Four native “flower flies” and one bumble enjoy a recently opened Centaurea above the Gnome Homes
CONSTRUCTION ZONE FOR SOLAR ARRAY
For the next 6 weeks or so, the area in front of our barn will be a construction zone — for the best possible reason: A giant solar array!
The solar array will be enough to provide for electricity needs for the whole property (and then some) and provide more shade and rain protection around the barn! Please pardon the inconvenience and make sure your little ones are extra careful around the construction site. Shout out to Green Valley Farm + Mill our landmate Jeremy Fisher for taking on this project!
IN THE FLOWERS THIS WEEK
Featured Flower: Keep an eye out this week for the very first of our new drying flower — Xeranthemum. It’s down on the end of one of the long beds above the gnome homes. Try picking a few and adding them to a mixed bouquet of drying flowers. If kept in a dark, dry space they should keep their color for years!
This Week’s Flower Challenge: This week, try making your bouquet in a vessel that you’ve never used before. See what new shapes emerge!
Xeranthemum
IN THE HERBS
Oregano, Marjoram, Thyme, Chives & Garlic Chives, Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, Chamomile, Tulsi Basil, Purple & Green & Bi-color Shiso (aka Perilla), Mints, Italian Basil, Purple Basil, Thai Basil, Cilantro, Dill, Anise Hyssop, Sage, Tarragon, and Vietnamese Cilantro, Culinary Sage, Sorrel
Strawberry Torte
This easy and delicious recipe is an adaptation of the New York Times’ beloved plum torte recipe first published in 1983. We found out about it from our friend and colleague Anna Dozor. It’s adaptable and can really be made to fit any fruit — think fresh summer blackberries, plums, or strawberries and rhubarb.
3/4 to 1 cup sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup unbleached flour, sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
2 eggs
2 pints of strawberries, each cut in half
optional: lemon zest, vanilla, or other flavorings of your choice
Heat oven to 350 degrees.
Cream the sugar and butter in a bowl. Add lemon zest or vanilla if using. Add the flour, baking powder, salt and eggs beat well.
Spoon the batter into a springform pan of 8,9, or 10 inches. Place the cut strawberries cut side up on top of the batter.
Bake approximately one hour until a knife almost comes out clean from the center of the cake. Delicious with barely sweetened whipped cream (consider making lemon verbena infused whipped cream!).
NOTES & REMINDERS
Confused? Ask us! If you’re ever confused about anything in the garden, don’t hesitate to ask us in person or via email. We love helping you use the garden!
How do I find the herbs? All herbs that are ready to pick are marked with a colored stake with the name of the herb on it.
FARMER’S LOG
CANNABIS IN THE FIELDS
A couple of weeks ago, after months of paperwork, Kayta and I received approval from the Sonoma County Department of Agriculture to grow a half-acre of medical cannabis in our fields this year. Their leaves are now wiggling in the wind in our lower fields.
As many of you know, we are vegetable farmers and this farm is about neighbors coming together over fresh local produce, flowers and herbs. Introducing cannabis into our fields was not an easy decision for us because of its loaded history in our society and our County.
Like most small farms in Sonoma County, Kayta and I have long struggled with how to make growing food the way we do make sense financially. The reasons why a small vegetable farm in a place like Sebastopol is such an economically precarious enterprise is a subject for another Newsletter — but, needless to say, after this drought forced us to cancel the year's vegetable production we were looking at a pretty grim economic outlook for the farm.
Concurrently, since Sonoma County approved zoning permits for cannabis cultivation on some agriculturally zoned parcels in 2016, we have watched a few vegetable growing peers incorporate cannabis into their fields in a safe, legal, organic way that helped them keep their farms running. So we started looking into it and indeed found a landscape much different than the one we grew up with: Cannabis — like prunes and hops and apples and wine grapes before — is now an emerging legal cash crop in Sonoma County, already shaping the agricultural landscape.
The sun sets on Grapes & Cream and Sun Bisc cannabis cultivars in field 2.
But regardless of the societal shifts occurring around cannabis, our biggest concern when we were considering trialing some cannabis in our own fields was how you, our members, would feel about it. After all, this farm is for you. But in conversations with so many of you we heard nothing but support. We came away feeling that if we could grow this plant in alignment with our soil and land stewardship values, and if it could help Green Valley Community Farm survive and thrive, then we owed it to ourselves and to the community that has grown up around the farm to give it a try.
So here goes!
Our immediate hope for this crop is that it helps us survive this drought year with just 10% of the water we normally use. We also hope to trial whether or not some cannabis mixed into our crop rotation might help bring financial stability and resiliency to the farm so that Kayta and I can keep doing the work that we love, in the community that we love, for the rest of our careers.
Fun facts & answers to some frequently asked questions:
This crop is 100% legal, permitted, licensed, inspected, tagged, tracked and taxed by a combination of the California Dept of Food and Agriculture; the Sonoma County Dept of Agriculture/Weights and Measures; and the Cal Dept of Fish and Wildlife.
No, the weed flowers will not be u-pick. Good try though. ;-)
Cannabis is a very water light crop and uses only 30% of the water vegetables use per half acre.
Why didn't you just do a smaller produce CSA this year? We only had enough water to run a 30 share CSA this year. A CSA of that size would have not paid the bills. Cannabis packs an economic punch big enough to get us through with such few plants in the ground.
You might sometimes see us spraying the plants in the evenings. These sprays are organic micronutrients, like kelp meal, and pro-biotic beneficial bacteria meant to help the plants to ward off pests.
No, we are not going to abandon the food farm to become cannabis growers! We love farming food for this community way to much. This CSA is our baby and we both hope it is our life long work.
Yes, we are hoping to grow some amount of cannabis in future years on the side in tandem with the vegetables in the hopes that it helps us keep up with the cost of living and farming in West Sonoma County.
The two of us have never grown a cannabis plant in our lives (!) so we are growing this crop under the tutelage and in partnership with our friends at New Family Farm, fellow Sebastopol vegetable farmers who've been experimenting and innovating with cannabis in the field for a few years now.
What you see is a half acre of more than 10 varieties of cannabis plants with rows spaced very widely to encourage airflow. There is an insectary bed planted every 4th bed to attract natural pest predators. These insectary rows are planted with Sweet Alyssum, Cosmos, Crimson Clover, Phacelia, and other goodies
We will be growing it with similar practices to how we grow long term crops like tomatoes and winter squash — except if each tomato plant were the Prince of France and required the fluffiest beds, the finest delicacies, and weekly compost teas.
As always, we are an open book and are happy to answer any questions you have about this new crop in the fields.
We hope you all are enjoying the exploding July garden and the sweet strawberry breeze!
See you in the fields,
David & Kayta
