THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
Purple Majesty Potatoes, Black Futsu Winter Squash, Purple-Top Turnips, Storage #4 Cabbage, Yellow Elsye Onions, Leeks, Garlic, Celery Root, Bolero Carrots, Multicolored Beets, Rainbow Chard, Black Magic Dino Kale, Giorgione Castelfranco Chicory
HARVEST NOTES
Purple-Top Turnips: The most classic turnip. Sweet with just a hint of pepper. Delicious in soups and stews, roasted, or in the Miso-Glazed Turnips recipe that we sent out earlier this season. Or, for something slightly different, check out this Yotam Ottolenghi recipe for Roast Turnip, Potato and Garlic with Harissa and Orange — charmingly, part of a round-up of recipes on “less fashionable vegetables” (poor turnips!) — which also includes a mouthwatering recipe for a Kale and Swiss Chard Tart that we have our eye on.
Purple Majesty Potatoes: These fancy potatoes are new to us this year. They’re a beautiful purple inside and out, full of antioxidants, and particularly suited to roasting.
Black Futsu Winter Squash: A beloved Japanese delicacy, this bite sized, mini Butternut relative has bright orange flesh with unique fruity flavor and edible skin with a gorgeous frosted look.
Scenes from last week’s water world: Looking out at Centerfield between the two big oaks and one of a few garter snakes we saw swimming very competently through the floodwaters.
CELERY ROOT RÖSTI WITH CAPER AND CELERY SALSA
Recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi
This is a dish for any time of the day: for brunch (with some crisp bacon, maybe?), or for a light meal or first course. Makes 10 rösti, to serve two to four.
Note: if you’re in need of some additional Celery Root inspiration, check out Ottolenghi’s other mouth-watering recipes here.
INGREDIENTS
1 celeriac, peeled and coarsely grated
1 small desiree potato, peeled and coarsely grated
1 shallot, peeled and thinly sliced (use a mandolin, if you have one)
1 tbsp lemon juice
Salt and black pepper
½ tsp each coriander seeds, celery seeds and caraway seeds, toasted and finely crushed
½ garlic clove, peeled and crushed
2 eggs, beaten
2½ tbsp plain flour (all-purpose)
Vegetable oil, for frying
100g sour cream, to serve
For the salsa:
½ small shallot, peeled and very finely chopped
2 celery sticks, finely chopped
10g basil leaves, finely shredded
10g parsley, finely chopped
15g capers, roughly chopped
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon, plus 1 tbsp juice
1½ tbsp olive oil
Celeriac rösti — photo from The Guardian
INSTRUCTIONS
Combine the celeriac, potato, shallot and lemon juice in a medium bowl with two teaspoons of salt, then tip into a sieve lined with a clean tea towel or cheesecloth. Set the sieve over a bowl and leave for 30 minutes, for the liquid to drain off. Draw together the edges of the towel, then wring it a few times, to get rid of as much water as possible. Transfer to a clean bowl and combine with the spices, garlic, eggs and flour. Using your hands, form the mix into 10 6cm-wide patties, compressing the rösti as you make them, to squeeze out any remaining liquid.
Put all the salsa ingredients in a separate bowl, add a generous grind of pepper and mix to combine.
Pour enough oil into a medium-sized nonstick frying pan to come 1/2 inch up the sides. Put the pan on a medium heat and, once the oil is very hot, fry the rösti in batches for seven minutes, turning them a few times, until crisp and golden-brown all over. Transfer to a plate lined with kitchen towel and keep warm while you cook the rest of the rösti. Serve at once with the salsa and a spoonful of sour cream.
Our volunteer coordinator rockstar this year, Rose Brink-Capriola, in the garden. Thank you for everything this year, Rose!
CALIFORNIA BILINGÜE
Have you been thinking about taking your Spanish to the next level?
We wanted to give a quick shout out here to an incredible local Spanish school, California Bilingüe. Owned by CSA member Carlos Mayerstein, California Bilingüe specializes in one-on-one customized Spanish tutoring. In 2022, they gave the farm a generous scholarship to help me (David) improve my Spanish proficiency to help us connect more with the vibrant and skilled Spanish speaking agricultural community in Sonoma County. For me, California Bilingüe’s program has been joyous, fun, and transformational for my Spanish and opened so many doors personally and professionally.
Whether you’re a beginner or an advanced Spanish speaker, I can’t recommend their program highly enough! ¡Aprenda más aquí!
WHEN DOES THE CSA END?
The last pick-ups of our 2024 CSA program are as follows: The last Saturday pickup is Saturday, December 7th and the last Tuesday pickup is, Tuesday, December 10th.
AND WHEN CAN I RESERVE MY SPOT FOR 2024?
We plan to open sign-ups in mid-to-late January 2025. 2024 CSA program members will be given the first chance to reserve a spot for 2025. Please encourage family or friends who would like to join to sign-up for the waitlist on our website.
FARMER’S LOG
BELONGING
We’re having a busy holiday week, so this week we’ll repost a Farmer’s Log from November 2022 — which resonates with how we’re feeling about the farm today.
I think I speak for the whole crew when I say it brought us great joy to be a part of your food lives and weekly routines this year — and great joy to think of the farm’s food, lovingly grown and handled here, on your tables. We hope you felt nourished and grounded by it this week.
* * * * *
With the frost, the time of rest, gratitude, and reflection settles on the Laguna.
It was a quiet day today on the farm. I was on the tractor, shaping next year’s garlic and strawberry beds over what was the tomatoes and u-pick peppers, when a perennial Fall question occurred to me:
“What does it mean to belong to a place?”
Big questions like this are perhaps never answerable. Or perhaps, if they are answerable, the answers are constantly changing. Or, perhaps the point is not in getting an answer, but in consistently asking the question.
So today on the tractor I wondered, “What does it mean to belong to this place?" for the first time on the new farm. I was struck by how different it felt from the last time I asked.
Though we just moved the farm a few miles across town this year, it was a big move. We uprooted from the place where we started the farm as a 30 member CSA 7 years ago and where we cut our teeth shaping fields, growing food, building soil, and trying to build community together. We made a lot of memories there. Every nook, cranny, and field in that valley was becoming a layer cake of memory for us — first harvests; getting engaged on the hill; getting married in the redwood barn; of meeting so many of you CSA members for the first time.
A palimpsest (from the Greek “scraped again”) is a writing material or surface (like a slate tablet) used again after earlier writing has been erased. It’s a surface that is being continuously renewed, but the etches and marks of the past remain and build up.
A farm is a palimpsest for a farmer: The more years you’ve lived and worked in a place, the more the marks of memory build and layer depth onto the continuously renewing fields and landscape. This is why elders are the most revered members in any agrarian or land-based culture.
When you come to a new place, to a new farm in our case, the heaviest lifting isn’t physical — it’s mental. You have to learn the history of the place by talking to those who know it and by reading whatever clues the land can tell you. Then you just have live there and keep your eyes, your heart, and your mind open.
“Where should the garden go?”, “Where should we plant the garlic?”
You are bound to make mistakes — some big, some small as you build your memory and relationship.
One small mistake we made this Spring was shaping our tomato and u-pick beds too close to the drainage that separates that field from the garden so it ended up being hard to drive a truck comfortably around those oft-visited zones.
So today, as I was outlining 2023’s strawberry and garlic fields over 2022’s erased tomatoes, I gave us another 6 feet of leeway. Whenever I drove the tractor East, I could see the garden and the strawberry patch and was flooded with memories; of second-breakfasts with the crew under the oak trees; of picnicking and perusing the July flower garden with friends; the laughter of kiddos plucking strawberries in the morning.
And in that reverie the question arose, “What does it mean to belong to this place?”
I don’t know if I’ll ever know the answer — but I do know that those memories have a lot to do with it.
See you in the fields,
David & Kayta
CSA BASICS
When does the 2024 CSA end? The last Saturday pick-up this year is Saturday, December 7th and the last Tuesday pickup is, December 10th.
What time is harvest pick-up?:
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
Oriented members can come to the farm any time, 7 days a week, sunrise to sunset, to u-pick and enjoy the farm.
Where is the farm? The member parking lot is located at 1720 Cooper Rd., Sebastopol, CA 95472.
Where is the food? The produce pick-up barn is just to the right of the solar panels and above our big greenhouse. You can’t miss it!
2024 CSA program dates: Our harvest season will run from Saturday, June 15th through Tuesday, December 10th this year.
Drive slow! Please drive slow on Cooper Rd. and in our driveway / parking lot area. Kids at play!
No dogs: Unfortunately, dogs are not allowed on the farm.
