THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
Mustard Greens, Fall Braising Mix (with Radicchio, Frisee, Arugula, Ethiopian Kale, Red Russian Kale, Shungiku, and Baby Chard), Red Butter and assorted Head Lettuces, Indigo Radicchio, Dandelion Greens, Dazzling Blue Dino Kale, Daikon Radish, Cabbage, Fennel, Cauliflower & Romanesco, Green Magic Broccoli, Shallots, Red Thumb Fingerling Potatoes, Rainbow Carrots, Cured Cabernet Onions, Sunshine Kabocha Winter Squash
U-PICK
Albion Strawberries: Gleanings
Cherry Tomatoes: Final gleanings | See below…
Frying Peppers: Final gleanings | See below…
Jalapeños: Final gleanings | See below…
Yellow & Red Thai Hot Peppers: Final gleanings
Herbs: Italian Parsley, Rosemary, Thyme, Tulsi Basil, Thai Basil, Oregano, Marjoram, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Vietnamese Coriander, Culinary Lavender, French Sorrel, Lemon Verbena, Lemon Balm
Some beautiful Green Magic Broccoli coming atchya Week 21!
HARVEST NOTES
Sunshine Kabocha Winter Squash: Sunshine Kabocha is our farm crew’s unanimous all-time favorite squash. Excellent for eating straight roasted. Also excellent in pies, curries, etc. Super sweet, velvety smooth texture.
Dandelion Greens: A bitter green, in the chicory family (radicchio, escarole, etc.), try chopping these up in a nice rich omelet with Moonfruit Mushrooms and the last frying peppers. Also delicious lightly sautéed with garlic, bacon and red wine vinegar. Deeply nutritious and cleansing.
Shallots: We tried growing shallots for the first time this year, inspired by Anna’s Dad’s deep love of this delicacy allium. We’re not at quite the right latitude for this seed — but we did get a nice little fresh crop for you this week. To highlight them, try making a risotto, or slicing them thin, frying them, and then using as a topping for a rice bowl.
FINAL TOMATO AND PEPPER GLEANINGS
We’d like to invite any and all who wish to perform final gleanings on our Cherry Tomatoes, Shishito and Padrón frying peppers, Jalapeños and Thai Hot Peppers, as well as our main crop field tomatoes. Time permitting, we will begin ripping all of these plants out as soon as this coming Wednesday to make way for cover crop.
Our main crop tomatoes (of which there are still some yummy ones to be found) are the big patch of trellised tomatoes you having been passing, to your right, on your way to the cherry tomatoes. Ask one of us in the barn for directions if needed.
LOGISTICS
The 2020 harvest season runs from Saturday, June 13th til Tuesday, December, 8th.
Saturday pick-up runs from 9:00am - 2:00pm
Tuesday pick-up runs from 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm
The farm and u-picking are open 7-days a week, sunrise to sunset. Please close the farm gates behind you on off days.
FALL CARROT HARVEST this WEDNESDAY | 9:00 am
Joins is this Wednesday morning to our great Fall carrot harvest! Wherein we kneel on the soft dirt and top carrots into bags for washing. There are a ton of them (literally). We can use all the help we can get!
These Bolero Carrots, sweetened by light frost, will get sweeter and sweeter in storage and nourish us all through the Fall and winter. Join us for this fun, kid friendly harvest!
FARMER’S LOG
THE SEASON OF DEATH
Rise and fall. Light and shadow. Summer and Winter. Life and death.
Halloween is an important time of year on the farm. It is the season of Death.
The Gaelic Samhain festival — the root of our Halloween — marked the end of the harvest season, "summer’s end”, the transition to the darkest half of the year, and the transhumance time when shepherds brought their livestock, fattened in the summer mountain pastures, down for the winter for shelter or for slaughter. There were feasts. People opened their burial mounds, portals to the Underworld, and lit cleansing bonfires. The borders between the worlds were thought to thin around the Samhain and supernatural spirits and the spirits of the dead walked amongst us. Spirits and fairies were to be appeased to survive the winter. Tables were set for deceased relatives at the Samhain dinner. People wore costumes to disguise themselves from evils spirits and carved turnips and placed candles in them (in lieu of pumpkins) to ward them off.
You can feel the Samhain in every nook and cranny on the farm these days. How different it looks from Spring’s jubilant green promise, from Summer’s colorful cacophony. The life cycles of the plants that showered us with riches all Summer are now at an end. Their bodies hang drawn, gaunt and ghostly on their trellises, or they lay shriveled, mildewed, and desiccated in the rows, awaiting the final stab of a killing frost or the furious whir of the flail mower.
The portal is open. Anna broadcasting cover crop in 2020’s potato field.
This week, with our major harvests nearly complete, we started the liminal work of the Samhain. On Wednesday, we mowed and spaded under large sections of fields 1 and 2, transitioning our potatoes, squash, and Spring vegetables into the Underworld, where they are now being devoured by worms and bugs. On Wednesday night, there lay a bleak, deep brown maw of bare soil.
A great, pregnant silence. An open portal.
The next morning at sun rise, the four of us broadcast the first cover crop seed of the year, walking back and forth over the field, processionally, rhythmically tossing bell beans, peas, vetch, and grass seed — little prayers — into the black veil.
The rising sun was welcomely warm and good earth smells lofted up from the ground as it warmed. Later that afternoon we harrowed the seeds under, our little old tiller we use to “kiss” the seed into the ground whirring like a little demon.
One can only marvel at the wisdom of ancient agrarian festivals, born from bone deep relationship to the cycles of nature: How directly Death was confronted and dealt with.
Those people knew.
They knew that from death comes life. They knew that death and life were only thinly separated. They knew that the rotting, decaying, destructive forces were the building blocks and the gateways from which life would spring forth anew in the Spring and that the portals, the transitions, needed to be tended to, cleansed, and faced.
This Halloween, while you’re out there gleaning the last summer fruits, we invite you to cherish the ghoulish site of the dying cherry tomatoes, sagging limply, skeletal, and vacant; and the blocks of bare ground — portals, now pregnant with cover crop seed.
This death is the doorway. And on the other side are verdant Spring meadows, flower scented breezes, plump sugar snap peas, and bouquet after bouquet of Spring flowers.
See you in the fields,
David for Kayta, Anna, and Kate
