Dear members,
Welcome to your harvest season!
This special moment — the moment we have enough harvestable goodies and flowers poppin’ to call you out here — has been in the works for many moons.
This week’s harvest feels extra special because it marks the end of a big transition (a big uprooting, if you will) for our little farm and the beginning of next phase of putting down roots on this beautiful, serene, and nascent new farm. The sky is the limit, dear members.
We have a delicious, diverse, and exciting cropland shaping up in the fields and garden for you this year. Kayta and I, and are amazing crew can't wait to start sharing the harvests with you.
This newsletter, which will appear in your inbox each week before Saturday pick-up will contain a snapshot of the week's harvest and u-pick options, recipes, notices on farm volunteer days, and share stories of life on the farm.
Let’s do this!
Your 2022 farm crew, from left: David, Grace, Ashlynn, Kayta, and Lauren
FARM ORIENTATION TOURS
Come get your farm totes and learn all the important info (like where the strawberries are) at a farm orientation tour! All members are asked to join us for an orientation tour their first time picking up. Tour times are below.
WEEK 1:
Saturday, June 11: 9:00 am, 11:00 am, 1:00 pm
Tuesday, June 14: 1:00 pm. 3:00 pm, 5:30 pm
WEEK 2:
Saturday, June 18th: 9:00 am, 11:00 am, 1:00 pm
Tuesday, June 21st: 1:00 pm. 3:00 pm, 5:30 pm
WEEK 3:
Saturday, June 25th: 9:00 am, 11:00 am, 1:00 pm
Tuesday, June 28th: 1:00 pm. 3:00 pm, 5:30 pm
Orientations should take about 30 minutes. If you’re sharing-a-share (alternating weeks) one of your groups should attend an orientation Week 1 and the other an orientation on Week 2.
If you can’t attend any of the above, please reach out to us to schedule a time to get shown the ropes!
THINGS TO KNOW
Times & Dates: Our 2022 CSA harvest season will run from June 11th - December 6th.
Saturday harvest pick-ups run from 9:00am - 2:00pm
Tuesday harvest pick-up run from 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Members and their accompanied guests may visit the farm any time, 7 days a week, sunrise to sunset, to enjoy the farm and u-pick.
Where is the farm? The member parking lot is located at 1720 Cooper Rd., Sebastopol, CA 95472. It is the long gravel driveway to the left. Kiddos crossing. Please drive slowly.
Parking: Please find a parking spot under the solar panels to your left, or along the straw bales further down.
Where is the food! The pick-up barn is to your right with the beautiful mural on it.
What should I bring?:
Produce bags (if you have them)
A pint basket for strawberries (if you have one)
A vase or water bottle to keep your flowers and herbs happy on the drive home!
Clippers to cut flowers and herbs
Water / sun hat / picnic supplies if you plan to stay awhile!
THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
Freshly Harvested Lorz Softneck Garlic, Hopi Blue Corn Meal, Arugula, Salad Mix, Spinach, Flowering Purple Bok Choi, Pink Lady Slipper Radishes, Hakurei Turnips, Collard Greens, Green Zucchini and Yellow Crookneck Squash, Green Little Gems, Red Butter Lettuce, Merida Carrots (from Winter Sister Farm!)
U-PICK
Albion Strawberries
Herbs: Thyme, Italian Parsley, Tarragon, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Vietnamese Coriander, Culinary Lavender, Culinary Sage, French Sorrel, Lemon Verbena, Cilantro, Tulsi, Various Mints, Catnip,
Flowers! First of the Spring flowers — bring your clippers!
HARVEST NOTES
In this section of the newsletter we offer history or recipes/tips on things in the share are particularly noteworthy or exciting that week.
Fresh Lorz Softneck Garlic: A glorious heirloom garlic brought to Washington State's Columbia River Basin in the early 1900s by the Lorz family when they emigrated from Italy. This large, purple tinged softneck garlic has a robust, spicy flavor that lingers in dishes. Try it in pasta or mashed potatoes, or simply roast the thing and make aoli! These bulbs were just unearthed yesterday so you will notice green stalks, silky soft inner papers and turgid, crips cloves. Store it in the fridge if you’ll be using soon, or in a dark dry place to cure. This is a live food!
Hopi Blue Corn: How about a little Fall vibes in your late Spring? This beautiful corn originates from the Hopi people of the Four Corners region. The is a fresh corn flour, stone ground from whole kernels on Wednesday. It has a freshness and flavor that only fresh ground corn can have. Eat soon or store frozen for maximum freshness. See below for our go-to Hopi Blue Corn pancake recipe.
HOPI BLUE CORN PANCAKE RECIPE
INGREDIENTS
1 cup blue cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 cup boiling water
1 beaten egg
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons butter, melted (coconut oil would be a delicious, dairy-free substitute)
1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup pine nuts, walnuts, or pecans, toasted (optional)
DIRECTIONS
In a medium bowl, mix together the blue cornmeal, salt and sugar. Stir in the boiling water until all of the ingredients are wet. Cover, and let stand for a few minutes.
In a measuring cup, combine the milk, egg and melted butter. Stir the milk mixture into the cornmeal mixture. Combine the flour and baking powder; stir into the cornmeal mixture until just incorporated. If the batter is stiff, add a little more milk until it flows off the spoon thickly but smoothly.Heat a large cast iron skillet over medium heat, and grease it with a dab of oil or butter. Use about 2 tablespoons of batter for each pancake. Quickly sprinkle a few pine nuts (or other nuts if using) onto each cake. When the entire surface of the pancakes are covered with bubbles, flip them over, and cook the other side until golden.
Serve immediately with maple syrup or fruit preserves.
Greek zucchini fritters RECIPE
Originally from the New York Times, these fritters have been getting rave reviews from our crew who brilliantly thought to use this week’s larger than usual zucchinis in the most delicious way possible (well, zucchini bread is pretty good too :)
INGREDIENTS
2 pounds large zucchini, trimmed and grated on the wide holes of a grater or food processor
Salt
2 eggs
½ cup chopped mixed fresh herbs, such as fennel, dill, mint, parsley (I like to use mostly dill)
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 cup fresh or dry breadcrumbs, more as necessary
Freshly ground pepper
1 cup crumbled feta
All-purpose flour as needed and for dredging
Olive oil for frying
PREPARATION
Salt the zucchini generously and leave to drain in a colander for one hour, tossing and squeezing the zucchini from time to time. Take up handfuls of zucchini, and squeeze out all of the moisture. Alternately, wrap in a clean dish towel, and squeeze out the water by twisting at both ends.
In a large bowl, beat the eggs and add the shredded zucchini, herbs, cumin, bread crumbs, salt and pepper to taste and feta. Mix together well. Take up a small handful of the mixture; if it presses neatly into a patty, it is the right consistency. If it seems wet, add more breadcrumbs or a few tablespoons of all-purpose flour. When the mixture has the right consistency, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour or longer.
Heat 1 inch of olive oil in a large frying pan until rippling, or at about 275 degrees. Meanwhile, take up heaped tablespoons of the zucchini mixture, and form balls or patties. Lightly dredge in flour.
When the oil is very hot, add the patties in batches to the pan. Fry until golden brown, turning once with a spider or slotted spoon. Remove from the oil, and drain briefly on a rack. Serve with plain Greek style yogurt if desired.
FARMER’S LOG
OLD AND NEW
Our favorite section of the newsletter is this here little section at the bottom called the “Farmer’s Log”. It’s our attempt to open a window into the farm and the lives and stories behind your food.
By way of introduction (and to buy ourselves a little time getting the barn cleaned up for this Saturday!) we thought we'd offer a compendium of past Farmer’s Logs for new members to get to know us.
For you farm and garden nerds out there, learn how we crop plan, or take a deep dive into Kayta’s flower garden.
If you’re one of those people that gets hyped for pumpkin spice lattes, Halloween, and Fall vibes even in the late Spring, stoke that fire with an ode to the potato harvest and the winter squash.
We are so lucky to find ourselves farming in yet another wild place here on the Laguna. We can’t wait to share more of the antics of our non-human neighbors with you. For the naturalists out there, read here about a lesson the oak trees taught us, or hear tell of the screaming monkey owlets of Green Valley, Wesley the Weasel, or the fox that welcomed us there.
* * * * *
Enjoy these old tales for now, dear members, because starting this week we’ll begin writing a new ones. When you arrive this week, we’ll become a new community farm.
From the reassembled pieces of our old farm, on the site of a legendary community farm, under the watchful eyes of even older oaks and even older ancestors by the ancient, ever-changing, ever-renewing Laguna.
We’ll make new stories and put down new roots. Deep ones, we hope. And harvest weeks will become harvest years, and years will become chapters.
Thank you all for being with us this season. It’s an honor to be farming for you.
See you in the fields,
David for Kayta, Lauren, Ashlynn, and Grace
