8/10/18 - Week 10 - Attack from Above!

Lucky to farm in a wild land! You never know what is around the next corner!

So one day, a couple of weeks ago, I was walking along the farm road through the meadow back home. Everything was just fine and dandy and I was whistling my tune. As I rounded the corner before the pear trees where the turkeys take cover in the heat of the day, a kerfuffle erupted in their midst like I had never heard before.

I ran toward the pear tree only to behold chaos: Turkeys flapping, flying, squawking and fleeing in every direction, downy feathers in the air. One almost ran through my legs!

"What is happening turkeys!?", I asked, but of course, they were too busy to reply.

All of a sudden, a little chick emerged from cloud running fast as lighting toward the thicket of the creek. 

And then I saw him.

One of the turkeys was not a turkey but a Golden Eagle bounding, swooping, and pouncing with his mighty talons, trying grab our little friend. 

The little chick ran so fast. Just as she was about to reach cover the Eagle leaped up with his furry legs, heaved his might wings, aimed his sharp talons and descended. The Eagles talons closed.

Air.

Chick darted to the right just in time, and skittered down into cover.

As quickly as it had begun, the turkeys were gone. Eagle was alone, standing in the road.

Just then, he noticed my presence. He looked out of the corner of his eye at me and I could almost hear him say, "Shucks." With a resigned sigh he looked aloft, and with one powerful stroke of his wings, he launched off the ground, two, three, four and he was a hundred feet in the air, where another Eagle was circling. A piercing scream lit the sky.

The nervous chatter of the mommy and daddy Turkeys could be heard from the shade of the thicket for some time. I imagined little chick huddling in there with them, smiling proudly, replaying her lightning escape.

To think of the stories she'll tell her little chickies someday.

See you in the fields,

David & Kayta

8/3/18 - Week 9 - Joshua Harris: The Corn of Life and Death

There is the practical side of farming; there is the goofy side; and then their is the sacred side...

This week, we have a beautiful entry from CSA member Joshua Harris, about a very special friend growing in the back of East Field.

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Last-last Thursday morning, in the mist amongst the many green growing beings enjoying their morning drink from the arcing sprinklers, the fertile soil and eager earthworms of our beloved community farm, we welcomed a special new occupant.

Lovingly known as Concha, these blue-and-white corn seeds are storied to be descendants of an ancient, sacred variety of corn known to the Tzutujil Maya of Guatemala as "Birth and Death" corn.

According to Martín Prechtel, who carried the seeds from the village of Santiago Atitlan in Guatemala to the US, the descendants of this corn were stored carefully in the rooves of villager's homes where they were retrieved and prayed with during the namings of babies as well as ceremonies for the recently departed.

The Tzutujil Maya Corn of Birth and Death growing in the East field

For me personally, Concha has been a vegetal midwife into a kind of rebirth of my own. The process of planting and replanting her, and of learning to love her as a wise and mysterious being in her own right, has helped me to move from a lifetime of anxiety and depression into a life increasingly filled with friendship, peace, and connection here near Occidental.

I received these seeds from Martín while attending Bolad's Kitchen, his school in New Mexico. One morning as I was sharing the story of these remarkable seeds with David, he kindly offered to set aside some space for her to grow at Green Valley. She is now happily nestled close to the life-giving driplines, getting to know her new neighbors: the beautiful Painted Mountain corn which you all have been so carefully saving.

When Martín placed them in my hands and the hands of my fellow students, he instructed us that we were to grow them only to feed our families. Over the past months, I've come to see David, Kayta, Anna, and all of you - even those of you I haven't yet met - as family. After all, we now share many of the same relatives: the radishes, peppers, berries, lettuce (and occasional dirt clod) of Green Valley!

And so, I pray that Concha's most recent incarnation grows healthy and hearty, so that I might grind some of her seeds into delicious flour which I can share with all of you, my new family, and that you may all be woven into the fabric of her story!

In the meantime, I hope that you might visit her and welcome her from your heart in your own way, with a word or a song or simply a tender glance. (I know that she particularly likes songs!)

When Martín placed these seeds in my hands and the hands of my fellow students, he instructed us that they were to be grown only to feed our families -- never to be bought, sold, or traded, and not to be gifted as seeds until we understand them better. It is said that if these agreements are not upheld, Concha will cease to grow for us or for anyone! And so, I also humbly ask for your assistance in keeping these precious seeds sacred.

I hope that the spirit of this ancient corn may guide us all into a deeper experience of the communion and reciprocity which is possible with the generous and mysteriously wise plants who give their lives so that we may live, who remind our bodies how to laugh and cry and dance and sing, and with whom we are so deeply interdependent.

Thank you all for being in my life, and for all together supporting this beautiful farm and its stewards to jump up and live!!

Long life, honey in the heart,

No misfortune, thirteen thank-yous!

-Joshua

* * * * *

This farm is community supported... and so is the Farmer's Log! If you ever have a story or thought to share in the Farmer's Log send them our way!

See you in the fields,

David & Kayta

7/27/18 - Week 8 - On Limits and the Enjoyment of Life

As our fields and harvests transition away from the tender, jubilant Spring into the fruity, cacophonic colors and flavors of Summer, we’re reminded of some of the reasons why we love this CSA model and eating from the farm.

First, we eat with the seasons. Perhaps nothing dictates what is on our tables more than the tilt of the Earth. And as you have seen, the shares of early June are very different from those of late July. The Spring, with it’s softer waxing light, lends itself to tender, almost translucent softness in vegetables. Mentally compare an early Spring strawberry with it’s silky soft skin and thirst quenchingness, to the more sun hardened acid sweet candy packet strawberries of July.

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 carrots to mondo carrots; from garlic scapes to fully cured bulbs — and all the flavors and textures in between. In the supermarket and wholesale vegetable industry, buyers only accept, and are often only offered, produce of a certain size and shape... in other words, produce that is at a particular growth stage when it is harvested. In this way, vegetables have become standardized and rote. But out on the farm, life is happening. In our harvests here, we are beholden to these growth arcs and get see and cook and taste all stages of plant growth.

We also love that this model allows us the chance to distribute damaged produce and to share over abundant harvests with members for preservation. Older cultures, local land based cultures, were scrupulously efficient in their use of food because they had to be. There was a use for everything. And it was a duty to preserve the abundance of Summer. In this spirit, we put out the damaged garlic — split and cracked in harvest, but still perfectly good in Eggplant Parmesan. And in this spirit we’ve offered pickling turnips, the pickling cucumbers, and will offer pickling beets and kraut cabbage (and more) to come, as the fields overflow.

But perhaps our favorite thing about this model and about eating from the farm is an unsung hero: Limits. Yes, limits. Scarcity. 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 February. Melons in the Winter. Mangos in Sebastopol. We have conquered seasons and limits and scarcity.

But have we also conquered one of the simplest pleasures in life? What is the fulfillment of desire without a longing to precede it?

We are about to enter the time of year of unlimited tomatoes *knock on wood*. But leading up this moment, we’ve cherished our 1 or 2 or 3 tomatoes. After seven, tomato-less months, that first juicy sweet acid slice of heirloom tomato on an open faced sandwich brought back a flood of memories of last summer, and summers before that, and we smiled at our loved ones in our shared remembrance and shared enjoyment of this thing that we have now, but did not have for so long. It brought us together.

In most (all?) cultures there are festivals celebrating this moment. Basically, giant parties celebrating the return of a food. In Southern France there is a Spring festival marking the return of the egg, when the hens finally start laying again. Finally. What is cake without eggs!? In Sebastopol, we have the Apple Blossom festival.

Limits, scarcity, the lean times help us appreciate, really appreciate, what we have. Life's fleeting nature is really it's spice. So it goes for food, we'd say.

We hope you been enjoying the harvest season so far here at Green Valley Community Farm! And as we head together into the peak-of-the-peak of the harvest season, let us remember the lean times, and be grateful and it will all taste that much sweeter.

See you in the fields,

David & Kayta