THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
Harvest Moon Potatoes, Green Magic Broccoli, Sweet Peppers, Tomatoes, Carrots, Assorted Zucchini, Patty Pan & Crookneck Squash, Slicing Cucumbers, Cracker Jack Watermelon, Piel de Sapo Melons, Farao Cabbage, Leeks, Dazzling Blue Dino Kale, Assorted Little Gem Lettuces, Romaine Lettuce, Arugula
U-PICK
Check the u-pick board in the barn for weekly u-pick limits.
🌟 Goldilocks Beans | No Limit - Take what you’ll eat or preserve this week! | These beautiful, pale yellow beans are great for fresh eating or dilly beans! The last green bean succession of the year.
Albion Strawberries | 2 pints per share
Cherry Tomatoes | No Limit
Frying Peppers:
Shishitos | No Limit
Padróns | No Limit
Hot Peppers:
Jalapeños | 10 peppers per share | Red jalapenos are sweet & hot and used in making Chipotle.
🌟 Habanero | 2 peppers per share | Citrusy & mildly hot. Pick when orange.
🌟 Thai Chilis | 2 peppers per share | Spicy! Pick when red.
🌟 Wilson’s Vietnamese Devil Pepper | 2 peppers per share | A super-spicy Vietnamese heirloom. Pick when red. True Love Seeds tells the family story behind these peppers and the students who grew our seeds.
Herbs & Edible Flowers: (Note: Most new annual herbs are now in the north west section of the garden.) Husk Cherries, Italian Basil, Purple Basil, Lemon Basil, Purple Basil, Dill, Tulsi, Parsley, Cilantro, Chamomile, Calendula, Nasturtium, Lemon Bergamot Bee Balm, Garlic Chives, Tarragon, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, Culinary Sage, Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, Vietnamese Coriander, Shiso/Perilla, Catnip, Pineapple Sage, Sorrel, Assorted Mints
Flowers! (Note: Most of the new flowers, like big new marigolds, are in the western beds and north section.) Too many to list!
Goldilocks Beans & this year’s Hot Peppers: Top row, left to right: Thai Chilis, Habanero, Vietnamese Devil Pepper / Bottom row: Shishitos, Jalapenos, Padrons.
HARVEST NOTES
Last week of summer squash! As we turn towards the fall and the autumn equinox, we’ll be saying goodbye to our summer squash. There will be just enough for everyone to have a last taste this week.
Green Magic Broccoli: We’re welcoming our first abundant fall succession of broccoli this week! If you’re ever in doubt as to what to do with broccoli, or with a large quantity of broccoli, we have two fail-safe ideas for you. First: roasting. In our house we find that any amount of roasted broccoli, however large it initially seems, will be consumed. To make delicious roasted broccoli, preheat your oven and a pan to 400-450 degrees. Cut broccoli into thin florets after peeling the thick skin off the base of the stalk. Toss generously with olive oil and salt, then roast until crispy. A couple minutes before taking out of the oven, toss thoroughly with a couple cloves of crushed raw garlic. The other option is freezing! Blanched broccoli freezes beautifully, and can then be enjoyed on its own or added to your favorite dishes.
Harvest Moon Potatoes: Numerous crew and CSA members agree: Harvest Moons might be the best potato. The Burpee’s catalogue says it well: “Infused with creamy, nutty flavor, ‘Harvest Moon’ is a culinary triumph on her own, no butter or salt required.” Enjoy every which way: Mashed, baked, boiled, fried—or adding color to a potato salad.” Purple on the outside, gold on the inside.
SONOMA MOUNTAIN BREADS OFF THIS SATURDAY!
COOKMA POP-UP THIS SATURDAY
Come get some nourishing foods for fall with Cookma this Saturday. Based on Ayurveda and Chinese Medicine, Cookma creates one-pot meals that make it easy to have comforting food at home. They are an excellent way to utilize whatever produce is seasonal and abundant so they’ll make a great companion to your CSA pick up.
Cookma is a woman-owned company and is based in West County.
RED PEPPER, POTATO AND PROSCIUTTO FRITTATA
From Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables, by Joshua McFadden
Serves 3-4.
INGREDIENTS
1/2 lb peeled potatoes
Kosher salt, fresh ground peppers
2 tbls unsalted butter
2 red bell peppers (or ~ 6 Jimmy Nardellos), seeded and cut into julienne strips
1 bunch of scallions, trimmed and sliced on a sharp angle
4 oz prosciutto, cut into thin strips
6 eggs
1/2 cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
1/2 cup whole milk ricotta cheese, seasoned with salt and peppers and stirred until it’s creamy
INSTRUCTIONS
Put potatoes in a pan with water and add salt until it tastes like the sea. Bring to a boil and cook until they are tender but not mushy, 15-20 minutes. Drain.
When cool enough to handle, cut into small chunks.
Preheat oven to 400.
Heat the butter in a 10” skillet (this will go in an oven) over medium-high heat. Add peppers, scallions, and prosciutto, season lightly with salt and black pepper, and cook until fragrant and peppers are softening but not browning, 5-7 minutes. Add the potatoes.
Crack the eggs into a large bowl, add 1 tsp salt and many twists of black pepper and the Parmigiano. Whisk until eggs are nicely blended. Pour the eggs over the ingredients in the skillet, scraping everything out of the bowl with a rubber spatula.
Reduce the heat to medium and let the eggs sit peacefully for about 2 minutes. Then carefully slip the spatula around the edge of the eggs, releasing them from the pan, allowing more liquid egg to flow underneath. Let that new layer of egg set up a bit and then repeat the process. You are building layers of cooked egg, which will help the frittata have a lighter texture than if you simply let the whole thing set as one.
After most of the liquid egg has cooked, but the top is still runny, dollop the ricotta over the top of the frittata in 8 blobs, evenly spaced. Transfer the pan to the oven and finish cooking the frittata all the way through, about 5 minutes or so. It should be puff a bit and the top will get lightly browned.
Let the frittata sit in the pan for a couple of minutes, then run the spatula or a small knife around the edge of the frittata and as far under the center as you can go. Slide the frittata onto a cutting board or cooling rack.
Serve the frittata on the warm side of room temperature, cut into wedges. It’s delicious the next day too.
FARMER’S LOG
Equinox Musings
On Monday, at 11:19 am, the Earth will wobble its midline straight in line with our sun — the Autumnal Equinox. At that moment, if you listen closely, you might here a big “yipeee!” from thousands of Northern hemisphere farmers.
It’s not that we begrudge the summer. No. We just love the changes.
It struck me today how the tasks of pulling off a growing season harmonize with each other, and the seasons, such that it always seems like there is just enough time to do what needs to be done by the hair on our chinny-chin-chins.
The Byrds were right: To everything, there is a season.
In the spring, we aren’t harvesting yet, so we have all the lengthening-day to prep the canvas; to tune-up the equipment and build irrigation systems; to seed 200 trays a week in the greenhouse; to pot up, stake, and trellis tomatoes; to mow cover crop, turn soil, and plant, plant, plant!
Then harvest seasons comes and two, three, then four days a week are consumed by harvest. We put down the shovel and the hammer and take up the harvest knife. All other projects cease. Planting and harvest become our lives (and maybe some weeding if we’re lucky). The days are at their longest. If there is ever a time to harvest hundreds of pounds of cucumbers, tomatoes and squash in the morning and then seed a mile of carrots in the afternoon, it’s summer.
Before we know it, it’s late-summer. The tomatoes start exploding, the cucumbers already are, we’re still planting like crazy and then the melons come in — and just when when we think we’ll break, that there isn’t enough time in the long hot days, we scroll through our crop plan and see that the plantings are nearly done. No more bed shaping. Greenhouse seedings slow down. We plant the last Fall brassicas and the tractor sits quiet for a minute and we can spend all day amongst the vines and in the cooler playing Tetris with boxes of summer fruit.
Then comes the Autumn Equinox.
The tomatoes are still pumping and the onions and potatoes are calling to be harvested; the winter squash and corn are crisping up. Fall harvests are here. Space needs to be cleared, fields mowed and turned into cover crop, new strawberry beds prepped and planted — and just when we think we’ll break, that there isn’t enough time in the shortening days, the heat starts to ebb and the tomatoes show signs of slowing down. Soon, a light frost will roll through the farm and nip the summer fruits. Smiling friends will come to help with the potato harvest. The chill morning air goes down like a draught of ambrosia. We plant the last lettuce bed of the season and have a moment to sit and seed cover crop.
All this is why you’ll rarely hear a farmer say, “Shucks! Summer is over.”
We are greedy for the turnings.
We love nothing more than a first harvest. But the glory of the first tomato fades under the weight of hundreds of tomato crates and then we crave cold hands and cozy coats and the crisp stem snap of a plump winter radicchio.
Change is our tonic — and one of the great sustaining elixirs of farm life.
Soon, winter will arrive. The rains will come and we will turn in — to rest, rejuvenation, and internality. We’ll clean up the farm, look back on the year, plan, sit, think, fix things, and sleep.
But ample sleep turns into insomnia; too much internality into angst. Our harvest muscles will atrophy and we will get pudgy. We will forget why we are out puttering in the wet and the cold.
And just when we think we’ll break, that there is too much open-endedness in the too-short days, the sun will start creeping back and we will hear the Red-winged Blackbirds calling us out to the fields, beckoning us, “Build it up again! Plant again! Turn! Turn! Turn!”
See you in the fields,
David
CSA BASICS
Slow on Cooper Road! Out of respect for our neighbors and the many kids and animals that live on Cooper Rd., please drive slow (20 mph)!
What time is harvest pick-up?:
Saturday harvest pick-ups run from 9:00 am - 2:00 pm
Tuesday harvest pick-ups will run from 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm
U-pick hours: Oriented members can come to the farm any time, 7 days a week, sunrise to sunset, to u-pick and enjoy the farm.
2025 CSA program dates: Our harvest season will run from Saturday, June 14th through Tuesday, December 9th this year.
Where is the farm? The member parking lot is located at 1720 Cooper Rd., Sebastopol, CA 95472.
