Harvest Week 9 - On Limits and the Enjoyment of Life

THIS WEEK’S HARVEST

Assorted Lettuces, Flowering Purple Komatsuna, Red Beets, Assorted Zucchini & Summer Squash, Assorted Cucumbers, Carrots, Fresh Red Onions, Celery, Italian & Asian Eggplant, Bicolor Sweet Corn, Caraflex Cabbage

U-PICK

Check the u-pick board in the barn for weekly u-pick limits.

• Albion Strawberries: ✨4 pints per share✨

• Cherry Tomatoes: 1 pint per share | The earliest cherry tomatoes to ripen are on the very bottom of the plant!

• Amethyst Beans: No limit

• Frying Peppers:

  • Padrons: No limit — take what you’ll eat!

  • Shishitos: No limit — take what you’ll eat!

• Herbs & Edible Flowers: Lemon Bergamot, Dill, Cilantro, Purple Basil, Thai Basil, Lemon Basil, Italian Basil, Tulsi, Parsley, Chamomile, Calendula, Nasturtium, Pansies/Viola, Garlic Chives, Tarragon, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, Vietnamese Coriander, Shiso/Perilla, Catnip, French & Culinary Lavender, Sorrel, & Assorted Mints

• Flowers galore!

Eric fracturing in front of our insectary flower beds in the Kale.

HARVEST NOTES

• Fresh Red Onions: These gorgeous red onions are coming to you straight from the field, fresh and uncured. You’ll notice that they’re particularly crisp and juicy and we recommend keeping them in the fridge to preserve their texture. As with many red onions, these are on the spicy side, and perfect used in any of your favorite dishes (or the celery salad recipe below!).

• Bicolor Sweet Corn: We’ve been watching the corn silks in anticipation for weeks, and we’re so excited that the first of the sweet corn is ready! Grill it, roast it, boil it, or just take a bite raw! NOTE: Some ears may contain a caterpillar at the top — these are corn borers, and a totally normal (and unavoidable) part of organic sweet corn. Just toss the little guy outside and enjoy your corn!

CELERY SALAD WITH APPLE AND WALNUTS

Recipe adapted from Alison Roman

In honor of this weekend’s Gravenstein Apple Fair, here’s a refreshing side salad that features our minerally, sweet & salty celery, and the sweet-tart flavor of our hometown hero apples.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts or pecans, coarsely chopped (optional)

• 3 Gravenstein apples, unpeeled and thinly sliced

• 1 bunch of celery, leaves and stalks separated, thinly sliced

• ½ medium red onion, thinly sliced (if you’d like the onion to be milder, soak briefly in cold water, or use Torpedo onions from last week)

• 2 lemons, zested and juiced

• Kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper

• 2 cups parsley, tender leaves and stems

• Olive oil, for drizzling

PREPARATION

1. Toast walnuts, either in a 350° oven or toaster oven for 5–7 minutes, or a pan on the stove, stirring often. 

2. Toss apple, celery, onion, lemon zest and juice in a large bowl and season with salt and pepper. 

3. Taste and season with more lemon juice, salt and pepper. Add parsley and walnuts and drizzle with a healthy amount of olive oil, seasoning again with salt and pepper before serving. 

TOMATOES COMING SOON!

A practical update on our main-season slicing tomato crop: Sonoma County is a land of microclimates. From the baking oven of Dry Creek Valley to the fog-soaked stretches of the Petaluma Gap. Here at West County Community Farm we tilt toward the cooler side of things, low and fog kissed. For that reason, our main season slicing tomato crop usually comes in later — around mid-August — than friends in warmer areas. The fruit set on our crop is looking good and should be blessing our tables soon.

FARMER’S LOG

On Limits and the Enjoyment of Life

As our harvests transition away from the delicate greens of early summer into the colors and flavors of summer, we are reminded of why we love eating seasonally from the farm.

Nothing dictates what is on our tables more than the tilt of the Earth. As you’ve seen, the shares of mid-June are very different from those of late July and early August. The spring, with its soft waxing light, grows tender, almost translucent, baby-soft greens. While the hard summer sun condenses itself into weighty, colorful, sweet fruits. Mentally compare a silky, soft, watery Spring strawberry to the sun-hardened, acid-sweet strawberries this week.

Another cool thing about eating from the farm is that we get to experience the full arc of plant growth — from fresh onions to cured onions; from baby Spring carrots to the deep orange Fall carrots kissed by frost. In supermarkets, most produce is harvested at one standard stage of a few standard varieties. Here, life is happening, and we pull it out of the field for you to taste.

But perhaps our favorite thing about this model is an unsung hero: Limits.

Supersweet 100 trusses, going from ripe to just flowers.

Yes, limits. Not having something. “Limit: 1 per share.”

“What!?”

We live in a time and a place where we can get just about any food, anytime, en masse, if you can afford it. Tomatoes in January. Melons in the February. Mangos in Sebastopol.

We have conquered seasons. We have conquered limits.

But have we also conquered one of life’s simplest pleasures? What is the fulfillment of desire without the longing that precedes it?

Last week we cherished the year’s first slicing tomato. That first slice of vine-ripened tomato on an open faced sandwich (with a little basil, olive oil, and salt) brought back a flood of memories from last summer, and summers before that, and we smiled at our loved ones at the table in our shared remembrance and shared enjoyment of this thing that we have now, but did not have for so long.

In most (or maybe all) rooted cultures there are festivals celebrating the return of foods. In Southern France there is the plum festival and the Spring festival marking the return of the egg. In Sebastopol, we have the Gravenstein Apple Fair this weekend.

Limits, scarcity, the lean times — they help us appreciate, like really appreciate, what we have, where we are, and who we are.

Life's fleeting nature is really it's spice — and so it goes for food.

In a few short weeks, we will be rich in slicing tomatoes. We will take for granted their spiced-earth smell and the way they tie so many meals together. We may even grow sick of tomatoes. But not this week. This week we are in waiting. This week we will rotate a teasing Sungold around between our thumb and index finger — impossibly orange, impossibly perfect — and it will shine back at us and remind us where we are, in place and in time. And it will remind us how impossibly lucky we are to wait for tomatoes.

See you in the fields,
David

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CSA BASICS

Check out our Brief Membership Guide: A quick-reference on the essentials of being a member.

Harvest pick-up times:

• Friday harvest pick-ups run from 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm

• 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.

2026 CSA program dates: This year’s harvest season will run from Friday, June 12th through Tuesday, December 8th this year.

Where is the farm? The member parking lot is located at 1720 Cooper Rd., Sebastopol, CA 95472.

Slow on Cooper Rd. Please drive slowly on Cooper Road — 20 mph. It's a neighborhood with lots of kids and animals who generously share the road with us.

Harvest Week 8 - July Emptiness

THIS WEEK’S HARVEST

Red Little Gem Lettuces, Flashy Trout Back Lettuce, Red Romaine Lettuce, Bunched Baby Beets, Assorted Zucchini & Summer Squash, Lemon Cucumbers, Bulk Pickling Cucumbers (last week!), Carrots, Broccoli, Fresh Torpedo Onions, Celery, New German Butterball Potatoes, Italian & Asian Eggplant, first taste of New Girl Tomatoes

U-PICK

Check the u-pick board in the barn for weekly u-pick limits.

• Albion Strawberries: ✨4 pints per share✨

• Cherry Tomatoes: 1 pint per share | The earliest cherry tomatoes to ripen are on the very bottom of the plant!

• Amethyst Beans: No limit

• Frying Peppers:

  • Padrons: No limit — take what you’ll eat!

  • Shishitos: No limit — take what you’ll eat!

• Herbs & Edible Flowers: Lemon Bergamot, Dill, Cilantro, Purple Basil, Thai Basil, Lemon Basil, Italian Basil, Tulsi, Parsley, Chamomile, Calendula, Nasturtium, Pansies/Viola, Garlic Chives, Tarragon, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, Vietnamese Coriander, Shiso/Perilla, Catnip, French & Culinary Lavender, Sorrel, & Assorted Mints

• Flowers galore!

HARVEST NOTES

• New German Butterball Potatoes: These little beauties are golden, buttery and perfect for your favorite summer potato dishes. New potatoes are a labor of love — their delicate skins mean that they have to be harvested and washed by hand rather than mechanically. We hope you enjoy them!

• First taste of New Girl Tomatoes: This week we’re bringing you the very first sampling of this year’s field tomatoes as a small preview. These plants were seeded in March, planted out in May as soon as we could get into the fields after the late spring rains, and are finally bringing us the first of their fruits. New Girls are the fastest tomatoes to ripen, but over the course of the next month we’ll be welcoming 7 varieties of heirloom slicers and canning tomatoes.

• Flashy Trout Back Lettuce: We hope you’ve been enjoying the procession of different lettuces so far this season. We wanted to highlight this week’s Austrian heirloom — it’s a sweet romaine with a buttery texture and gorgeous red flecked leaves that’s making us excited about salads all over again. If you haven’t made a caesar salad yet, now’s the time!

EASY PEANUT NOODLES

By Hetty Lui McKinnon

On a hot day like the ones we’ve been having, there’s nothing quite so satisfying (and easy!) as cold peanut noodles. They’re a perfect base for an infinite array of vegetables. Cucumbers — of course — but also julienned carrots and daikon (if you still have any hanging out in your fridge), and, if you feel like turning on your oven, roasted, crispy broccoli and eggplant would be very welcome. It also makes great leftovers; just store the noodles, sauce and chopped peanuts separately and toss to combine.

Cook Time: 10 minutes Servings: 4 servings

INGREDIENTS

• 12 oz. dried wheat noodles (such as thin udon) — or ramen, soba or rice noodles

• Kosher salt

• ½ cup chunky or creamy peanut butter

• 2 Tbsp. unseasoned rice vinegar or lime juice

• 4 tsp. pure maple syrup or honey

• 1 tsp. soy sauce or tamari

• 1 small garlic clove, finely grated

• Freshly ground black pepper

• 4 small cucumbers, thinly sliced

• 2 scallions, or other mild onions, finely chopped

• ⅓ cup salted roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped

• Raw sesame oil or chili oil (for serving)

DIRECTIONS

Cook the noodles in a large pot of boiling, salted water until tender. Drain and rinse under cold running water.

To make the dressing, whisk the peanut butter, rice vinegar or lime juice, maple syrup or honey, soy sauce, garlic and ¼ cup hot water in a large bowl until smooth. The dressing should be the consistency of heavy cream. If it’s too thick, add a little more water as needed. Season with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.

If the drained noodles are sticking together, rinse briefly to separate and drain well. Transfer to the bowl with dressing and toss to coat. Add the sliced cucumbers, scallions, and any other veggie additions, and season well with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.

To serve, top with chopped peanuts and drizzle with raw sesame oil or chili oil.

FARMER’S LOG

JULY EMPTINESS

At this time of year it is hard to find the headspace for a thoughtful Farmer’s Log — the steady rhythm of the bulky harvests drowns out the softer notes of reflection.

To sneak in planting, seeding, and weeding in the margins of harvest your only thoughts are farm thoughts, your only feelings are farm feelings. You must remain disciplined, focused… you can’t miss a beat (no pun intended).

This week, while the harvest share starts to get a little more summery we turned towards fall in the field. We transplanted celery for the fall. Eric cultivated our fall carrots. We’re enjoying the first potato tubers swelling up in the flowering potato field.

Where we’ve been spending a lot of our time — the cucumber, squash and melon plantings in Creek Field.

It’s a strange feeling, this time of year: Our internal lives, our emotions, dreams, and whimsies — feel far away, shoved aside by the harvest and urgent needs in the field — but at the same time we never feel more full. 

There is a sort of innocence, a fullness, in being so busy as to be empty.

Then, the swelling of the corn stalks can you lift you up to the eaves. The heat is your sorrow. The flowering potatoes are your whimsical thoughts. And the little things — a good sip of coffee, a crew mate’s joke —  can fill you up to the brim.

See you in the fields,
David

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CSA BASICS

Check out our Brief Membership Guide: A quick-reference on the essentials of being a member.

Harvest pick-up times:

• Friday harvest pick-ups run from 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm

• 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.

2026 CSA program dates: This year’s harvest season will run from Friday, June 12th through Tuesday, December 8th this year.

Where is the farm? The member parking lot is located at 1720 Cooper Rd., Sebastopol, CA 95472.

Slow on Cooper Rd. Please drive slowly on Cooper Road — 20 mph. It's a neighborhood with lots of kids and animals who generously share the road with us.

Harvest Week 7 - Strawberry Moon

THIS WEEK’S HARVEST

Mustard Mix, Green Little Gem Lettuces, Flashy Trout Back Lettuce, Curly Kale, Assorted Zucchini & Summer Squash, Lemon Cucumbers, Persian Cucumbers, Bulk Pickling Cucumbers, Carrots, Broccoli, Fresh Torpedo Onions, Celery, Fennel, New Purple Viking Potatoes

U-PICK

Check the u-pick board in the barn for weekly u-pick limits.

• Albion Strawberries: ✨4 pints per share✨

• 🌟 Cherry Tomatoes: 1 pint per share | The earliest cherry tomatoes to ripen are on the very bottom of the plant! See the photo below for an introduction to the varieties we’re growing this year — and let us know which of the pink varieties you like better!

• 🌟 Amethyst Beans: No limit | These are purple green beans (purple on the outside and green on the inside). Eat them raw to highlight their color and sweet flavor, or cook as you would any other green beans and watch their color change to green!

• Frying Peppers:

  • Padrons: 3 pints per share

  • Shishitos: 3 pints per share

• Herbs & Edible Flowers: Lemon Bergamot, Dill, Cilantro, Purple Basil, Thai Basil, Lemon Basil, Italian Basil, Tulsi, Parsley, Chamomile, Calendula, Nasturtium, Pansies/Viola, Garlic Chives, Tarragon, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, Vietnamese Coriander, Shiso/Perilla, Catnip, French & Culinary Lavender, Sorrel, & Assorted Mints

• Flowers!

This year’s cherry tomato lineup! Top row, left to right: Supersweet 100, Sungold / Bottom row, left to right: Pinkie, Sunpeach, Black Cherry.

HARVEST NOTES

• New Purple Viking Potatoes: These beautiful pink and purple swirled potatoes are fresh and uncured — with delicate skin and an extra crisp texture, they’re more of a fresh vegetable than the starchy, storage potatoes of winter. Use them like you would any potato, or, to highlight their fresh flavor, roast them in the oven with olive oil, salt and pepper (and Torpedo onions! So good in everything) or use them in an herby potato salad like the one below.

• Baby Celery: Farm-fresh celery is world’s apart from the celery that comes from the store. Minerally, sweet and salty, we can’t get enough of it. To highlight this week’s pairing of celery and fennel, we’ll be making one of our longstanding favorite salads: Alison Roman’s Celery and Fennel with Walnuts and Blue Cheese. (You can find the recipe in this old newsletter.)

• Fresh Torpedo Onions: A favorite in Italy and France, these beautiful, pink, elongated onions are mild, delicate, and delicious raw. We recommend incorporating them into fresh salads, pizza or sandwiches.

HERBY POTATO & GREEN BEAN SALAD WITH TOMATOES

From Daisy Beet

With this week’s arrival of new potatoes, (purple) green beans and cherry tomatoes we can’t help but think of French potato salads and salade niçoise — some of our favorite essence-of-summer dishes. This recipe brings all these ingredients together with a classic vinaigrette and herbs from the garden, but feel free to add in anchovies, tuna, or hard-boiled eggs to take it all the way to salade niçoise.

INGREDIENTS

• 3/4 pound green beans, trimmed

• 1 lb potatoes

• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved

• 2 tbsp basil, chopped

• 2 scallions, white and light green parts thinly sliced or Torpedo Onions

• 1/4 c parsley, chopped

• 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

• 2 tbsp champagne vinegar

• 1/4 tsp Kosher salt

• 1/2 tbsp Dijon mustard

• Salt and pepper, to taste

Prairie Sun Rudbeckia (Black-eyed Susans) in the foreground, with Celosia, Queen Mix Zinnias, and Valentine Sunflowers.

PREPARATION

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Prepare a bowl of ice water that will fit the green beans.

2. Drop the green beans into the boiling water to blanch for 30 seconds. Remove them and plunge them into the ice water to stop them cooking. Let cool, then drain and pat dry.

3. Add the potatoes to the same pot of boiling water. Cook for about 15 minutes, until soft and fork tender.

4. Drain and let cool. Once cool enough to touch, cut the potatoes in half.

5. In a small jar, combine extra virgin olive oil, champagne vinegar, Kosher salt, and dijon mustard. Close the jar and shake vigorously to emulsify the vinaigrette.

6. Combine the cooked green beans, potatoes, tomatoes, and the fresh herbs in a mixing bowl. Add a generous pinch of salt and pepper.

7. Add the dressing and gently toss the salad together so everything is well coated.

8. Enjoy at room temperature or cold!

FARMER’S LOG

This week’s Farmer’s Log is by new crew member Shanga Juckas — a wonderful essay written in late June about strawberries, farming and her grandma. Thanks for sharing, Shanga!

STRAWBERRY MOON
BY SHANGA JUCKAS

I have been living from moment to moment to moment and the times of slowness that I once relished so deeply are few and far between. I do not mind. I feel like a ripe strawberry. My time of being a sitting seed is behind me. I am ready to burst and be devoured by the world.

After two years of living in Sonoma County and flirting with the idea of farming, I took a full-time job as a produce farmer on an Organic farm. The only other time I can remember feeling so full and complete and pulsing with so much aliveness is when I was teaching at Tree School. The link between the two? Being outside, being social, being in close-relation with simple beauties that seem to amplify the more they are engaged with. The sinewy bloody roots of the Beet Starts. The sleepy bees resting in golden Squash blossoms. Hawks, Kites, Herons, Red-winged Blackbirds: their songs, flight, and persistent presence all around.

Shanga this afternoon with the beloved Root Blaster 3000

At the end of every day, my hands feel stronger and my mind is at peace. The feeling of full-body exhaustion paired with a fresh stir fry of veggies I’ve just harvested is hard to beat. On Friday morning my co-workers and I were out harvesting Squash early enough that the nightly fog had not yet burned off. We all walked through the misty rows, swishing our noisy waterproof harvest pants. Morning birds were singing and the bees were just beginning to wake from their drunken naps in the blossoms. I was sad. The same kind of sadness that is felt when you meet someone who you love so much and you can hardly believe you’ve only just met. It’s strange to imagine you’ve lived your entire life without them. And it’s also scary because what if the love you suddenly feel is not forever? I mean, it’s not–nothing really is. I thought about the things people say like “farming destroys your body”, “farming is a young person’s game” and so on. And people say the same about dance. And people say the same about running. And people say the same about so many things. And yet, there are old farmers, old dancers, old runners. I dated someone last year who was a wildland firefighter. He was also an arborist, shepherd, and pretty much anything you needed him to be. We began seeing each other right before I left for the PCT. His attitude was unlike that of anyone I’ve ever met. While I had always heard this idea of attitude being everything, I never saw it quite like I did for him. When I left for the PCT I asked him for words of wisdom. He shrugged, smiled, and said “just keep walking”. Those words were with me for the entire trail. And they still are. I’ve never held such a subtle and powerful piece of wisdom. And so I will hold it as I walk into this new chapter of working in close relationship with the land and my own body.

When I began my time at this new job, my boss knew I had hiked the PCT last summer and he said “Farming is a bit like through-hiking”. We bonded over the John Muir Trail, which overlaps with the Sierra Nevada section of the PCT. He hiked the JMT several years back and I felt grateful to have a boss who could relate to this right of passage I had experienced. I agree with his assessment so far. Farming is like through-hiking, in a way. Incredibly physically demanding, requires mental fortitude above all else, high highs and low lows. But farming is distinctly not like through-hiking for one main reason. By definition through-hiking requires you to quickly pass through, always on to the next place. By definition farming requires an agreement to become incredibly intimate with one piece of land, sticking around and sending roots into the earth. It is exactly what I desired after so much movement over the past year and more.

I now spend my mornings pulling carrot roots from their homes in the soil. I spend the middle of the day standing on the back of a tractor as it maneuvers through newly planted beds of watermelon. I nap under grandmother oaks in the heat of the day. Each night I fill a glass with strawberry shrub that I’ve made from our farm’s prolific straw-covered beds.

My grandma was a farmer of sorts. More of a rancher, I suppose. Or a high-level wrangler. Regardless of her title, she spent her summer days in and around a barn. She had dirt under her nails and deep wrinkles on her hands. Her arms were strong and she was not afraid of working herself to the bone. She did. She worked until she died. As I kneel into the soil as a sort of harvest prayer every morning, I feel my grandma close to me. I hold my core strong, remembering the advice during training to keep body mechanics ever present in the dance of the farmer’s day. My grandma has been gone for over six years now. But suddenly, as my straight back stoops for a heavy bin of summer squash, I get to know another side of her. Through this work I find myself understanding her more and more. I admire her work ethic more than ever. I understand her draw to hard-working people. I feel her joy and her steadiness and her passion. Her closet full of beautiful clothes and eclectic jewelry waiting for her every day as she wore holes in the white sneakers she marched around in all day. There is something so very pleasurable about getting absolutely covered in soil, sun, and sweat and then washing it away to adorn my sore body in beautiful clothes.

As this current strawberry moon ripens into fullness, I feel the same of my own heart. Strawberries fill my fridge and freezer. Homemade strawberry popsicles, strawberry crumble, strawberry salad, strawberry shrub, and of course a bowl of the ripest most delicious strawberries I’ve ever tasted. Strawberry Jam that my mom has made sits on my table. The Label reads: Pam’s Jam 2026 Strawberry Ingredients: Strawberry, Love, Sugar, Pectin. I wish I could bring my grandma some strawberries. I wish I could cuddle up to her on the couch watching Antiques Roadshow and lick strawberry popsicles together. I would love to tell her how much more I am starting to understand.

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CSA BASICS

Check out our Brief Membership Guide: A quick-reference on the essentials of being a member.

Harvest pick-up times:

• Friday harvest pick-ups run from 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm

• 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.

2026 CSA program dates: This year’s harvest season will run from Friday, June 12th through Tuesday, December 8th this year.

Where is the farm? The member parking lot is located at 1720 Cooper Rd., Sebastopol, CA 95472.

Slow on Cooper Rd. Please drive slowly on Cooper Road — 20 mph. It's a neighborhood with lots of kids and animals who generously share the road with us.