Past Newsletters

Summer is no longer a date on the calendar or the degrees of the weather. Summer is fruit to be harvested, summer is making sure that the garden is watered, summer is getting up earlier and earlier to get work done, as there is so much to do even though there are more light hours in the day now, it just doesn’t seem like it is enough. Especially when it is a rush to get out and cut flowers or basil before the sun wilts them on the plant. Yes, summer is here leaving less time for deeper thoughts, for quiet moments to gather words to describe feelings, actions and dreams. The sun is out shinning down on us all making it harder to stand idly to gaze at the landscape, the bright light forces us to keep our hats on covering our heads and eyes, moving to the shade if possible, and keep working. Maybe moving slowly because it is hot, and the breeze isn’t cooling off the sweat that is trickling down our backs, when it does there is a smile on our face and an “ahh” sigh of relief.

Summer has become a bit of a fear factor for me, wondering if I will make it through the longer hours in the days, the hot weather, the work of the harvest. After many summers passing, I would think that I would realize that yes; I will make it through another. Yesterday everyone here was working with the heat in mind. How fast can Cuca and I pick flowers? How can Jeff and Francisco pick the apricots before it gets too hot? The day before they were harvesting, trying to pick the fruit at perfect ripeness and the ladies were shorting out a lot of soft fruit. Jeff was puzzled and then opened up a cot and found the insides were brown…it is called pit burn, when the fruit is ripe, the temperature is hot the fruit gets cooked in the middle. So they changed picking standards…they are choosing fruit that is a tad under ripe, before the pit burn gets a chance to happen. Nothing is the same, daily changes adjustments and everyone working together to make it all happen. Maria and Daniel came yesterday to start cutting the soft fruit, drying trays are starting to line up in the dry yard, where just a few months ago where Zach and Nicole got married. We are driving to Sacramento three times a week delivering boxes of fruit and Claire has been a good sport to take that up for us. Ali and I have been making strawberry jam, and this week apricot jam.

What has been diffe

rent this year is that we are now all sleeping in the new house. It is not finished yet, still tiles to put in the bathrooms along with toilets, floors to put down, trim around windows, cabinets in the laundry room….but it is cool over there, the windows have screens that let in the cool air at night and not the cats or insects. The house has a lot of insulation and an all house fan that moves night cool air in. It is nice to escape to during these hot nights.

So the newsletter is short today, I need to bunch flowers and head to Sacramento to make deliveries while I leave the packing of the boxes to the two girls and Ricardo. Have a good week, stay cool. Annie…

P.S. We did have the ETC (Environmental Traveling Companions) inner city kids here this last week-they are always full of energy and a distraction from the daily heat, work, and bring laughter and fun.

Cut onion crosswise into ¼ inch thick slices and arrange slice on a try, keeping them intact. Brush both sides lightly with oil and season with salt and pepper. Grill onions on a lightly oiled rack set 5-6 inches over glowing coals 4 minutes on each side, or until lightly charred and softened. Transfer onions as grilled to a bowl, separating rings. Brush 2 tortillas lightly with oil on one side and put oiled side down on a platter. Divide onions, cheese and cilantro between tortillas and cover with remaining 2 tortillas. Brush tops of tortillas with oil. With a metal spatula transfer tortilla sandwich to a rack set 5-6 inches over glowing coals and grill until undersides are golden brown, about 1 minute. Flip over and grill the other side about 1 minute. Transfer quesadillas to a cutting board and cut into wedges. Serves 2 as a light luncheon main course or side dish.

Beat eggs until light, add sugar gradually, beating until mixture thickens. Add remaining ingredients and mix thoroughly, including your pre-blended fruit (I use an entire blender full which is at least a quart): freeze in ice cream maker.

Preheat grill to medium heat, or when coals are ready. Toss nectarines and onions with oil in a medium bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Grill nectarines and onions turning often until softened 15-20 minutes. Reserve the juices in bowl. Transfer the nectarines and onions to a cutting board and let cool slightly. Combine the mustard, vinegar and chili in the reserved juice bowl. Cut nectarines and onion into ¼-1/2 inch thick slices. Add to bowl, stir in mint, and season with salt and pepper. Lightly coat both sides of each swordfish steak with oil. Season with salt and pepper and grill turning once until cooked through 3-4 minutes per side. Cut each fish steak in half and transfer to a serving platter. Top with nectarines-onion salsa.

All basils add fragrance to lemonade, but colored and scented varieties contribute extra personality Dark purple basils tint the lemonade a pretty pink but have a milder flavor than green varieties. You can make the lemonade up to 1 day ahead, cover and chill.

In a 1 1/2 to 2 quart glass measure or bowl, combine rinsed leaves and sugar. With a wooden spoon crush leaves with sugar until thoroughly bruised. Add water and lemon juice. Stir until sugar is dissolved. Taste and add more sugar if desired. Pour through fine strainer into ice filled glasses. Garnish with springs of fresh basil.

June 21, 2010 The first day of Summer-Summer Solstice The longest day of the year, and now as summer begins the days will be getting shorter. That’s weird because in my mind somehow it doesn’t appear the way it seems…summer= long days, and they get longer as the summer goes along, more time to work into the evenings?

Letters from You-Your Russian Banana new potatoes and recipe for potato salad last week prompted me to make potato salad. One suggestion for others cooking potatoes, is to rinse them off and put them in a dark metal pot and put them in your solar oven. WHAT?! You don't HAVE a solar oven?! Well now's the time to think about getting or making one. Solar cooking is a great way to keep your kitchen cool and reduce energy consumption, and just plain have some fun with this very simple concept. I also put a few eggs in with the potatoes (no water) and in a few hours, depending on conditions, you have cooked potatoes and hard "boiled" eggs to make your potato salad.

If this is a new idea to you and you want to know more, I (as a regular volunteer for Solar Cookers International) would be glad to give you a personalized orientation and take you to the SCI office on 21st Street at S Street in midtown Sacramento. The Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op is also presenting a solar cooking class there on

Saturday, June 26th at 2:30PM. Call the Co-op to see if there's room. Feel free to call me for more information at 916-446-2850. Linda Hayward

We have started the Apricot Harvest here at Good Humus. As many of you know from over the years, the apricots are Jeff and my favorite, and we only grow one variety, the Royal Blenheim. They are an old variety that has flavor like apricots should have, but with this comes the finicky nature of the Royal Blenheim. They are so delicate, it is almost impossible to put them in the commercial fresh market. The fragile fruit practically bruise at a glance, and you can sometimes see the two finger marks of the person that picked the fruit off the tree. The apricot ripens from the inside out causing fruit pickers to develop specific harvesting habits for the apricot that included picking fruits that still had a faint green tinge. You can always tell a Royal Blenheim because of this greenish tint, especially on the shoulder. It’s a hard sell when you have the newer varieties that are huge and have that pretty red blush on them, but there has been a revival at local farmers markets where long-distance shipping is not a critical issue. Folks are waking up to the fact that compared to the big beauties that taste like cardboard, which have made folks in the past have turn away from eating apricots entirely, are now searching out the Blenheim because they are the best tasting apricot and that they have never found its equal for pie or jam.

Being a finicky fruit, this Royal apricot-as most royalty is finicky, did not like the wet spring rains that we had this year. We have, Jeff thinks about ½ to ¾ of a crop on the trees due to the wet and coldness of the spring but also, a lot of Brown Rot spores. Brown Rot is a fungus that lives in the trees and in the soil that will come alive, produce and spread with the warm, moist conditions like we had this spring. So what will happen is that we will pick and pack beautiful fruit one day and the very next day you will see brown rotten spots showing up on the outside of

the fruit. There really isn’t anything we can do, but to warn you not to think that the fruit will last days and days. Plan on eating the apricots right away. We have been making morning smoothies with fruit, yogurt, milk and ice as a breakfast. I made an apricot cherry tart last night in a pizza pan. Just one layer of fruit on a pie shell, with cherry juice and sugar drizzled over it. Quite impressive to serve a pizza pan of pie!

Summer at Good Humus-Well we are definitely moving into the rhythm of summer here. Claire is home from Monterey Bay and has found herself an internship at Capitol Public Radio in Sacramento. She is working with Ben Adler who we met while participating in the Five Farms National Public Radio program last year. (www.fivefarms.org you can still listen to the 5 hours program of five different farms around the country) Ben told Claire, who is interested and has declared Journalism as her major in college to come visit the radio station. She now is working there three days a week, editing news information down to 12 second bites. She came home this last Friday so excited to tell us that Ben let her do an phone interview and then produce a piece about this years fire season, control burn in Yosemite Valley. On her non-radio days she is helping me at the Wednesday and Saturday Farmers Market in Davis. Zach is gone, has started his fire season with CalFire, so Claire has taken his place at Market. Claire has grown up at the market as all the kids have, but being the youngest one of the three she always had to compete with the older two. Now at 20 with just her and me at market, I think she has realized that she is a good marketer, likes to talk to folks to see if she can get them to buy a new item that they may not have been looking for. We work well together, well, as long as I let her do her magic with setting up the stand…she has a gift of display, I always let her set the tables at home because she would make the table beautiful in some special way. She really does have fun with the stand, and it gives a fresh look each week. She likes to count the money all during the market, and make me guess how much we will make by the end of the day. And then lets me know that she was the reason that we did so well that day. It is fun to be with her, just she and I without the dynamics of the rest of the family.

And then Ali, who came home from Brooklyn and Art School in May, is now working in Santa Rosa at the restaurant she worked at last year, so she can make enough money to go back to art school in the fall. I asked her if she would come home each week, just so we could see her too, and what has happened for the very first time is that she is working for us for real! Not much because of her other job, but 1-2 days a week. In the past for all the kids it has been easy to say they will work for us then slip upstairs to their room and take a nap or read when it got too hot, but this time we set hours expected to work each week, a hourly wage and made an official agreement. Last week she worked in the garden with me weeding, and then we make some Strawberry jam, she worked 11 hours! It was so much fun, again just she and I work together, chatting, teaching her about the weed eater and how to use it, plants, digging up nut grass….we had a blast!!! And got a lot done. Have a great week- Annie

Wash and slice apricots. Mix with sugar and pineapple. Cook until thick (about 25 minutes). Pour into sterilized Kerr jars to within 1/4 inch of top. Put on cap, screw band firmly tight. Process in boiling water bath 10, minutes. Yield: 6

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Make the topping, toss the rest of the ingredients together in a mixing bowl and then place in a 9 inch square baking dish. Level the fruit and cover with the topping. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes until the crisp is golden brown and the juices bubble around the sides of the dish. Serves 6

In a medium bowl combine the flour, oats, cinnamon and cloves. Using your hands or a pastry blender, work the butter into the flour mixture until the pieces are about the size of peas

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Wrap beets in parchment, then foil, and place on a rimmed baking sheet. Roast until tender about 60 minutes. Let cool completely. Peel and cut beets into ½ inch dice. Transfer to a large bowl. Prepare a ice-water bath. Cook beans in boiling water until bright green and crisp tender. About 2 minutes, plunge into ice bath until cool. Drain completely and them mix into bowl with beets and add the remaining ingredients. Garnish plate with basil.

Finely snipped fresh mint adds an enticing depth of flavor to many Mediterranean salads. Serve crusty sourdough bread with this old world’s salad.

Red and Green Oak Leaf Lettuce, Sweet Onions, Russian Banana new potatoes, String Beans, Basil, Broccoli, and Carrots.

The Small Farm Preservation Collaborative was formed to preserve the place of small farms in our communities, and to connect with an important source of funds for doing so. The Collaborative intends to create vehicles for the members and shoppers at local food cooperatives to collectively invest funds that will be used to finance these initiatives. These customers, numbering in the tens of thousands, have already shown their support for local, organic farms by choosing their products. As a group they also represent a significant pool of capital that can be leveraged to create a mutually beneficial partnership with the farms in their local communities.

If every one of the Co-Op customers put aside 3 cents a day or 10 dollars a year to local farm preservation we could raise $400,000.00 a year to keep local farms in production. Look for card swipes at the check out stands at both the Davis Food Co-Op and the Sacramento Natural Food Co-Op, or the piggy bank at the stores that your kids can put 3 cents a day into, or note cards, or One Farm at a Time mugs….all of the proceeds will go to farm preservation…one farm at a time. And the farm we are working on right now is Good Humus! We also have a piggy bank at the market that you can add your few cents every week to.

This morning I was up at 6am out in the garden picking flowers before breakfast, before turning on the computer to check e-mails, before my morning tea. The air was cool and still, the north wind had stopped sometime in the night. The light was just moving over the garden slowly as the sun rose to greet the day. The insects were out buzzing my face, visiting the flowers; mosquitoes were not missing their breakfast either. It was quiet…well sort of the ranch in the hills behind us are moving the cows to another location so the cows were talking up a storm, complaining about the change, about having to get into the big truck and moving on. I could also hear the ladies laughing as they were out in the far field harvesting flowers, just every now and then, Ricardo wasn’t singing, I love it when you can hear him singing in the field. It was such a lovely moment as I picked the coreopsis, Shasta daisies, scabiosas and yarrow for tomorrow’s bouquets. Definitely the time to be out with the summer heat upon us. I had just watered the garden over the weekend to help them through the wind. Everything seems happy and healthy, the weeds are coming back of course, and I made mental notes of what needs to be moved to another bed in the fall, or dead heading right now, or cutting some herbs for drying…hoping I can remember the list as I make it in my head. But most of all it was peaceful, a beautiful morning and what better way to begin the day and the week out in the garden.

Letters from You-This came after last weeks newsletter of me crying in my soup about lost membership. Well I continued to cry reading this, we each live with our challenges and with the connection of the CSA we each share in our journey together on balancing and living with what life has dealt us. I want to thank Erin for taking the time to share her life with us here in this letter, for being a part of our community and for the courage she and her family have. Hearing what others have to live with sure helps one see clearer the whole picture. Please if you are so moved send in your stories-is so great to hear from you about your lives your challenges and what keeps you going, what makes you sing in the morning, and make it all worth it.

After reading the insert in the box today, and then following up with the newsletter on-line, I wanted to let you know how very much our family appreciates what your family does. I have three young children, and two of them have serious, progressive kidney disease. My youngest, who just turned five had his second kidney transplant in December. As I'm sure you can imagine, we have a lot of medical expenses. Last year, our family also took a significant pay cut due to the economy and that meant cutting back even more.

But the one thing I've refused to eliminate from our budget (even though pretty much everything else that was "optional" has gone) is our weekly Good Humus CSA box. Each week when I open it, it never fails to bring a smile to my face. The produce is so colorful and vivid and is such a bright spot in my week. Looking at its quality and beauty, you can just see the love and care that has gone into growing it. Just today, the fat orange carrots with the pretty green tops still attached, the beautiful lettuces and arugula which taste so much fresher in our salads than anything from the store, a whole bag full of sugar snap peas (which go like candy in our house!), and that tremendous Swiss chard (which I have tried to grow in my amateur garden, but it just never seems to work out very well!) looking so green and healthy.

Several years ago, I arrived home from the hospital in San Francisco after spending two months there following the receipt of my youngest son's diagnosis and I was so physically and emotionally wiped out. It was so strange to come back to my home after all that time and try to figure out how things still made sense in any way now that so many things had changed. For a long time I didn't cook (which is something I normally love to do). I just couldn't seem to find the energy or enthusiasm that I once had. Then, one day the box came home with a bunch of broccoli and a recipe from Annie for broccoli soup. I finally felt inspired to get back in the kitchen and cook something. I chopped the broccoli while sautéing the leeks (also from the box) in butter, and as the good smells filled the kitchen, things finally started to seem possible again. I think I sent Annie a note that day just to let her know how very much that soup and those veggies meant to me.

At any rate, I know the economy is down and its effects are felt everywhere, including in the drop in membership for Good Humus. I just wanted to write to say I know things will turn around and the interest will come back, because the food you grow is incredible. My mom was a customer prior to moving to Angels Camp several years ago to retire. She belongs to a CSA down there, but whenever she's visiting on a Tuesday when the box comes home, she always rhapsodizes about how much better the Good Humus produce is than what she is getting now, and how truly beautiful it is.

P.S. I'm all for conserving paper, and I completely understand why the email newsletter makes sense, but I have to confess that I do miss the printed newsletter in the box. I always looked forward to settling down with a cup of tea in the kitchen to read it after the kids were in bed, to catch up on what was happening at the farm and check out the recipes, surrounded by all of the beautiful veggies in the box while dreaming about how to creatively use them in our meals that week.

This uncooked seasoning can be made in advance. Use on pasta or on a baked potatoes, or on your sandwiches instead of mayonnaise.

Start with olive oil first in the blender, but not all of it, maybe half, and then add your basil leaves a little at a time to make sure the blender keeps working. Once you have added half the basil then add the nuts, continue blending all of the ingredients. If the blender gets stuck, add more olive oil, the pesto should have a smooth thick consistency enough for spreading, if too think add more olive oil, if too runny add more basil and nuts or cheese.

(From Working Mother magazine, June 2001) This salad is chock full of Mediterranean flavors: olives, herbs, and salty feta.

Place potatoes in a large pot; cover with cold water. Bring to a boil over high heat. Add 1 tsp of the salt. Cook about 10 minutes, until potatoes are just tender. Drain; transfer to large bowl. Meanwhile, in blender or food processor, combine garlic, oil, lemon juice, vinegar, oregano, black pepper, and remaining 1 1/2 tsp salt. Puree until smooth; drizzle over warm potatoes. Add onion and olives; toss to coat. Fold in remaining ingredients. Serve at any temperature. (Salad can be made 1 day in advance. Sprinkle with cheese just before serving.)

Toast the almonds and blanch the vegetables a day ahead to ease the preparation during the day’s rush.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spread almonds in a single layer in a shallow pan and bake for 7 minutes or until lightly browned and fragrant, stirring occasionally. Cool completely and set aside. Place carrots in a large saucepan of boiling water, cook 3 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon. Plunge into ice water and drain. Place broccoli in boiling water cook 2 minutes, drain and plunge in ice water, drain. Melt the butter in a 12 inch nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add the onions and sauté 2 minutes or until tender. Reduce heat to medium. Add carrots, broccoli, turkey stock, salt and pepper, cover and cook 6 minutes or until carrots and broccoli are crisp tender. Sprinkle with almonds, serve immediately. Yield 12 1/3 cup servings

In a large saucepan, combine the strawberries, wine, orange juice, honey, lime zest, lime juice, mint, vinegar, cinnamon, star anise, peppercorns and salt. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and cook for 15 minutes for the flavors to blend. Remove from the heat and cool to room temperature. Remove and discard the cinnamon stick and star anise. Place a food mill over a large bowl, pour the soup through the mill and press into the bowl. Discard the seeds. Chill the fruit broth and when ready to serve, ladle the broth into shallow bowls. Sprinkle generously with berries.

Last night I was at Tucos Wine Market and Café in Davis and they served Cherry Gazpacho which was fabulous!!!

Set aside 1 cup diced tomato and 1 cup cherries. Place the remaining tomato and cherries in a food processor and purée. Put the mixture through a sieve to remove any solids. Place the liquid in a large bowl and add the rest of the ingredients, including the diced tomato and cherries. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Head lettuce one Red Perella Butter Lettuce and one Deer Tongue Butter, Chard, sweet onions, Yellow Finn new potatoes, Arugula, Peas and Carrots.

This is the first day of summer quarter and there have been a lot of folks that have dropped out. We have dropped from 98 Davis-Sacramento members to 79! Mostly due to summer vacations and some because families are seeing their children head off to college leaving just two to cook for. Needless to say that is a huge loss to us; it is hard on the farm to have such a decline in the members economically. It is also a very sad day when we have to say goodbye to those that have become friends over the years. Those that have been getting our box of veggies for almost 17 years!!!!!!! Many of those that we feel we are walking side by side with in our work for sustainability and ecological change. It is like we have been holding hands through life, not actually spending time in each others presents much, but definitely in the knowledge of like minded people linked and making a difference together. Becoming friends through the process of exchanging of food, stories, recipes and shared beliefs. So it is hard to let go of you, please send post cards from you wild adventures, keep us in your lives, come to the farm with a picnic when you can.

Jeff and I work on not thinking that the decline in numbers is a reflection on our service, but it sure gets us to thinking that we need to make sort of changes to find ways to bring in more young families into the mix. Some of our thoughts are that we would like to open the farm up to more visits during the year to members. Not work days, not a big production, just bring a picnic and enjoy the farm with us. So you may be seeing some of those dates coming up. We also worry that because we have put the newsletter on line that many of you do not read the newsletter, meaning that we lose the personal touch that we once had. We would like to keep the newsletter on line just because it saves so much paper, but we might add back a ¼ page short notes each week just to keep closer to you. And we were wondering if anyone would be interested in having conservations via blogging. It is Greek to me, but I know that Claire who is now working with us this summer could set it up like she did our Face Book page. MAKE SURE TO CHECK OUT THE GOOD HUMUS FACE BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!

Oops, not Annie anymore. We both had to leave for a meeting at the Davis Food Coop with the Coops and Land trusts and Twin Pines Cooperative Fund and Farm Link and a few others. And so I’m back but she’s not yet. That means no more talk about blogging, sorry.

Annie and I talked today about the drops that are happening. Annie takes them very seriously, and so do I, up to a point. I think it is really important for us to remember that we are a service farm in our CSA program, and our job is to remember that good service is our first priority. It is a big part, close to 50% of the Good Humus business, but more than that it is close to 50% of the people that are our connection to community. What has been great about our farming journey is that it has actually taken us closer to community, rather than further away. And today, finding a job and a career and a way of life that forces even shy people to develop the ability to be in relationship with people that could have stayed total strangers but didn’t, is rare. We are very lucky in that way, because the usual story of the farmer begins and ends with the farmers standing alone in their field. In our lifetime, in our part of California, this has changed. Beginning with the farmer’s markets in the mid 1970’s and the coops at the same time, small farmers and the people who eat their product came together in ever increasing numbers, and found that they had so much to believe in together. Out of this regrew the trust and the knowledge of each other that had been so missing since the industrial model had come to agriculture. What a pleasure it was, one of the great moments of my life the first time that I sold a handful of green beans from my garden to someone who really wanted my beans. And many of those customers and friends became our partners in life, as week after week they returned and we shared stories and experiences and family and food. And beneath it all lay the very human interaction of each of us giving to the other what was needed, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

But this has only begun. All of this relationship and all of this sharing of a basic daily need has changed us, each and every one. We are different than we were. Annie and I cannot go back to what we were, nor would we want to. Being surrounded by people whom we need and who rely on us gives a sense of being integrated and integral, of being useful to some bigger thing. What a great place to come to in life! And here we are at the beginning of something growing out of that. As we watch and listen, we see and hear a groundswell of people recognizing the fundamental strength of the bond between two people, and in recognizing that strength, feel even more connected, more integrated, more useful. Where can all that lead? I don’t know, but if in 1976, someone had told me about the beauty of what would surround us in 2010, I would not have been able to see it. And here we are.

Spring Greens Quiche

1-2 cups chopped spring greens-chard, spinach, or even a mix of the braising greens

Sautee is you are using onions or leeks until golden and soft. Beat together the eggs, milk and spices. In a prepared 9”pie shell grate cheese, then add the sautéed vegetables, and greens, then pour the beaten eggs and milk over the greens. Bake at 375 for about 1 hour. Check with a knife to see it is set.

Two Crust 9” Pie Shell

When I came home from the 8^th grade Home Economics class after failing at making a pie, my mom taught me to use this recipe, and it is almost a never fail recipe! It is easy.

Mix flour and salt in a bowl then remove 1/3 cup of flour. Cut the butter into the mixture until the flour is the size of small peas. With the removed 1/3-cup flour add the water to form a paste. Add the paste to your mixture. Mix and shape dough into a ball, if it feels too dry and crumbly get your hands wet and pat the ball. Cut the ball in half and roll out ¼” for a pie.

Cut or tear arugula into pieces. Combine vinegar, brown sugar and salt in a skillet and bring to a boil about 1 minute. Add onion and cook for 1-2 minutes. Add tomatoes cut in half. Sauté for 30 seconds. Add arugula and toss just to coat with the dressing. Remove from heat garnish with bacon bits and serve.

Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add leek, onion and green onions, cook 5 minutes stirring frequently. Cover reduce heat to low and cook 20 minutes or until onions are golden brown. While onion mixture cooks, prepare pasta according to package directions, omitting salt and fat. Bring the broth to a boil in a small saucepan. Add dried currants and vinegar. Add broth mixture, cream and salt to onion mixture; cook 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from heat, stir in arugula, mozzarella, and thyme. Add to pasta, toss gently to combine. Yield 4 servings

Head lettuce one Red Perella Butter Lettuce and either red or green Oak leaf, Kale, Red Beets, Asparagus, Spinach, Broccoli, and Carrots…and if we are lucky a few Bing Cherries from our trees, the first harvest ever!

PLEASE LET US KNOW IF YOU ARE GONG TO CONTINUE OR NOT-GIVE US A CALL OR E-MAIL THIS WEEK!

We do not have a waiting list at this time; you are our best advertisers that we know. I have attached a short blurb that can be put into your school newsletters or local papers. Remember that the more we drop at your site, the more efficient our use of fossil fuel is.

The delivery spots that are in need of numbers to increase is the Pocket, Roseville and at EDAW, but that doesn’t mean to not talk to folks that may be interested at the other drops. Thanks so much for you help!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here is an interesting piece from MarketPlace Wall Street Journal-To read the entire piece you can find it in the May 24, 2010 issue

Chase, La-The deep orange vegetables sprouting at an agricultural research station here are the root of ConAgra Foods Inc.’s biggest bet in years: as effort to reinvent the lowly sweet potato for mass consumption, starting with its shape and sugar content. For decades, sweet potatoes have been a holiday favorite. In the past decade, they’ve popped up increasingly at restaurants catering to diners eager for something new. ConAgra hopes to make the sweet potato a modern-day equivalent of its stepbrother, the russet potato. In the mid 1940’s entrepreneur J.R. Simplot developed the frozen French fry, thus elevating the russet from kitchen staple to multibillion dollar franchise. Alas, the knobby yams aren’t ideal for machines designed for russets, and their color and sweetness aren’t uniform. So three years ago, ConAgra started working with scientist at the Louisiana Star University AgCenter and elsewhere to change some characteristic of sweet potatoes. “We want to deliver to ConAgra’s factory something that looks like a brick,” say AgCenter researcher Don LaBonte as he brandishes a sweet potato shaped more like a croissasnt. “We don’t want them with that pretty shape like you get in the grocery store.” “We’re witnessing a revolution in the making, not unlike potatoes” bred to become French fires say Jan De Weerd, a potato expert and vice president of global agriculture strategy and services at ConAgra’;s Lamb Weston potato processing unit….”We’re trying to see this sweet potato in a way that consumers recognize, and that’s in long, thin strips.”…..Researchers are always looking for ways to improve our food so that it is more nutritious, right, and way to get folks to be interested in eating a variety of different vegetates in different ways…Plant breeding research has been going on for years, but trying to make a sweet potato into the shape of a brick that has uniform color???? Wacky world we live in….

Speaking of wacky, crazy world, this last weekend I asked our daughter Claire if she would make a Facebook page for Good Humus. And of course she did it in the wink of an eye. So if you are a facebookie and want to see what is going on with Good Humus, all the YouTube pieces, recent articles in the Sac Coop Reporter, the 3 minutes clip of the documentary of our farm you can just check out Good Humus on Facebook! In trying to promote the Last Crop documentary the film maker Chuck Schwartz had a young woman who in works in marketing look at our web sites. Well, as you can imagine she suggested that we upgrade our web site, unbury lots of the information that we have in there, get hooked up to facebook, twitter, blogs, have more farm events, use paypal as she certainly didn’t want to download a form and write a check….and I’m not sure what else she said. It was a bit of an overload for me, as I knew that I was not going to be doing what she was recommending, because I didn’t know how or was unsure if I would ever be able to keep them up. But you know she I think she is right, we are trying to keep up with this faster paced world and do not have the perspective of our youth. We need to get more CSA members as you all know, we need to raise more funds for our farm preservation project as you all know, and we need to find different avenues to market ourselves in this ever changing wacky world we live in.

WEB DESIGN: Claire is interested in helping to work on the web site-but I think it may take more technical knowledge that she has. She is great with words, a good editor, has worked some with web design, but I think could use some guidance….anyone out there willing to help her out??? We like our homemade looks, but I think we could make it so much easier to find information. I do know that many folks have wanted to be able to pay for the quarterly vegetables via paypal or something, credit cards…oh boy; I sure don’t know what that takes.

Well more on the normal run of the mill, slow snails pace home front: the weather continues to be crazy. I realize that my reference to life is basically weather related. When it is rainy it is winter, when it is warm it is summer-now is that a California girl talking or what. Not too much in-between-fall is an extension of summer, just nicer weather, and spring is the beginning of summer, the desired summer weather if possible please. So when we have rain in May-June I desire soup for dinner and want to curl around the fire and read a good book. Completely confused as to what I really “should” be doing and what month it is. So here we are in June half way through the year already and I am still mentally in March! When the sun and warmth actually hits, I think we will all melt as if we were from Oregon, unused to the summer double digit temperatures! And I think it is going to hit-not creep in, ready or not here is summer, bam!

Jeff has all of the summer crops planted; we actually harvested the first of the cherries for the farmers market on Saturday along with the first of the basil too. It feels good not to be behind in the plantings. This spring has been hard for us, as the winter crops just didn’t do very well. The broccoli only grew small heads, with the ups and downs of the weather the greens bolted and we weren’t able to get in and plant more, so we have been out of bunched greens for a while. That is when it is really such a relief to have our neighboring farms such as Riverdog, Full Belly, Short Night, Terra Firma and Eat Well to ask for help. This year we all were asking for help from each other. We sold lots of our dried fruit to almost all of the farms, and they have continued to supply us with the bunched greens and some roots for your boxes. Our strawberries have thrown us for a loop, they are not producing enough for us to eat, let along to pass on to you, and the rains have hurt them and other farms too. There are still lot of flowers coming, so who is to say if we have even started to see the harvest yet!

So it is nice to be moving on to the next season, which brings new hope, new crops, a feeling of starting all over of possibilities as to what will happen, chances of more production and income too! The Apricots should be about 2 weeks away, with the weather they don’t seem to have grown much, but again we hope that they will put on some size, and the heat will flavor and ripen them up for the coming fruit boxes.

Katie Cooper who has been working for us at the farm for the last few months and especially with me for the last three years at the farmers market. Well she will be leaving this week for home in Tennessee, then off in the fall for her last semester of school in Turkey. Katie has been the best, always willing to do anything, working all markets, has helped me with the spring school visits and wants to eventually go into farming. She would be my choice as a person I would want to pass our farm onto, she is that kind of person-able to work, even our crew, who watches folks come and go from here commented that Katie is a good worker…I think that is the highest praise one can get, because not too many people can keep up with our crew.

Zach and Nicole are off on a Honeymoon on an Alaskan Cruise, but on his return will start working wit CALFIRE at the Brooks station, so my Saturday market crew just disappeared! And………most fortunately Claire has moved back home for the summer from Monterey and I think willing to fill some of Katie’s jobs such as markets and helping with web design and weekly facebooks postings, hopefully more if possible.

4 cups cooked beets or broccoli, rutabagas, cauliflower, cabbage or kale cut into bit size pieces

Cook the pasta accounting to package directions, drain and place in a large bowl. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat, add the onion, and cook 4 minutes, or until almost soft. Add the garlic, vinegar and broth. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low and simmer 5 minutes. Add the cooked vegetables, oregano, parsley and season with salt and pepper. Simmer for 3 minutes, or until heated through. Pour over the pasta, top with the cheeses, and toss to coat well.

Kale is a marvelous source of chlorophyll and contains twice the amount of beta carotene as a serving of spinach! Along with the other leafty green vegetables, kale is also an excellent source of calcium. Save a few kale leaves to add to the next juice you make. The magic of this recipe is that the mushrooms rehydrate with the marvelous taste of the marinade. If you do not have time to prepare the dehydrated mushrooms and nuts, plain mushrooms and nuts will work too. In a large salad serving bowl, combine the kale, onions, red pepper, sweet potato, garlic, lemon juice, oil, liquid aminos and dehydrated mushrooms. Toss, let the salad stand at room temperature for 1-2 hours. Toss again just before serving and top with the nuts or seeds. Note: To blanch kale, tear into bite-sized pieces, removing the stems. Place the leaves in a sieve, and pour 2-3 cups water that has been brought to a boil and cooled for 1 minute over the kale. Drain. To speed up the draining process, roll up the kale in a clean dishtowel for a few minutes. Serves 5-6

SUMMER QUARTER

PAYMENT IS DUE June 1

The new quarter begins June 8th

Veggies $200 Fruit $175 Bread $36 Flowers $84

In last weeks box you received a Good Humus Brochure-I forgot to tell you that was to share with a friends, neighbors or relatives. We do not have a waiting list at this time and would like to bring our weekly numbers up from 100 to 120 for the summer quarter. You are our best advertisers that we know, and if everyone gave the brochure away we could reach our goal of 120 members. The delivery spots that are in need of numbers to increase is the Pocket, Roseville and at EDAW, but that doesn’t mean to not talk to folks that may be interested at the other drops. Thanks so much for you help!!!!!!!!!!!! Remember that the more we drop at your site, the more efficient our use of fossil fuel is.

This Week on the Farm

Here we are in the last few weeks of the quarter. Things have been really topsy-turvy (By the way, does anyone happen to know the origin of that term? I have no idea.) There has been a giant wedding at which I was accused of being “removed” by unnamed friends and family. I think I prefer the term “in shock”. Having such a gigantic celebration at the small farm that we call home, to have so many people come from such a distance, to have the bride and bridegroom actually want to be married in a place that only 20 years ago was scary hot and dry, boggled my mind. I really was dazed by the interplay of all leading up to it and the events of the day. I guess I really felt more in touch with the past and the future that I saw that day than with the events I saw around me. It brought into my home at one time many of the friends and helpers that have been here with us over many years. It brought to me the garden wedding that Annie and I had in a gorgeous garden that her Mother had created at the family home in Santa Rosa. Her Mother had been raised there and Annie had spent happy summers on the farm before Annie’s Mom moved back when her Mother died. Because of the similarities in those two weddings so many years apart, and because the community around us was so involved, I had a strong sense of connection with weddings as they have always been, surrounded by family and community, wedding themselves to the wedded couple in a way that provides the security and stability for societies in all times and places.

Topsy-turvy also is Good Humus Farm when the spring cycle of 2^nd and 3^rd grade classroom visits begins. Managing twenty or so children in the Spring just before school lets out for the year is like trying paint lightning “plenair” or trying to pinch water. As Annie introduces the farm, like liquid the children flow toward dogs, cats, trees, lawn, anything that that happens into their field of vision. Using all her skills, her assistants and several agile parents and a forceful (hopefully) teacher, some coherence is maintained long enough to send out in smaller groups. This happens for a day a week this time of year, and although Annie and Tree and Katie bear the brunt of the chaos, and they put forth a valiant effort to keep the rest of the day to day activities insulated from it, it will spill over.

Finally, I have to say that although I love this weather, it is a topsy-turvy weather pattern. The entire spring feels like a race to beat the next predicted, but always arriving storm system. We have been really lucky (and talented, wise and experienced!) to have had ground fertile and ready to receive our seeds and plants. So, although it feels like a race, it also feels as if we have all our resources in place to be able to do our best in the race. That translates out to another summer of fresh fruit and vegetables coming off our land and into all the homes and onto all the tables that enjoy our bounty of the Central Valley summer. About two weeks ago we finished transplanting all of our bell peppers, eggplant, and flowers. We finished the tomatoes (slicers, heirlooms, yellow and paste) and cherry tomatoes (8 varieties) before that and this week the guys are staking and putting the first tie on the plants. And there are some amazing potatoes coming, green and lush, about 2 ft tall plants, that we are envisioning laden with potatoes pushing each other out of the ground in about 3 weeks. Help us with that vision, hold it for us, please. The varieties are Yukon gold, Yellow Finn, Russian banana, French fingerling (a red) and Bintje. Now if we can just keep them apart, a task that actually stretches our capabilities as thinking, reasoning human beings. Squash, cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, cantaloupe, Sharlyn melons and Crimson Sweet watermelons are all out of the ground and wondering where the California sun is. The grapevines are growing like crazy for some reason, in spite of all the threats of fungal attack. Everything is very, very green. Let’s all hope for a long gentle glide into summer, not a ferocious onslaught of heat. There is so much nore going on right now on the farm, I could sit at this computer all day and give you the rest of the story, but you have your lives and I am a farmer first, and then an unabashed lover of the printed word. Well hope all this holds together, and all can make sense of it. Let’s enjoy the summer! Jeff

Spinach or Chard and Feta Pie

2 cups shredded potatoes

2 green onions minced

¾ teaspoon salt

6 eggs

¼ cup four

¼ teaspoon ground pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 red onion finely chopped

2 garlic cloves minced

2 bunches of chard, or spinach coarsely chopped

1 ½ cups crumbles feta cheese

2 tablespoons chopp0ed fresh oregano

½ cup toasted bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly oil 9 inch deep pie plate. Place the potatoes and green onions in a colander and sprinkle with ½ teaspoon of the salt. Drain for 5 minutes gently squeezing out any excess liquid. Place in a medium bowl and add 1 of the eggs, the flour and pepper. Stir until well blended. Press into the prepared pie plate to form a crust. Brush with 1 tablespoon of the oil. Bake for 30 minutes or until the crust is browned. Meanwhile, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add the red onions and cook for 4 minutes or until soft. Add the garlic and spinach or chard and cook, stirring often for 3 minutes or until it has wilted. Remove from the heat, drain off excess liquid and cool slightly. In a large bowl, combine the remaining 3 eggs, 1 cup of the cheese the milk, oregano, the remaining ½ teaspoon of salt and the chard or spinach mixture. Pour into the baked crust; sprinkle the top with the bread crumbs and the remaining ½ cup cheese. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake fro 35 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Let stand 15 minutes before serving. From Your Organic Kitchen

Sugar Snap Pea and Potato Cakes

10 sugar snap peas trimmed

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 large onion thinly sliced

2 garlic cloves minced

2 cups cooked mashed potatoes

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

3 tablespoons flour

½ teaspoon salt

4 cups salad mix

1 carrot peeled into curls

Bring a small saucepan of water to boil over high heat. Add the snap peas and blanch in the boiling water for 3 minutes. Drain and cool slightly, cut into thin slivers. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a large skillet over medium heat, add the onion and cook for 4 minutes or until soft. Add the garlic and cook for 2 minutes. Place in a large bowl and cool slightly. Add the snap peas, potatoes, cheese, flour, slat and pepper to the bowl, stir until well blended, shape into 8 round cakes. Heat 1 ½ tablespoons of the remaining oil in the same skillet over medium heat, add 4 cakes and cook for 8 minutes turning once or until browned and heated through. Remove the cakes to a plate and keep warm. Repeat with the remaining cakes. Evenly divide the salad mix and carrot curls among 4 plates and top with the cakes. From Your Organic Kitchen

Tarragon

Use it to enliven omelets, fish, poultry or even deserts! Like so many herbs, tarragon is best fresh, since many of its more subtle flavors dissipate during the drying process. To keep tarragon for a day or two, roll it in a damp paper towels, wrap it in plastic, and put it in the refrigerator. The longer you keep it the less flavor you will get. You can also stick the tarragon in water as you would a bunch of flowers and refrigerate it. No moisture should remain on the leaves as this accelerates spoilage.

Fresh Tarragon can stand by Itself

As a general guideline tarragon does not go well with other aggressive herbs such as sage, or rosemary. Its best alone or with more delicate herbal partners.

· Sprinkle tarragon leaves or tarragon vinegar on a first course salad with orange slices-orange loves tarragon.

· Toss whole leaves into garden greens

· Enliven a wild mushroom sauté and nearly any potato dish with tarragon

· Tarragon butter is a great mate for almost any white fish, as well as for chops and steaks

· Lamb stew is delicious when spiked with tarragon

· Fix iced tea with fresh tarragon, mint and basil

· Try a tarragon rhubarb or tarragon orange sorbet

Lemon Sauce with Tarragon

Spoon this simple vibrant sauce over an avocado salad, or any simply cooked vegetables or fish. If you are planning to serve this over fish, consider adding a small avocado finely diced to make a lemony avocado salsa. From Local Flavors

1 large lemon

1 shallot diced

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

2 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons tarragon leaves lightly chopped

Remove the zest and juice the lemon and put both in a bowl with the shallot and ¼ teaspoon salt. Let stand for 10 minutes, then whisk in the oil and add the tarragon Season with a little pepper. If the lemon is more acidic than you like, whisk in more oil to taste

I have to first off say thank you all for understanding Jeff and I not getting to a newsletter last week, or the mess ups on emails the last few weeks. Thank you all for sending messages of congratulations too. From my point of view the wedding went perfect, the garden was amazing with color drama all over, and Zach and Nicole looked so beautiful and happy. The food was memorable (my goal was to have food that would be so special that everyone would know the love and community effort that was in it) and we have been eating the left overs all week, even after sending containers out with many who were here. We are pretty sure about 200 people showed up, and what was exciting to me was that there were at least 9 Good Humus old time and present interns’ workers here too. We got a photo hopefully we can share. One of these was Ryan Dolan who actually married Zach and Nicole and he did a great job. It was his second wedding that he has preformed, and you would not have known it. The ceremony was very personal, a friend of mine who I have know since college days, who works locally in sustainable agriculture, and who Zach and Nicole have gotten to know well at the farmers Market wrote a piece that gave folks an incite to who they are. It was a fun piece. Claire wrote a poem for Zach and Nicole and read it during the ceremony:

And even though our ages are so different,
we’re siblings nonetheless,
and on your wedding day I feel
a strong, bright tenderness.

And there is a place in my heart
that you will always fill.
No matter where you are,
your place remains here still.

And now, when you begin anew,
a man taking a wife,
I want you to know my pride, my hope and love
are yours throughout yo

ur life. By Claire Main

I was so proud of her being able to step up in front of the crowds, even though she choked up during the reading, she was able to share her thoughts of her brother on his special day.

We are so proud and happy for Zach and Nicole-walking together to meet the world with smiles, laughs and strong heart felt love for their community and each other.

This last week was filled with cleaning up, getting rented and borrowed linens, platters, coffee pots and such all back to their rightful owners. Now mostly the garden and house are clean and look like we are just organized and neat folks! This too will pass! I have to say that both Jeff and I were pretty drained from the wedding planning, cleaning and preparations, I know this last week I felt like someone had pulled my plug, and I had no energy flowing in. Zach and Nicole gave us two nights at a B&B as a thank you for our part of their wedding so we snatched that one us as fast as you can say Jack Sprat! We went to a Bodega Bay Inn, and we did not leave the room, we slept, read, slept, watched movies, slept and ate Cheese Torta-wedding left overs. It is so incredible to be able to sleep and know that nothing was looming over us to do, nothing to think about, no problems to solve, nobody to answer too…and this too will change…apricots are about a month away.

We are now back getting back into the saddle; Jeff is out on the tractor-cultivating tomatoes, eggplant and peppers, planting flowers.

In their bid to catch on with the American masses, Fava beans start out with at least two strikes against them: their beany, starchy taste and the time-consuming peeling process. You can avoid both problems by doing as the Roman do: eat the firs Fava beans of spring raw, when they are tender and sweet, and only need to be shucked, not skinned. As for the bit of hand labor that is required, let the diners do it! On the first day of May a public holiday for the Romans workers comes the first picking of Fava bean. This is traditionally a day for picnics or eating out, and even on elegant tables the Fava beans are served in their pods and everyone shells their won, and if you find a pod with nine beans you must keep it safe for it will bring you good luck for the following year.

As summer draws nearer, Fava beans quickly mature, as which point each individual bean, after it is removed from the pod, must be peeled. The best way to skin them is to drop them into boiling water for about a minute, then plunge them into cold water to stop the cooking. Next, break the skin with your thumbnail and pop the beans out.

This ubiquitous salad while enjoyed in Tuscany, is one of the best ways of serving Fava Beans, sometimes vary it with simply salt, sometimes fresh oregano, or a touch of fresh thyme.

Bring a large pot of water to boil over high heat. Add the beans, return the water to a boil, and then drain the beans. To remove their skins, make a slit in one side and squeeze gently so the bean pops out. Continue until all of the Fava beans are skinned. In a medium shallow serving bowl, combine the Fava beans, cheese, and oil and toss gently until the Fava and cheese are well coated with oil. The amount of oil is intentionally generous. Sprinkle the salad with salt to taste, and then sprinkle the herbs over the top if desired. Carefully toss all the ingredients so they are well mixed and serve.

Risotto with Asparagus, Fresh Fava Beans and Saffron

Fava beans top my list of spring favorites. The 15 minutes that it will take you to shell and skin these high-protein, high-fiber treasures is time well spent, because their season is, sadly, a short one. A warning, though: fava beans are toxic to individuals with favism, caused by an inherited blood enzyme deficiency. Be cautious when trying fava beans for the first time.

Prepare the fava beans. Shell them while you bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Drop the beans into the water, and boil small favas for one minute, large favas for two minutes. Transfer at once to a bowl of ice-cold water. Drain. Remove the skins, using your thumbnail to open up the skin at the spot where the bean attached to the pod, and then gently squeezing out the bean. Pour the stock or broth into a saucepan, and bring it to a boil. Add the asparagus, and blanch for three minutes. Remove the asparagus with a slotted spoon or skimmer, refresh in a bowl of cold water, drain and set aside. Turn down the heat under the stock, and keep at a simmer with a ladle nearby or in the pot. Make sure that it is well seasoned. Heat the oil over medium heat in a wide, heavy skillet or saucepan, and add the onion and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Cook, stirring, until tender, about three minutes. Add the garlic and the rice. Cook, stirring, until the grains of rice is separate and beginning to crackle, about one to two minutes. Rub the saffron between your thumb and fingers, and stir into the rice. Add the wine, and stir over medium heat until it has been absorbed by the rice. Begin adding the simmering stock, two ladlefuls (about 1/2 cup) at a time. The stock should just cover the rice and should be bubbling, not too slowly or too quickly. Cook, stirring often, until the liquid is almost absorbed. Add another ladleful or two of the stock, and continue to cook in this fashion, adding more stock when the rice is almost dry, and then stirring, for 15 minutes. Then stir in the asparagus and the fava beans and another ladleful or two of stock. Continue adding stock and stirring the rice for another 10 to 15 minutes, until the rice is cooked al dente and the vegetables are tender. Add more stock to the rice, and stir in the Parmesan, pepper and chives. Remove from the heat. Taste and adjust salt. The rice should be creamy. Stir once and serve right away in wide soup bowls or on plates, spreading the risotto in a thin layer rather than lumping in a mound. Yield: Serves four to six

Advance preparation: You can begin this recipe several hours ahead and finish it just before serving. Cook halfway through step 4, that is, for about 15 minutes. The rice should still be hard when you remove it from the heat. Spread in an even layer in the pan, and arrange the asparagus and favas over the top. Fifteen to 20 minutes before serving, bring the remaining stock back to a simmer and reheat the rice. Resume cooking as instructed. The favas can be blanched and shelled a day or two ahead and refrigerated.

Italian Salad Mix, Oranges, Parsley, Asparagus, Tangelos, Potatoes, Spring Onions and Tangelos.

This is the flowering crabapple in my garden; it is bursting with pink and white blooms. Ready… set… here we go… from a dead stand still to a full run-I can imagine us all at the starting line, hunched over in the formation, arms or wings back behind our bodies, head lowered, listening for the birdie to sing and then everything, bees, us, ants, flies… all are sprung from the winter bindings and we go dashing off with huge leaps and bounds!

This Week on the Farm- Periodically, we are really low on product, and right now is one of those times. The beauty of a reasonable amount of rain means a very short or non-existent planting period on the winter. The alternative is to plant a lot in the last waning days of the fall, and depend on it to pull you through until late spring. Sometimes, with small acreage and lots of cold, wet weather, we end up with a low period right now. That is one of the reasons that we planted the oranges and tangelos and flowers and strawberries, is to provide a shot of income during the low times of early spring. And here they are. Well, we do what we can and move on, staying busy with what we’ve got and keeping our spirits up in lots of ways.

One good spirit raiser, and a way for us to get out of the late winter grey short light ruts, is to spend a little time remembering what our dreams are, and remembering our dreams of the past and how many are now reality. It seemed so easy to dream when we were young. I do remember being so busy that I woke myself up in the morning coming to bed, so it isn’t a lack of time that keeps us from dreaming, it just seems kind of like an old habit that I didn’t even realize was gone, until one day it seemed like a long time since Annie and I had sat down and just dreamed about our future.

So one evening about a week ago, we consciously stopped talking about today’s work and tomorrows plans and the problems we face, and took the time to ask ourselves what we want from the next twenty years. I’m 59 and Annie is 57, by the way, so it was something we had to mark with an asterisk, so to speak, but that’s ok. The first ground rule had to be we can’t be bounded only by what is possible. That was empowering, of course, but took a little getting used to, but I dimly remembered when the sky was the limit, back when we were traveling around the Pacific Northwest picking fruit for a living and keeping my 1959 International pickup running. There were a lot of evenings when we sat after dinner, at the dark end of dusk, and told each other what we wanted to do with our lives.

And the thing that makes our lives so blessed is that some of those dreams have come true. I really have built Annie a home in a meadow. We really did raise our children on a farm, making our living off the land. We really do have a community of people that are close to us and share the dream of taking care of a piece of earth. We really have been able to do that, to take care of a piece of land in the best way we know how, and grow old on it together. And so much more has happened that we could not have possibly dreamed of, that has “dropped into our lap” so that in picking it up, it almost seemed effortless and a gift that we had only to accept as our work. But I am learning, helped by many people in many ways, that that is my work, to allow myself to pick up what is in front of me as a gift, to recognize it, acknowledge it, and to accept it

So much has happened for us, that when Annie and I sat down it was hard to switch out of a day full of the results of all that we have picked up. Our lives are so full of unfinished projects and commitments to the world, that if we allow it, which we mostly do, then our lives are completely “full of it “. So when I asked Annie what were her dreams for the next twenty years, she looked at me, rolled her eyes and said, “I can’t even think beyond this week and if I do, there’s a wedding and a house and a garden…” Me too, but what if… And so, gradually we came to the point where we could look beyond tomorrow and next week and visualize our perfect future. So, here’s our dream, as of one week ago.

We would like to see our farm become a much more diverse operation making the way for other talents to operate within the borders of the farm and the business. It would be great to have room for a resident writer, artist, and carpenter. (That’s in case our kids are paying attention…kos!!!J)

We are looking forward to a future containing a farm stay program on a on a farm that supports itself through the production of food for the local community. We would love to have a chance to provide educational and research opportunities to all ages, and a mature educational program. It would be great to have facilities for people to just come and relax, totally independent of the life of the farm, and just enjoy the beauty that is here.

We would hope to leave the farm at our appointed time with a second home for the retired farmers, farm worker housing, and solar electricity supporting all the farms needs.

We would like to see a farm that minimizes the use of fossil fuel, (but oh, how I love my Caterpillar) has a strongly integrated domestic animal presence for maintaining fertility of soil, a mature wild land habitat that supports and attracts its own diverse species of life, and a collective consciousness on the farm that orders its life.

Can all this be done on twenty acres? Of course, in some form, but the future may allow us to extend the boundaries a little bit, in its own good time. The nice thing is that all of this is frosting on the cake, and it either will or will not happen, following on the heels of the work that has been done to get to this point. There isn’t really a time frame, after all, the farms I saw in England were 600 years old, and the farms Annie saw in Ladahk were thousands of years old. Thirty years ago this was a barley field and 150 years ago it was oak grassland. Jeff

In this years Cover Crop, Jeff started mowing the bell beans and rye and it was so tall, smelling good that he wanted to get everyone walking in them, you can also see some of the still loaded citrus trees behind us.

If you are using parsley only a as a garnish, take a tip from great cultures around the world and work its peppery flavor into the center of your cooking. You are most likely to find parsley on the outskirts of a plate or atop a sizzling, steak, the truth is, and this little garnish holds great powers. Its slightly peppery taste and deep green color wont’ overpower other foods, even when used in generous amounts, but just a dash can lend panache to the simplest dish. Other cultures have known this for centuries, In Spain, where the herb allegedly promises prosperity and a fresh sprig is present at the openings of new business, parsley in cooking is as common as olive oil. Italians use parsley to make vibrant and assertive sauces and stuffing’s. In northern Africa and the Middle East, seasonings grains and vegetables with parsley is as old as cooking itself. Parsley’s lack of respect here is puzzling, so give it a chance it deserves. This is one of cooking’s most reliable herb.

1 cup nuts: walnuts, pecans, almonds, hazelnuts, pine nuts, unsalted pistachios or any combination

Toast garlic in small dry skillet over medium heat, shaking pan occasionally, until softened and spotty brown, about 8 minutes, when cool remove and discard skins. Toast nuts in dry skillet over medium heat, stirring frequently, until golden and fragrant4-5 minutes. IN work bowl of food processor fitted with steel blade, process garlic, nuts, parsley and oil until smooth, stopping as necessary to scrape down sides of bowl. Transfer mixture to small bowl and stir in cheese season to taste with salt and pepper.

Carefully wash parsley leaves to remove any dirt; dry well and place in a salad bowl. Coarsely grate or thinly shave parmigiano-reggiano and add to parsley. Drain 1 ½ cups oil packed sun dried tomatoes on a paper towel. Slice the tomatoes into medium julienne and add to the parsley and cheese along with minced garlic. Toss well to combine

Carefully wash basil leaves to remove dirt, then dry well. Place the basil leaves in the bowl of a food processor and add cup olive oil, cup rice vinegar, and salt and ground black pepper to taste. Process until smooth, finely mince shallot and clove of garlic and stir them into the dressing.

Drizzle dressing over salad and toss to combine ingredients. Taste and adjust seasonings. Divide between 6 salad plats, garnish with some shaved parmigiano and serve.

Italian Salad Mix, Oranges, Oregano, Spinach, Carrots, Asparagus, Braising Mix

I have mentioned in past how I have been working on our new house…well I have to admit so much so that almost to the extent that I haven’t seen much of spring happening around me. I am so focused that when I do happen to take a walk around the farm I am surprised to see it is not still mid winter, but sprung spring. I also have to admit that the house we are living in is not too clean either… that my garden is full of weeds. I know that I can’t continue this type of behavior too much longer, the farm is going to pull me out of the construction zone and into the season, and I think that is why I keep a tighter hold on working on finishing the new house. I so want to see the house finished, no, what I really want badly is to move! And you know after we finished painting the five rooms, I had a beautiful tablecloth and a bowl of tulips on the table, I thought this is going to be a really beautiful place…then I tried to imagine myself living in it and it was hard to think that I get to live in such a beautiful house. After a bit of who knows what my mind was doing, I decided that I could take on the challenge of living in such an incredible place that Jeff and Zach and Steve Schroeder, and Meg Hehner and I have created!!!!!

So two weeks ago I did surface, and went out to see the apricot bloom. Now the bloom has completely gone, petal fall has left the red jackets covering the small green baby apricots, they are growing with leaps and bounds just like babies do, and are just about ready to burst out of their tight jackets. I had wanted to show you the bloom, so here are the photos, but as I look at them, I realized it really does not do justice to the moment when I was out in the orchard under these trees, you can’t smell them, or see the cloud of blooms all in one vista. But you might get an idea, and now the peaches are in bloom, they are pink, but they don’t have the cloud of bloom like the apricot, not as many flowers per tree and so they are not as dramatic…

ahh, you can see my bias can’t you?

With the rains during the bloom it causes some worry. Francisco and Jeff are out spraying oil and copper on the blooms before each rain to protect them from brown rot spores from getting into the buds, fruit and the ultimately the tree itself. Once the petals have fallen they we don’t to worry as much and they don’t need the protection sprays, just the concern for freezing weather to nip them. This morning Jeff and I were having breakfast and Jeff was looking out the window, there is forecast of rain for today (and it looks like it will rain) so he was checking for the breeze or wind factor. He can’t spray in the wind as the tiny particles won’t go where he wants, making sure to get the spray application completely covering all the blooms from all angles on the trees, (the organic spray material is not cheap) so the conditions have to be just right to spray. Well they did head out, but now an hour and a half later it is raining… they were only able to go one direction in the younger orchard, they did what they could. This is probably the fifth time they have sprayed this spring. As the blooms grow and change new surfaces emerge and need the vegetable oil and copper protection. Jeff and Francisco have done a good job keeping up, now here’s hoping that the rain lets up, the cold weather doesn’t get tooo cold, and we have a good fruit set.

And then there has been the tulip harvest, here is a photo of the Bright Parrots and the Pink Angelique tulips- they have been a delight to have at the Farmers Market-short or weird, folks love tulips no matter what! I increased my plantings to 4000 this year, but I sure think I will look for more varieties to try to lengthen the harvest period. Have a great week-Annie

Serve with cold beets, fresh egg noodles, or spread on toast, then covered with tomatoes. You could eat it with most anything.

Remove the crusts from the bread, and then soak it in vinegar on a plate. Pound the garlic with ½ teaspoon salt in a mortar until smooth, and then work in the oregano, capers, nuts, and olives until you have a coarse puree. Add the bread and the olive oil and work until the pesto is well amalgamated. Season with pepper taste for vinegar and add a little more if you think it needs it. The pesto will be very thick.

Heat 1 teaspoon oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Add leek, sauté 6 minutes or until tender and golden brown. Add garlic, sauté 1 minute. Spoon leek mixture into a large bowl. Place ½ cup flour in a shallow bowl and dredge chicken in flour, shaking off excess. Heat remaining 1 tablespoon oil in pan over medium heat add half of chicken mixture, sprinkle with 1/8 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper. Cook 6 minutes, browning on all sides. Add browned chicken to leek mixture. Repeat procedure with remaining chicken. Add wine to pan, scraping pan to loosen browned bits. Combine 1-cup broth and 1 tablespoon flour, stirring with a whisk until smooth. Add broth mixture, remaining 2 cups broth, water, and mustard to pan, bring to a boil. Stir in chicken mixture, remaining ¼ teaspoon salt, and remaining ¼ teaspoon pepper. Cover, reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes. Stir in potato. Cover and simmer 30 minutes or until potato is tender. Stir in kale or braising mix cover and simmer 10 minutes. Garnish with crushed red pepper if desired. Serve

1.5 cups dried fruit or raisins (squashed them down or a top and a bottom crust)

Dissolve lemon juice and salt in hot water and pour over the dried fruit. Make sure the fruit is well covered. Let soak until they are plump, stirring occasionally, this takes about 45 minutes to an hour. Once the fruit is plump, dust them with the tapioca flour or cornstarch and stir it tin to the remaining liquid. If you are using fruit besides raisins you may want to add a bit of sweetener as well, but raisins really don’t need sugar. Put filling in bottom curst, and top with second crust by turning it out of its pan (if using a purchased crust) onto the top of the first. Seal the edges by pinching together, and pierce a few slits to release steam. If you like you can decorate the top with scraps of crust and even paint the top crust with egg white or milk to help it brown. Bake until crust is golden and filling is bubbly-approximately 45 to 50 minutes. Let cook (preferably on a snowy windowsill, but hey this is California) and serve. Sarah Mandel

The challenge: in the midst of the earthy root vegetables and dark, rich braises and stews of winter cooking, out taste buds crave bright, rollicking flavors. THE oranges that fill winter produce bins sate that appetite nicely, weather alone or as part of a lively salad. But too often these salads disappoint because the oranges fall by the wayside, their flavor fleeting and the pieces of orange lost among the salad greens.

The solution: our first thought was to improve the orange flavor by including some fresh squeezed juice on our vinaigrette dressing. Unfortunately, this didn’t work. A good vinaigrette depends on a balance of oil and acid, the latter usually supplied by either lemon or lime juice or by vinegar, all of which have substantially higher acidy levels that orange juice. Consequently, we found that the orange juice actually diluted our dressings and compromised their intense flavors. Next we tried fortifying the orange flavor with some grated zest, the outer, orange portion of the fruit’s peel, where the flavorful citrus oils are concentrated. This brought a healthy orange flavor to the fore. What also helped to boost the orange flavor was cutting the orange into sections freed from the outer membrane. Slice off a small section at the top and bottom, stand the orange on end and slice off the rind, including the white pith, following the contour of the fruit. Then free the sections by slicing along the membrane.

In this salad arrange the orange segments on the greens leave behind any juice that is released.

1 large head escarole, washed dried and stemmed-about 9 cups lightly packed-you can use our Italian Salad mix

½ cup slivered almonds, toasted in small dry skillet over medium heat until golden about 7 minutes

Whisk vinegar, olive, shallots, garlic, and orange zest in large bowl; whisk in oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add greens toss to coat. Divide dressed greens among individual plates, arrange a portion of orange segments on greens and sprinkle with almonds, serve.

Dissolve lemon juice and salt in hot water and our over the raisins. Make sure the raisins are well covered. Let soak until he raisins are plumped up, stirring occasionally. This takes 45 minutes to an hour. Once the raisins are plump, dust them with the tapioca flour or cornstarch and stir it into the remaining liquid. If you are using another type of dried fruit, you may wish to add a bit of sweetener as well, but raisins really don’t need sugar. Put filling in bottom crust and top with second crust by turning it out of its pan onto the top of the first. Seal the edges by pinching together, and pierce a few slits to release steam. If you like, you can decorate the top with scraps of crust and even paint the top crust with egg white or mild to help it brown. Bake unit crust is golden and tilling is bubbly approximately 45 to 50 minutes.

Braising Mix, Italian Salad Mix (stronger but still wonderful in used as a salad), Bok Choy, Yellow Fin Potatoes, Rutabagas, Celeriac, and Cilantro.

What’s in the Fruit Bag? Oranges, Tangelos, Grapefruit, and Dried Nectarines

Last weekend I think I had a hint of cabin blues. Can I admit that after such a going on about how great the fog and rain are for winter hibernation? With the flooding I know that I was running on the fear factor of driving the roads out of the farm, between Saturday Market to Saturday market I stayed home, I was becoming reclusive, a bit depressed, and grumpy, feeling somewhat like Pillsbury dough girl too (maybe just like the bear in her cave). The blue skies this week definitely helped cheer the spirits and clear the roads, I headed into town to shop, go to the gym, and yoga! It felt good to be alive and feel my body tingling (well actually aching) from activity. It is raining again tonight, but the reprieve was nice. So far Jeff’s 5 gallon bucket on the lawn rain gauge is about 2 inches from the top-Jeff estimates (and don’t ask me how he makes this calculation) that with this last rain spell we have gotten about 9 1/2” of rain, half of our rainfall for the year!!!

With the enclosure of the rain, the seclusion that it creates, I was able to focus, (like the horse with its blinders on kinda focus) on working on our house. Zach has been steadily working on putting up the wall board, and this week, between he and Jeff they have now finished the sunroom, living room, stairway, almost all bedrooms, one bathroom. What is left is the library, two bathrooms and the kitchen. I have been “mudding” the wall board, taping the seams, and then putting on layers of join compound. In Claire’s room I put 4 layers of “mud” on her walls to get it to a smooth texture, with no seams or tape showing and it is almost ready for primer and paint. We are also experimenting with clay that has a pigment in it instead of using the “mud”. It is real clay from the South West, and the color we used in the living room is Tucson Gold. The process no matter what the material is, is slow. One coat on and then two day to dry, sand, smooth and then the next coat, two more days to dry, again sand…slowly we are making progress, and I think one of these days we will be surprised that there are no more layers to put on, and all the rooms will be finished. I think that is the carrot that keeps me going; I can’t wait to see the finished clay walls, or the painted rooms.

I know I have told you about the tile mural (4’x8’) that Meg Hehner and I have been working on since last January. Well we were stalled on the sky since August, trying to find the right glaze and the right technique to give the feeling of a summer sky in the valley. After many, many, many sample trials, talking it over, trying to duplicate success trials, this week we put the finishing touches on the sky, and turned the entire mural in to our ceramic Guru Susan Shelton to fire away. We won’t know what we really did until we see them cooled and out of the kiln sometime next week, but we boxed up close to 80 tiles out of the 104 that we glazed. Now that is down right exciting, and scary, but it was time for the tile making workshop to be taken down so Zach could go up in the loft and put up the last of the wall board in that room.

So the rain and the fog has allowed us to put in a lot of hours on the house, the crew doesn’t come to work unless we have a harvest for the Tuesday delivery or the Saturday market, and Jeff and I burry ourselves in mud, clay and gypsum dry wall. I never knew how much work it takes to build a house, snail creeping slow, and how much detail goes into each piece, each part, and I know that even though it seems that we are getting closer to the end, there are so many parts that I don’t know about yet. How to put up the wainscoting, the tile floor, the oak floor, the trim around windows, doors…Our time to give so much of ourselves to the house project is short, in this California winter; really we only have a few months of cave life. With the blue skies, I can tell you we were not the only ones looking relieved for the warmth, the willow trees, the lilacs, the pussy willow are all pushing buds, and my flowering plum, apricot and peaches are starting to bloom. We harvested several dozen bunches of flowering fruit branches for market this morning. With this, one knows that spring is coming, coming this next month and our ability to focus gets lost in the rush to keep up with the tightly coiled springs of the “prima verde”.

The other day I was on my way over to work on the new house and I had a thought…one of these days I will be walking the other direction, I will be coming out of the new house and going to work to the barn, I will have a completely new view, almost walking a new direction, heading east instead of west to work. I almost felt like it would be doing things backwards, but you know it just made me smile inside, because I am so ready to head a new direction.

Celeriac is the “ugly Stepsister” relative to parsnips, carrots, parsley and fennel. Celeriac was developed from traditional celery in areas around the Mediterranean sometime in the late 1500 to early 1600’s. The flavor of celery was appreciated byte the populations of temperate Asia and Europe for thousands of years but the bitter tasting stalks were considered undesirable. The small root of the celery plant is sweet and mild, which prompted botanists to breed the plant with enlarged roots and few bitter leaves. Celeriac is long season plants taking up to 200 days to fully mature. With its single root lumpy, brown, and somewhat hairy, creating a first impression that could easily frighten off all but the most stalwart fan. The root needs peeling before cooking in soups, stews or stocks. Celeriac is delectable addition to roasted vegetables and pairs nicely with potatoes. Young roots can be grated into salads or cut for crudités. However it oxidizes quickly, so cut roots must be held in acidulated water before preparation.

Strip leaves from 2 of the rosemary branches and finely chop. Finely chop 3 of the garlic cloves. Combine chopped rosemary and garlic and oil in a bowl and set aside. Generously season chicken cavity with salt and pepper, then stuff with remaining 2 branches rosemary and 3 garlic cloves. Tie legs together with kitchen twine and run all over with half the prepared oil. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat oven to 400. Rub chicken with half the remaining prepared oil and generous season with salt and pepper. Put chicken, breast side up, directly on an oven rack set in the middle and cook until skin is deeply golden 50-60 minutes.

2 Bell Peppers (Now? I would skip these) 1 red and 1 green cored, seeded and cut into 2” squares how about carrots or potatoes or rutabagas

While the chicken is roasting, put garlic, potatoes, peppers, squash, celery root, leeks, and onions into a large bowl. Add the remaining prepared oil, season to taste with salt and pepper, and mix well. After chicken has roasted for 25 minutes, put vegetables in toasting pan under chicken to roast for the remaining time the chicken has to cook.

Heat oil, garlic and rosemary in a small pan over medium heat until garlic begins to brown about 2 minutes. Add stock & simmer until reduced by half, discard rosemary. Whisk in butter, a few pieces at a time, then add lemon juice and season to taste. Add parsley just before serving.

4 cups cooked winter vegetables such as parsnips, rutabagas, winter squash, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and kale cut into bite size pieces

Cook the pasta according to package directions. Drain and place in a large bowl. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat, add the onion and cook for 4 minutes or until almost soft. Add the garlic, vinegar and broth. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the cooked vegetables, oregano, parsley, and season with salt and pepper. Simmer for 3 minutes or until heated through. Pour over the pasta, top with the cheese, and toss to coat well. From Your Organic Kitchen

Bok Choy is, dare I say, unique. Not the greens; they are about the same as those of many other cabbages/ But its fat, thick stems become creamy and tender during cooking in a way that you cannot duplicate with other greens. This makes the basic, simple version of this recipe just wonderful; the slightly more complicated variations are even better. Other vegetables you can use; Napa or Chinese cabbage, chard, or broccoli raab.

Cut the leaves from the stems or the bok choy. Trim the stems as necessary, and then cut them into roughly 1 inch pieces, rinse everything well. Put the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When hot, add the stems and cook, stirring occasionally, until they just lose their crunch about 3 minutes. Add the greens and about ½ cup water. Cook stirring occasionally, until the liquid evaporates and the stems become very tender, about 10 minutes more; add a little more water if necessary. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and serve immediately.

Braising Mix, Italian Salad Mix (stronger but still wonderful in used as a salad), Arugula, Radishes, Spaghetti Squash (cook like any other winter squash, bake at 350 for 45-60 minutes, but then cut in half remove center seeds, then remove the noodle like flesh and make into a spaghetti meal), Tangelos, Chieftain Red Potatoes.

What’s in the Fruit Bag? Oranges, Tangelos, Grapefruit, Meyer Lemons, and Almonds

This Week on the Farm Wet week on the farm. As if you didn’t know! Wet week all over California, with perhaps another one to come. With all the wonders of our science, that is one we have yet to copy, the wonder of clouds and rain. We can predict it, channel it, store it, purify it, split it, or combine it, but we can’t make it happen. So it still falls into the category of an unexplained miracle, a life-renewing miracle every time our wishes or prayers are answered.

Man, was it a wild storm that beat around us this week. Starting on Monday, we had 7.5” of rain by Thursday morning. That in a place that has a rainfall total for a normal year of about 20 inches. Old El Nino played with us, made us wonder if he was ever going to perform, and then came right in with a roundhouse right to the solar plexus, boom! And we are standing here saying yeah, hit me again, we can take it. Maybe he’s winding up for a real bell-ringer, and maybe not. That’s the beauty of this, we don’t know, it’s a real mystery. But that was a significant blast and let us know that the gifts of Nature don’t have to be totally sweet.

We woke up on Tuesday morning, powerless as usual in heavy storms, after a night of listening to the wind and rain on our tin roof, crashing nearly horizontally into the resisting windows, doors, siding and sheet metal. This wonderful house that was built so long ago, is not weather tight and we can truthfully say that radon poisoning, or built-up household toxins are not a concern. Our kids grew up feeling the fresh air in their faces and the pitter patter of tiny feet (ants, spiders, and mice) while in bed at night. But aside from a few phobias about ants or spiders in the bed, everybody has come out healthy, and I get to laugh at the experiences, while they all glare at me. And so on a rainy, windy night, our house serves as a kind of osmotic membrane, allowing a small sample of all that is outside to creep into our dreams. And when we awake, it is there around us, the soaked survivors of a yard full of small friends, the puddles that tell of an unfound pinhole or an unforeseen consequence of hurried repair work. So waking on such a day is a matter of going exploring into previously charted, but possibly changed territory, reminding me of Mark Twain’s descriptions of piloting the Mississippi after a winter’s changes. I know the course, but need to be prepared for a major change around any bend. Inside the house, check, no water around the edges of the slab, but put down buckets and mop the floor. Look at the desk, and move any important papers that might be in the way of those stubborn leaks around the skylights. Look outside for any downed branches or, even worse, trees—ah! Not bad, only a few branches. Outside, the trees are whipping back and forth with a beautiful flexibility that tells me how alive they are in this weather, all still holding firm in their own strong communities of roots.

Over in the new house, I close the door and the storm disappears suddenly. This house is so well insulated that I can’t hear the rain on the tin roof, I can’t feel a breath of air through the up-to-code heavy insulation, and not a sound through all those layers. And standing there, I am glad that my children were raised in the old house, with its puddles and drafts. I know that in time this house will become the “old house” just as I will become the “old man”, and it will show its age and the effects of years of human lives and become home to all who come here, but something really important is lost when I can’t hear the rain falling on the roof at night.

I could go on and on about that day and the next, the pictures of Francisco, Ricardo, Jose and I shoveling mud across a downhill road and out into a field to channel silty water sluicing from the hills above us out into our planted, weedy fields to slow and spread the water, the dedication of the people around us to their work, but I grow acutely aware that storm or not, time goes on and there will be a time in the not-too-distant future, that the sun will shine and all that can be done in the winter will have to be done. Suddenly, really suddenly, it will be time to move into a new season, ready or not. Jeff

Julies Box-Each quarter we donate a box of veggies to a family in need in honor of Julie Estridge who told Jeff she will always get a box from us. For the last two quarters we have been donating to the Berenson's family who has been dealing with medical problems. Kaye Berenson, who had pancreatic cancer, died the week before last. She survived approximately 8 months with that terrible disease. Her funeral mass and Irish Wake were held last Thurs, 1/14/10. Her husband, Scott, Molly (daughter-13) and Kerry (son-40) are hanging in there and trying to keep busy. One of the ways Molly has been keeping busy is by cooking the food from the veggie box for the rest of the family, and her mom before she passed. Kerry always enjoys receiving the bread and Kaye did too when she was still able to eat. The donated box got them to eat more organic foods especially the veggies. I think they will continue at least some of that change in their lives. I know they have really appreciated receiving the box and bread and I would like to thank those of you that have added a bit to your quarterly payment to help support the gift of Julie’s Box.

The Chieftan Potatoes are from Oh! Tommy Boy’s Organic Farm from in the historic potato growing region near Valley Ford, California. Nathan Boone who grew the potatoes was in need of help marketing, so we decided to get some for the CSA boxes. He Dry-farmed the potatoes and say that they are the best-tasting potatoes you can find. Dry farming uses the natural soil moisture to grow crops instead of irrigation. Deep loamy soils and careful soil preparation make it possible to grow potatoes in the coastal areas of Northern California.

The farm was originally started in the 1850’s by Tom Kirkland Sr. who began dry-farm potato production around 1926. Tom was known affectionately as the “potato king” and grew up to 20 acres of potatoes each year. In 1976, Tom Kirkland Sr. retired and his grandson, also Tom Kirkland, took over the farm. Tom revived the tradition of dry-farmed potatoes and introduced Sonoma County to more than 20 varieties of gourmet potatoes. After Tom and Heidi Kirkland retired from farming in 2009, Nathan Boone (a friend of ours from years ago, Nathan taught Annie how to use the computer) from First Light Farm CSA stepped in to continue the dry-farming tradition to grow 14 varieties of gourmet potatoes.

The coastal area of Sonoma County has a history of dry-farming. The remnants of a geological formation of silt, sand, and sediment was uplifted and deposited over bedrock five million years ago, resulting in an unusual condition of deeper, fertile hillside soils perfect for dry-farming.

The famous potato crops of the past were planted in the spring and grew without irrigation through the summer. Oats and barley were sown in the fall for winter crops, taking advantage of the more or less predictable Mediterranean wet winters.

Today, dry-farming is being re-invented in the Valley Ford area of Sonoma County. The deep silty loam soils are perfect for the practice with high moisture contents and a deep water table. Dry-farming is well suited where water is scarce.

Oranges-In Chinese traditional medicine, dried orange and tangerine peel is considered a precious medicinal herb. It is used to treat a wide range of digestive problems as well as coughing, fatigue and loose stools. It is thought to discharge excess fire, relieving anger, frustration and depression. Limonene, a substance found in oranges and tangerines (and in the seeds of caraway and dill) is a natural phytochemical found effective at preventing and even treating cancer in animals. Dr. Michael Murray of Bastyr University describes limonene as an inducer of detoxifying enzymes that neutralize carcinogens. Consumption of oranges is linked to lower rates of pancreatic cancer and protection against radiation damage to sperm. The essential oil from citrus peel is antifungal and anti-inflammatory.

To dry citrus peel-remove from citrus cut up into small minced pieces place on a cookie sheet and put in a very low oven, or in a food dehydrator, or even seconds in the microwave. Keep checking to make sure you only dry to remove all of the moisture, when dry place in closed container and use in teas.

Preheat the oven to 375degrees and bake the squash unit the flesh is yielding and soft, an hour or more. Slice the squash in half and scrape out the seeds. Now drag a fork through the flesh, pulling the strands apart. Toss them with the parsley, cheese and butter. Season with salt and pepper and serve

Tomato sauces of all kinds are good with spaghetti squash. Toss the strands lightly with olive oil, salt, and freshly milled pepper, then pile them on a platter. Make a nest in the middle for 1-2 cups tomato sauce. Toss then serve. Pass Parmesan Cheese at the table.

Serve spaghetti squash with any of the mushroom ragouts or with Sautéed Mushrooms with Garlic and Parsley. Season the squash with butter or olive oil, salt and pepper, then mound it on a platter and surround with the mushrooms. Toss before serving.

4 large bunches arugula, washed, stems trimmed and torn into bite sizes pieces 61/2 cups loosely packed

1 medium head radicchio-or the Italian salad mix washed, dried and torn into bite size pieces 21/2 cups

Adjust oven rack to center position and heat oven to 375 degrees. Stir bread crumbs and 1 teaspoon each of thyme and rosemary to combine in a shallow pie pan. Brush goat cheese rounds lightly with 1 tablespoon olive oil and gently press both sides and degrees in bread crumb mixture to coat thoroughly with bread crumb mixture (can be done up to 1 hour before serving time and refrigerated on baking sheet until ready to use)

Whisk garlic, vinegar, olives, remaining thyme and rosemary, salt and pepper in small bowl, gradually whisk in remaining 1/3 cup olive oil and set aside. Just before serving, bake breaded goat cheese rounds until warm through, but not at all browned 5-7 minutes. Meanwhile whisk up oil and vinegar mixture toss with mixed greens to coat in a large mixing bowl. Divide dressed greens among 6 plates placing the warm breaded goat cheese on top and serve.

January 16, 2010

What’s in the Vegetable Box? Arugula, Salad Mix, Green Garlic (use as a mix between garlic and onions), Spaghetti Squash (cook like any other winter squash, bake at 350 for 45-60 minutes, but then cut in half remove center seeds, then remove the noodle like flesh and make into a spaghetti meal), Braising Mix, Tatsai (almost like spinach, munch on it raw, add to salads or stir fry), tangelos and Broccoli Romanesco.

What’s in the Fruit Bag? Satsuma Mandarin Oranges, Raisins, Grapefruit, & Navel Oranges

Fruit during the Winter Season: This time of year the fruit that we will be harvesting is various types of citrus, there really is no other fruit growing right now, all apples you see in the stores are coming from storage or other parts of the world. In the fall you started to see the first of the citrus in your weekly box, the Satsuma Mandarins coming from Riverdog farm in Guinda, followed by the sweet Navel Oranges from John Ceteras who lives up the Capay Valley in Rumsey. Our Late Lane Sweet Oranges will be starting around February. Last week you saw the first of our Meyer Lemons which have a sweeter juice and a thinner skin. Later we will harvest the Lisbon lemons that are knobbier with a thicker skin and tarter. The Tangelos will be sweeter in Februarys and March although when Jeff or I pass them in the citrus orchard right now we pick one, they are tart and juicy, a bit more time and they will sweeten them up. We have a few pummelo trees but never enough to put in the weeks shares. Citrus likes to be grown in hot summer climates and not so cold winter climates. The hard freeze that came in December was not good for the Citrus trees. We ran our sprinkler irrigation all night for several nights to keep the fruit and trees from freezing temperatures. The ice that forms from the water actually acts as a protection and keeps it at a higher-warmer temperature. You can see some damaged leaves on the trees right now, like they were burned, but over all I think that we have a very heavy crop of fruit that is only becoming sweeter with time.

History of Citrus: Citrus Fruit cross very easily between species and the grapefruit is the best example of this.

The Grapefruit are believed to be hybrids of the pummelo with the sweet orange, and the only citrus fruit native to the New World. They are round, yellow fruit growing in huge, impressive clusters like a giant bunch of grapes, hence the name. The Mandarins were brought to Japan from China around CE 500 and brought to the United States in the mid nineteenth century. The Sweet Orange also called the China orange or Portuguese orange reached Europe comparatively late, in about 1500, when Vasco da Gama brought the first ones from India. The sweet orange spread around Europe during the next century, but it was still an expensive luxury. The species was introduced to the New World in 1565 by the first Spanish colonists in St. Augustine, southern Florida, and Spanish missionaries planted sweet oranges in California in 1707. However it was not until Florida became part of the United States in 1821 that sweet oranges became a major export. The lemon first arrived in the Middle East from India and China in the twelfth century, and has been cultivated ever since in Israel and Iran. Columbus brought the fruit to the West Indies on his second voyage in 1493, and the seeds were introduced to Florida from Haiti in the early sixteenth century. The Tangelo developed about 2,500 years ago in China, was a spontaneous hybrid of a tangerine and a pummelo.

This year marks the tenth year of building our new house, and we just may finish it too! This year Jeff will turn 60. This year Zach and Nicole his sweetheart from High School will have been together for 10 years. This year Zach and Nicole will be getting married at the farm on Mothers Day May 9. This year on 10-10-2010 Claire will turn 21. This year Jeff and I will celebrate our 35^th Wedding anniversary! It feels like a lot of big events are coming up, and I am not sure that one can be prepared for much in advance. Well, I have been working on the garden for the last year getting it spruced up, rearranged, new plantings, a new rose arbor, and as of fall grass planted in the path ways in preparation for a wedding, but I think I would have done most of it anyway, it was time for a change, my garden and I have been in the same dance for 25 years, and I was ready to shift to a new look. Moving to a new look, a new view, a new perspective point; now maybe that is my seed planting for this year?

The girls have been home and it has been nice to have some time to be with them, I think that has been the best gifts of this holiday season. We have gone to movies, dinners together, celebrated my moms 89^th birthday, talk’s together, quiet time, working on the house together, and the other day we had a photo session in the garden. It was such a kick having us all back together trying to get the perfect photo. It so brought me back to the time we all lived together: nobody on time, Zach coming out the door tattling that Ali had put a piece of chicken in his ear, and then later Zach throwing orange pieces at the girls, kids teasing Jeff about his shoes and clothes being muddy, and so much laughter, jokes and fun poking.

The fog lifted early this week and some rain moved in. It was sure nice to hear the rain drops pitter pattering on our tin roof (the tin always magnifies the sound and it seems like more drops than it really is). The farm is definitely muddy and everything got a good drink from the rain, but we sure do need more. It might be time to start thinking of that rain dance that we do sometimes to ask for more storms and more precipitation. I have to admit to a fear that I have that comes from past winters when the rain didn’t show up until late spring early summer and it almost took our entire fruit harvest. So you see when you ask for good weather in the winter, your wishes may be granted, but then delaying the winter into spring just brings chaos to us farmers. Grin and bare it and pray for the winter season in the winter. Bring on the rain, but not in floods, so it’s just enough. After that wonderful rainfall came beautiful clear skies, and I don’t know about you, but all of a sudden I was in spring time. My gut got all floppy, my head a bit turned around, I could feel the stress of “shoulds” moving in. I should be in the garden weeding, should be pruning roses, should be cutting back and dead heading last years flowers… I get kinda twitchy and my eyes keep moving back and forth to the garden, what am I missing, what is happening that I haven’t attended to??? With the good, clear, warm weather my focus goes outward. A time when I am more physical, a time when it is harder for me to remember to take care of myself, because the weather, the season, the possibilities are so expanding, exciting…. Ok, ok I had to calm myself down, reassure myself that the soil is tooooo wet to do anything, it is still January, get back to the office and don’t worry about garden work yet, get back to the seed inventory and planning for the year, This is just a pre-spring like warning telling us that she will come, but to make sure to get the hibernation time in, do that personal work, personal focus, inner evaluation and planning that needs to be done. Ah, I do enjoy winter, it never lasts long enough, I love the less distractions, and lately have noticed an irritation rise up when I do get a phone call, who is that knocking on my cave door? Have a great week, and thanks for the positive comments about the veggies and the newsletter, they are ALWAYS APPRECIATED and recipe suggestions!!!!! Annie

I will cook some ham steak in a large roasting pan and covered with cabbage, beets, golden turnips (which are beautiful), leeks, garlic, parsley and probably add steamed beet greens and some lemon at the end. A cold season kind of hearty meal.

We had roasted beets last night with pistachio butter from the mark Bittman cookbook...mmmm. The pistachio butter is also so good on roasted Kabocha Squash.

Fresh orange compote is an especially refreshing and not too sweet, it may be served alone or with shortbread or chocolate wafer cookies. Leftovers, should you have any, can be served the next day on vanilla ice cream or stirred into yogurt.

Peel and section the oranges into a serving bowl. In another, smaller bowl, mix together the orange

marmalade and liqueur to make a sauce. If necessary, add the juice from a few orange sections to the marmalade to reach a pourable consistency. Stir the sauce into the oranges. Refrigerate at lease 20 minutes, and serve chilled. To section an orange quickly, cut both of the ends form the orange and place it cut side down on a cutting board. Slice down he sides of the orange with wide strokes, just deep enough to remove the peel and all of the white pith. Hold the peeled orange over the serving bowl to catch any drippings juice, and with a paring knife, carefully cut between the membrane and one side of each orange section and back out the other side to release it from the membrane. This can be done with one smooth in and out motion. When all of the sections are removed, squeeze any remaining juice from the membrane into the bowl. From Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home

ORANGE BEETS AND OLIVES

Place the beets in a medium saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to low. Cover, and simmer foe 45 minutes, or until the beets are tender. Drain the beets and run cold water to remove the skins. Cut the beets into ¼” cubes and place in a large bowl. Squeeze the juice from the oranges over the beets. Add the olives, vinegar, oil, ginger, and chives. Toss to coat well and let sit for 5 minutes. Season with salt to taste.

In a medium stockpot, bring chicken stock to a simmer over medium heat. Add ginger, garlic, ¼ cup cilantro and mint leaves, and chicken. Simmer until chicken is cooked through about 30 minutes. Remove chicken and allow to cool. Tear each breast into about 6 pieces, discard bones. Strain broth and return to pot over low heat. Add bok choy (or Napa) and simmer 5-10 minutes.

Soak noodles in hot water until softened, 5-10 minutes. Cook noodles in boiling water until tender, about 3 minutes. Drain and rinse well with cold water.

Divide noodles among 6 bowls. Add chicken pieces, scallions, remaining mint and cilantro, and Tatsai. Pour hot broth and bok choy over top. Serve with Tuong Ot Toi.

Garlic puree is best when made with spring garlic; the young bulbs are moist and sweet-with green stalks. Spread the puree on croutons, for soups, or use it in a salad dressing, or in almost any recipe calling for finely chopped garlic. This recipe calls for a lot; adjust the amount to the bunch in your box: 20 heads of young tender garlic whole and unpeeled ½ cup olive oil

Divide the garlic into 2 groups of 10 heads each, wrap each group in heavy duty foil and bake the garlic on a baking sheet in a preheated oven (375 degrees) for 1 hour. Unwrap the garlic and let it cool until it can be handled. Separate the garlic cloves from the head and press each clove between the thumb and forefinger, squeezing the flesh into a sieve set over a bowl, stir in all but 2 tablespoons of olive oil and discarding the papery covering. (With the green spring garlic there should not be much of the papery covering) Pack the puree into a sterilized jar top it with the remaining oil and seal jar, when opened keep a layer of olive oil on top.

January 9, 2010

What’s in the Vegetable Box? Leeks, Turnips, Beets, Salad Mix, Spinach, Cabbage, Arugula, and Broccoli

What is in the Fruit Bag? Satsuma Mandarin Oranges, Dried Fruit, Lemons, & Navel Oranges

Reminder to start picking up your box this Saturday January 9^th and Tuesday January 12.

Winter Health Tips from Chinese Medicine

We Westerners spend the month of December fending off the growing darkness and cold with lights, festivities, and frenetic busyness. On New Year's Day, we resolve on even more activity and effort.

“Follow nature and align with seasonal energies,” advised the ancient Taoists, advice that underpins Chinese Medicine. If we steal a moment from our busyness and look around, we might note that everything else has slowed down. The plants in our gardens send their energies deep into their roots. The fields outside of town lie fallow and quiet. Further a field, bears conserve their energy through hibernation. Nature's winter message is: rest, go inward, conserve your energies, and enjoy the quiet.

Winter, in Chinese medicine, is the most “Yin” of the seasons. Yin energy, or qi, manifests as coolness, darkness, and lack of activity. Over the course of the year, Yin qi is balanced by Yang, epitomized by the warmth, light, and growth of summer. Our capacity to harmonize these energies internally—as rest and activity, coolness and warmth—both daily and seasonally determines health and well-being. Since Western culture tends to be exclusively “go go Yang”--think of the Energizer Rabbit—many of us fail to hear nature's call for rest and quiet. Ironically, some of us end up, in midwinter, feeling too Yin: sick, exhausted, or depressed.

So a winter prescription from Chinese medicine is “give yourself a break.” Let loose your inner slacker: stop multi-tasking, spend an afternoon enjoying a good book without feeling guilty, occasionally substitute a leisurely walk in the Arboretum for your daily run (no, you can't quit exercising altogether). Give yourself the extra hour of sleep you crave. Trust that a bit of dormancy will re-charge your batteries body, mind, and spirit.

In Chinese medicine, winter's element is water and its organ is the Kidneys. The Kidneys are said to house our foundational and reserve qi. They govern reproduction, growth, and longevity and are depleted by overwork. Abundant Kidney qi helps us to age fearlessly, with grace and wisdom, and with fewer health problems.

Chinese medicine suggests supporting Kidney qi by eating more beans (black and, of course, kidney) and by snacking on a few roasted nuts, especially walnuts and chestnuts. While the point of winter is to chill out from our usual overheated and frenetic pace, we don't want our water element to freeze, so keep warm with more soups and stews, whole grains, and warming herbs like cinnamon and ginger. Eat less raw salads and instead shift to leafy dark greens cooked with warming garlic and onions.

A little winter down-shift with gentle self-care will help you prepare for the return of light, warmth, growth and activity in the spring.

This morning we woke to the dripping on our tin rooftop of a thick fog. I looked out of our bedroom window which is up on the second floor and could only see white just a tad beyond the very close tree line. The white cave has enshrouded our world. I thought, well this is as close as it comes to hibernation that one can find in California. I think of the bears in there dark winter sleep and envy them to that quiet time, but this morning I realized that we do have that darkness here too, only it comes in the form of fog. I know many of you are sending me arrows to hush up, as some of my friends are gong crazy in the Valley Tule Fog that has engulfed the lower marshes of Yolo County, which is what most of the area is. But if we redefine fog, and realize it is our opportunity to hibernate like the bear and not look beyond what is 2 feet in front of us it might not be so terrible. I don’t get depressed with lack of sun during the winter, but it might be because of my over dose of summer sun, I know I couldn’t live in a place where fog, clouds and rain dominate. It also might be hard to hibernate if I lived in town, with everyone going and coming to work, the busyness of the community might make it hard to shut down.

This world out here on the farm is very different I think than what you live with in town. The fog does bring everything to a stop, there isn’t noise, expect the dripping of the heavy drops, or the birds that on doing their little dance in the garden or on the lawn searching for seeds or insects. You can hear them chirping in glee when they find something, but it really isn’t load or noisy, you have to listen to hear them. Francisco has been coming to prune the orchard, his car will whiz past and then he disappears into the mist. No other crew members are coming right now as there hasn’t been any harvesting going on, and so Francisco walks out with his pruning sheers and clips away and nobody knows he his here.

It is quiet; I guess you could say fog quiet, and a visual shield that limits the eye and mind from outward distractions. We are in our own world, just like the bear in her dark cave. This is the quiet time of the year, from the winter solstice to the spring equinox we are in a time of contemplation (well that really isn’t true here in California, maybe just January). The New Years Resolution is really figuring out what seeds you want to plant for the coming season. As farmers this is the time of year that we look at the past season’s crops and evaluate what did well, which crops produce abundance and continue them this year, or which planting do we want to rouge out, the seeds or crops that really didn’t carry their weight. What trials do we want to expand, or what new trials do we want to experiment with this year. This quiet time is a time of contemplation, evaluation, of looking at the seeds catalogues, kinda like your kid’s toy catalogues, or your clothes or hobby catalogues. It is a time to dream, imagine and create a new season of possibilities for the coming summer season. And you know it all if true for us too in our personal lives. What went well this year for me, what changes do I want to make for myself, or what work do I still need do continue on, and what newness do I want to bring in this year? We are planting our seeds and the quiet of the fog is the perfect time to do it, as I am in my own world, with little distractions having to be with myself-face myself and ask those hard questions. I also got sick this week which means that I hadn’t slowed down enough and my body is making me do it, really making me taking the break.

So I am drinking my tea and talking to you, hoping that you too can enjoy the slowness of the fog, have time for contemplation, stay warm, eat lots of soups and yummy greens and listen the quietness of this time of year. 2010 here we come-slowly; quietly but sure as shooting we are coming!!!! Have a great week, season, year-Annie

Place chicken in a large stock pot with water to cover, coarsely chop carrots, medium onions, and celery, and add to the pot, along with garlic, washed parsley, black peppercorns, and salt. Bring to boil over medium heat, then reduce heat and simmer for 2 hours. After the chicken is done (in the first hour of cooking) remove let cool and then pick the meat from the bones and return the carcass to the pot. Reserve the meat for another use. Once the 2 hours of cooking are up, remove bones of chicken and then add ½ pound of your favorite noodles (we use rotelle) and cook until the pasta is tender, according to the package. Stir in 2 cups of washed, parsley leaves and simmer for 1 minute more. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 6 cup soufflé dish with 1 teaspoon butter, dust with flour (tap out excess) and set aside. Boil diced peeled trimmed turnips in a pot of salted water over high heat until soft 8-10 minutes: drain well and mash until smooth. Melt butter in a medium pan over medium heat. Add flour and cook, stirring for 2 minutes. Stir in the heavy cream and mashed turnips and cook until thick, about 5 minutes. Add minced peeled onions and salt and pepper to taste. Remove pot from heat and gradually stir in egg yolks. Transfer mixture to a large bowl and set aside. Whisk egg yolks in a large bowl until stiff peaks form gently fold into turnip mixture and spoon into prepared dish. Bake until puffed and golden about 35-40 minutes.

Place sugar and lemon juice in a large stainless steel bowl. Push yolks through a sieve into bowl, and whisk to combine. Set bowl over a pot of simmering water and whisk unit mixture thickens, 15 to 20 minutes. Cook 5 minutes longer. Remove bowl from hat, and stir in zest. Stir in butter piece by piece until completely melted. Pour into cooled tart shell and chill until firm for at least one hour. Preheat broiler. Remove outer ring of tart pan and place pan on a large cookie sheet. Place outer rind upside down on top to protect pastry from burning, sift sugar evenly over top and place under broiler. Watch carefully; remove tart when top is evenly browned.

Last newsletter for the year of 2009. Thank you all for giving us the chance to spend it with you. I hope that the rewards for you have been as valuable as they have been for us. The dream of providing food through our efforts in harvesting from the giving of the earth still guides our hours. The desire to be more aware of how to do it in a better way for you, for us, and for all life continues to shape our thoughts for the future. The past thirty odd years have convinced me that there is no better way I might have spent those years.

It is so quiet now. Standing at night, looking out across the farm to the windbreak line, brings out hidden memories of other times, standing and watching for something. A cold and wet night, perfect stillness, a mist blurring edges of indistinct bushes and trees, one distant token pinpoint of light, all this acts on my imagination and feelings until I know there is something here with me. The chance to stand immersed in that feeling, searching emotionally for something more, is one of those moments of mystery that keep life alive. All my life, I have looked forward to the fall and winter, to the return of the quiet time.

I want to continue to tell you about our trip to the East Coast, particularly about our stop in Durham, North Carolina. I was primed for this visit to the tobacco country because on both my parent’s sides, my family is descended from North Carolinians. I always knew the story of my Mother’s father, the youngest of 12 children and a twin, who left the plantation near Asheville to work for Liggett and Myers (L&M) as a pipe tobacco blender, came to San Francisco in that capacity, and spent the last dozen years of his career starting and running the cigar making shop at San Quentin Penitentiary through the 1940’s. I had also recently learned that an ancestor in my Father’s mother’s family had left North Carolina shortly after marrying a woman named “Cherokee” Terry and changing his name from Burroughs to Burris. Sounds like a good story there……

So setting down beside the trees along the runway at the Durham-Raleigh airport was, after the stone and iron of New York, an occasion for a big sigh. While not home, the feeling of familiarity, of something I knew about was an occasion for a deep outbreath. On the trip south from NYC I had been most impressed by the sheer force of the light put out by the Atlantic City casinos, which was a white-hot point surrounded by filaments of light feeding it. From a couple of thousand feet it was a pleasure to see the light spread out, diminish and fade as we came to North Carolina.

We, along with five other farmers from around the country and the photographers and local producers, were the guests of the producers of the “Five Farms” documentary series. We were all there, ostensibly to participate in a small seminar learning about the effects of the documentary making and its aftermath on our lives, but really to get a chance to learn more about each other and to get a face-to-face social encounter with the team that dedicated themselves to the production of this effort. It was during those encounters that it became more than an extended tour of our farm for someone carrying a microphone. The faces and lives behind the stories are way more arresting and inspiring and difficult and ordinarily heroic than I could have imagined. And that is the photographers, the producers and the staff at the Center for Documentary Studies. Don’t laugh. It is the truth that the world we entered for a few moments showed us all these characteristics and many more as we listened to these people talk about their professions, their lives and stories during the making of this documentary, and now its relevance to their lives. It seemed such a privilege afforded to us to be able to sit and listen to them as they mingled freely among the farming people. So many stories and so much life. At the end of the time it became evident to me that we had participated in something that was much bigger than a set of five storyline edits. We had all affected each other’s lives and as a new community were sharing each other’s journeys.

As I sit here and wonder if all this about our lives, and not really about the farm, is worth the kilobytes I feel again the certain knowledge of the billions of stories that surround me. It is very similar, sitting here in my life, to standing in the night listening in the darkness for the stories that are out there on the edge of my life. Jeff

I looked in most all of my cook books and could not find a recipe for broccoli soup. So here is my version that I made for lunch today. You have to know that I didn’t measure, I’m not really good at flowing recipes, or making them exact…so use this as a guide only

Cut broccoli heads into florets do not remove the leaves or the stem. Cook it all in a about 1 quart of water until tender. Blend the broccoli and use milk to keep the blender buzzing. Once the broccoli is ready I then melted the butter and sautéed the leeks, garlic and thyme until they were mostly soft, I scooched the leeks out of the middle of the pan added another ¼ cup of butter, melted it and then added the flour. (This is a quick white sauce lazy method). Once the flour has covered the leeks, I slowly added the broccoli/milk blended mixture to the leek flour mixture, first making a paste, and then added the entire broccoli mixture, including the reserved water from steaming. Cook until all is thickened and hot. Serve

Gently reheat the roasted turkey before adding to the cooked risotto so you won’t overcook the dish trying to warm the turkey thoroughly before serving.

Bring 3 ¼ cups chicken broth and water to a simmer in a large saucepan (don’t boil). Keep mixture warm over low heat. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in Dutch oven over medium heat, add squash and shallots, sauté 5 minutes or until lightly browed. Stir in remaining ½ cup broth, 1/4 cup wine, sage, salt, and pepper. Cover reduce heat and simmer 3 minutes or until squash is tender. Remove squash mixture from pan, and keep warm. Increase heats to medium high add remaining oil and Arborio rice to pan. Sauté 2 minutes or until lightly browned, stir in 1 cup broth mixture and remaining wine, cook 5 minutes or until liquid is nearly absorbed, stirring constantly. Add the remaining broth mixture ½ cup at a time, stirring constantly until each portion of broth mixture is absorbed before adding the next (about 35 minutes total). Gently stir in squash mixture and reheated diced turkey, and top with crumbled goat cheese. Yield 4 servings. From Cooking Light November 2006

Cut turnips in half and into ½ inch wedges. Combine water and remaining ingredients in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add turnips, turning to coat, bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 15 minutes or until tender. Uncover and cook 7 minutes or until turnips are glazed. Yield 4 servings. From cooking Light

2 oranges-remove the juice by putting oranges in the microwave for 20 seconds then roll with hands on countertop before juicing.

Peel the onion and cut finely and sauté along with garlic in olive oil until the onion is translucent. Put into bowl. Chop the parsley add to onions along with the rest of the ingredients. This goes well with anything grilled, or on tortillas with grilled chicken, or seafood, falafel, or livening up some scrambled eggs. Makes about 1 cup.

Southwestern Version-Substitute cilantro or mint for parsley, use limes instead of lemons and 2 tablespoons papaya nectar for the orange juice. Add ½ teaspoon toasted cumin seeds-makes great bean burritos.

Sorry about last week’s newsletter. We arrived home Monday night from NYC and Durham, NC to the first night of a really huge freeze. I spent the first two hours home running around wrapping pipes and turning water on the citrus. I read the thermometer at 8:00pm and it said 31 degrees so I knew it was going to be really cold. We passed last year without a freeze and the past several years have been mild enough that with our elevation above the floor of Hungry Hollow the cold air that would cause a freeze has drained into the valley below. So when I turned on the water in the citrus I knew that we were facing something unusual. When I turned on the misting sprinklers under each orange tree, the fog of warm water was visible, and I felt the relief that we had arrived home just in time to do what we could to avoid losses. The night was so still and clear that it almost felt as if the universe had creaked to a halt due to cold. Windless nights like that are worse for freezing because the air doesn’t drain as well, and any wind can mix the air in the grove so that the coldest air doesn’t sink to the bottom. But in our case, I was giving thanks for the lack of wind, because that meant the warmth of the water would meander upward through the tree, creating a localized warm zone. We awoke the next morning to icicles hanging from the lower branches of all the citrus. If only I could have created an Ice shield, a 32 degree protective layer, over the whole tree that would have been the end of my worries. But of course the weight of all that ice might send branches already burdened with oranges and tangelos and pommelos and lemons crashing to the ground, so I worried a little instead.

The trip to the East Coast, while memorable in so many ways, is one that I am sure will always feel better viewed as a memory. That is for me, at least. Annie will surely feel differently, being the veteran traveler that she is. It was the first time that Annie and I had flown together, each of us having traveled separately on various occasions. Annie of course, has taken our children to various parts of the globe in her search for connection with others living on and with the land. I have traveled here and there over the years, but preferred mental travels with feet firmly planted here. As a result the farm had never missed both of us for longer than 4 days, and we had never left it to its own designs for long enough to be too concerned about what it may have cooked up for us on our return. So traveling together was the first adventure. Since we left San Francisco at 11:00PM and arrived in New York at 7:30AM our adventure was less than inspirational, both of us dozing and growing more bleary as the trip went on. But waking up to crossing Long Island at about 2000ft. and viewing the quadrangle of Central Park in the first sun of the morning was special. So much water! I had not realized, growing up in the arid West, that that part of the coast was a series of deltas of rivers draining large and small watersheds that receive water all year. From the air, water is the dominant natural feature. It surrounds all the well-known Islands, Manhattan, Long, Staten, Governors, Ellis, the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn and Queens, and the Bronx. Looking at all that on a map did not convey to me the same impact as seeing the physical reality. It is a watery world.

Emerging at JFK, feeling comfortable and adequately spiffy in my lucky plaid shirt, red Stanford Sequoias hat, and work Levis and worn old Redwing boots, we saw through the glare of the giant airport windows behind her, our first New York woman. She was tall, wearing a warm and well fitted long grey coat that emphasized her cultural and fashion superiority, and stood with an ease that let us know that she was at home and comfortable in any situation she might find herself. I was jolted when she turned toward us, and barely recognizable as Alison, walked toward us, arms open. Tender moment, made even more tender by the sudden realization of what she was capable of becoming.

Alison was there with Gary Baum, a friend for many years, artisan contractor and a buff of all life relating to Brooklyn as the center of life, the universe, and everything. So began our running tour of life as it was and is around our daughter. I remember a constant round of subways, lights, small shops under mountainous stonework, magnificent and formerly magnificent wrought iron everywhere, breakfast, lunch, dinner and late night snacks at places that like a geode stone, only showed their wonders after breaking through the everyday exterior.

Would I go back? If I had to, yes. If there was a good reason, yes. Do I need to go back? No. I remember how good and real it felt to hear that “we will be arriving at San Francisco International in 20 minutes, on behalf of the crew, I would like……”.

Am I worried about my daughter? Yes. She lives in a place foreign and unrecognizable to me, and I have only gained a few threads to connect me to her in her new place. There is a decay, natural through age and recognizable through neglect that lies on the fringes and beneath the constant renewal and energy that forms the vital core of the living city. It is its own thing, disconnected from all earth around it except as a medium for its expression and further out, as a resource necessary for life. This decay lies at the fringes of her life, and all lives there, and bounds the safety and security that she fashions for herself. But I am so encouraged by the adaptability and resourcefulness of her youth, and realize that she is capable of mastering the tremendous adjustment from farm to city and that within her lies the ability to pause, analyze, gather and prosper wherever she goes.

It is really nice to be home, back in the normal flow of the week, walking over a place that clings to my boots. I am through, for the time being, with popping in and out of flying sausages, and down and up from snaking underworld tunnels. Thanks for the opportunity to talk about my impressions, it helps to put them to bed. I am anxious to talk nest week about our adventures in Durham, North Carolina as the guests of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, the producers of the “Five Farms” documentary.

One really great thing that Gary Baum gave me after an exchange about the people on the sidewalk in Brooklyn. He said “Jeff, you’re talking and looking as if someone is going to attack you at any moment! I’ve always looked for the nice in people and found it and I personally have always refused to participate in that misconception about city life”. It was not a rebuke, it was a personal sharing of his joy in the relationship and community natural to human beings everywhere. And the more we traveled in the city, the more I learned about the willingness of people to step out of their lives, even for a moment, to help someone. Have a great week-Jeff

You can deep fry virtually any ultra thinly sliced root vegetables and get homemade chips, but you can also crisp slightly thicker pieces in the oven, with a lot less oil and a lot less mess. Beets are especially great this way because of their bright color and naturally sweet flavor. Other vegetables you can use are carrots, parsnips, rutabagas, kohlrabi, sweet potatoes or turnips.

Preheat the oven to 400, lightly grease a couple of baking sheets or line them with parchment.

Cut the beets in half and then crosswise into thin slices (1/8 inch or so). You can use a mandoline for this; just don’t set it too thin. And if the beets are small simply cut them crosswise. Toss them in the oil and spread the slices out on the baking sheet. It’s okay if they are close, but don’t let them overlap.

Roast the beet slices until they are beginning to brown on the bottom, 10-12 minutes. Flip them over and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Keep roasting until they are well browned, another 10 minutes or so. Serve immediately.

Superb on any short, substantial pasta, it also tastes good by itself, with a big chunk of crusty bread to mop up the juices.

Try a combination of beets greens. kale, escarole, or chard, and mustard greens to complement the pungent flavor of the cheese.

3 large bunches fresh greens stemmed if necessary and coarsely chopped about 12 cups

Heat the oil in a large skillet or deep Dutch oven. Add the onion and salt lightly. Sauté over high heat for about 5 minutes, then turn the heat to medium, cover and let the onions cook until very tender about 10 minutes.

Add the greens in batches, sprinkling lightly with salt after each addition. When all the greens are wilted, stir in the feta and cook for about 2 minutes longer. Taste to adjust salt, some feta cheese are saltier than others.

Transfer to a platter, and grind on a generous amount of black pepper. Serve hot or warm, on or next to pasta or grains, or by itself.

The Stir Fry Story
It happened back in Œ86 when I was just an entry-level farm worker at Stone Free Farm, just outside of town on the south bank of Putah Creek. The birth of Stir-fry Greens, or Braising Mix, as we originally named it. The boss was a vegetarian and loved to cook greens. During one of the slow winter months when we were a bit short of product for market, he went wandering about the farm foraging for choice young leaves of the various greens - chards, kales, mustards, bok choy - and tossed them all together. The result was a very versatile mix of diverse flavors that was as convenient to use, as it was nutritious.
JUST WOK IT. In general, the leaf size of items in the Stir-fry Mix is considerably larger than what¹s in Salad Mix, though they may be the very same greens (except lettuce, of course). Thus, they are generally not eaten raw. When someone asks me how to cook the greens, I suggest, for starters, that they try either Asian Style or Italian Style. Asian Style means you use peanut oil, ginger, garlic, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, a drizzle of toasted sesame oil, and well, you know, Asian kinds of things. Italian Style means you go for olive oil, garlic, onions, herbs like basil or oregano, and maybe some mushrooms. In either case, the preparation is basically the same: Just throw everything into a hot wok and toss it until all the greens are wilted. I emphasize the term wilted to encourage people not to overcook the greens. Amorphous green mush has never seemed appetizing to me.
Over the years I have come to enjoy the Stir-fry Mix more and more just steamed with no sauce or seasoning, or as a warm salad with but a drizzle of vinaigrette. I drop a steamer basket into a stockpot and bring the water to a boil. Then I dump a bagful of Stir fry Greens in and steam them for only three or four minutes. I then find myself poring over a mound of colorful wilted greens that I pick leaves out of, one by one, sampling and comparing flavors and textures. Red Russian Kale; Dinosaur Kale; Curly Green or Curly Red Kale; Red Mustard; Frilly Green Mustard; Swiss Chard; Red Chard; Gold Chard, Baby Bok Choy; Tatsoi; Napa Cabbage; Red Cabbage; Collards; Beet Greens; or Mizuna? Hmmm... What’s in the stir-fry today? Needless to say, just about every other vegetable can go into a Stirfry dish, even rutabagas! (But, like potatoes, you might want to precook them a bit.) On the other hand, you don¹t have to Stirfry the Stir-fry Mix. Miso soup or Ramen-type noodle soup becomes more flavorful and nutritious with the addition of a handful or two of chopped up Stirfry Greens. I¹ve used Stirfry Greens in place of spinach to make a Spanakopita-type phyllo dough casserole. Just a couple of minutes in the steamer basket brings out the natural sweetness of many of the greens (e.g., Kale) and reduces the pungency or bitterness of others (such as Red Mustard). By Jim Eldon, MOP*, Fiddler¹s Green Farm, Inc (*= Manager, Owner, President)

Fragrant Rice Noodle with Vegetables from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home

Southeast Asian inspired sauce with colorful strips of leeks and mixed vegetables in a creamy, peanut-lime sauce.

6 ounces ¼ inch wide rice noodles (or linguini if rice noodles are not available

In a covered pot, bring the water to a rapid boil. When the water boils, add the noodles and cook for 3-5 minutes, until just tender. (I have found that really alls you need to do with rice noodles is bring the water to a boil, turn off the heat and place the noodles in the hot water and let set until tender.) Drain, rinsed briefly under water, drain again and set aside.

Combine the sauce ingredients and mix them by hand or puree them in a blender until smooth. Cut the leeks in half long ways; wash the insides looking for dirt under each layer. This recipe calls for squash, but this time of year you could replace with kohlrabi, fennel, carrots or any other in season vegetable. Cut the vegetables into sticks 5-6 inches long and ¼ to 1`/2 inch wide. Heat the oil in a wok or large skillet, stir fry the leeks on medium high for 2-3 minutes. Add the vegetables and continue to stir fry for about 3 to 4 minutes, until the vegetables are just tender. To prevent scorching or sticking add about ¼ cup water while stir frying. Add the noodles and the sauce and toss well until heated through. Serve at once.

Recipe adapted from The Savory Way by Deborah Madison. The recipe calls for Taleggio Cheese, but other cheese may be used in its place such as Fontina, mozzarella or Gouda (or a mixture). This dish can be assembled earlier in the day and then finished in the oven or it can be made completely on the stove, the potatoes added after the cabbage is cooked and the cheese shredded and tossed in at the end. Makes 4 to 6 servings

If the skins on the potatoes look fresh, scrub them and leave them on. Otherwise peel them and cut into ½ inch chunks. Bring several quarts of water to a boil; add salt and the potatoes and turnip or parsnip. Lower heat to a slow boil and cook until they are just tender. 7-8 minutes. Remove them from the water and rinse briefly to stop cooking. Heat the butter in a skillet and add the sage, leeks, garlic, red pepper, fennel and sauté for 3-4 minutes. Add enough water to just cover the bottom of the pan and stew for a few more minutes; then add the cabbage by handfuls or in whatever size batches the pan will accommodate. Salt lightly. Cover the pan and cook until the cabbage is tender. Preheat the oven to 400 F. Toss the cabbage mixture together with the potatoes, and the Parmesan cheese. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper. Layer the cabbage in an earthenware dish with the cheese. Cover and bake until the cheese is melted and the vegetables are hot, about 20 minutes. This is great as a farm box recipe. I used similar items such as potatoes and turnips or parsnips. I used the fennel to add flavor as well as a small green pepper. Most of the ingredients can be found in a box one week or the next, just buy some of your favorite cheese.

Brush cut side of squash with oil, place face down on baking dish and roast until tender about 1 hour. Cool and then scoop enough flesh out to measure 3 cups. Melt butter in large pot, and cook at medium heat carrots, onions, apple, about 2 minutes. Add curry paste stir 2 minutes, add chicken broth, bay leaves and squash. Stir in and bring to boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 1 hour. Remove bay leaves, and puree soup in blender until smooth. Return to soup pot. Stir in cream and honey and season with salt and pepper. Serve with garnish in each bowl.

For those of you that have signed up for winter quarter thank you for continuing into the season of greens, roots, and citrus. The winter fields looks so beautiful, they are full of produce ready to harvest, and lots just planted for the future. The orange trees are so full this year that we are propping up the branches to make sure they don’t break before harvest, weather has been spectacular too; I should be out taking lots of photographs for you to see.

With the new quarter brings change and I thought it might be good to let you all know how the change effects us. Summer 2007 our CSA membership in Sacramento was up to 120 and held at that until this summer 2009 where it dropped to 96 and starting this winter quarter we are at 90 with no waiting list at the moment. This last summer quarter many families decided to plant a garden to cut costs to help get through the economy crunch. Some have returned, some have not and in the end we too feel the crunch and loss of members. Some that have dropped out were long time supporters, with changing family dynamics, kids growing up leaving only two at the dinner table making the farmers markets or local grocery stores a more economical way to spend the weekly food allowance. What the consequence are for us with the decline in numbers is that at some of the delivery spots where the numbers are lower than the required 10 boxes per delivery, are in need of canceling if we can not bring them back up to a number that makes it economical to make the stop. Jeff and I can figure that the economy is what is keeping families from the CSA type of shopping; families are less able to pay in advance for the three month period. We offer a payment plan of your own creation to work around the advanced payment if needed; we would rather keep our customers than loose them because of money flow issues. We do not want to assume that the economy is the problem if there something else going on. Many folks have dropped this quarter because they are traveling over the holidays, and others didn’t say why they are going to take a break for the winter. It sure is true that the box is not as full as it was two years ago, the prices have gone up. I know also that I have had several folks say that they miss the hard copy of the newsletter in their box; the e-mail version isn’t as satisfying. Do we go back to hard copies in the box? Would that make a difference to you? Jeff and I would like to hear comments why our numbers are on the decline, ideas on how to bring them up, and any thoughts to better the system. We defiantly have the produce in the field to deliver and would like to have the families there to pack boxes for. And if we can’t bring the numbers up will need to look for other ways of marketing our crops to keep our income at a leave to support all that work here.

I thought you might be interested to see where our deliveries go and the numbers at each spot. Possibly you have family or friends in these areas that you could recommend getting a box. The ones that are below 10 are definitely in danger of being dropped, even though it means fewer boxes made overall. The red number of boxes are the drops where we need to increase the most. If you have ideas on how we could do that, newsletters in local school papers, or organizations, churches….that would be helpful to bring our numbers back up.

THE MYSTERY TO MISSING PRODUCTS-One last issue that I would like to talk about is the missing bread or flowers, vegetables or fruit. Each quarter mysteries happen, this quarter at the Davis Waldorf School takes the cake! This quarter one member did not receive 5 weeks of flowers ordered; she got them if picked up before 5 and not if picked up after 7. A MYSTERY that I have not been able to solve. It is really important that if you signed up for a product and your name is not on the list, please call us to clear up the confusion, but do not take the item until it is cleared up. If you have not signed up for items and take them thinking they will not be picked up, you are taking what belongs to someone else and they have paid for it.

Jeff and I are heading to North Carolina this Tuesday after the CSA run. We have been invited to gather together with the other four farms from the FIVE FARMS NPR program at Duke University to meet each other, and share experiences. You can still listen to the 5 hour program by going to www.fivefarms.org. We will also be visiting Ali in New York for a few days. This will be Jeff’s first trip to New York, and our first trip flying together!!!!!!!

Beet Salad with Mandarin Radicchio & Endive

(Additional 1 tablespoon l each of olive oil and orange juice for beet roasting)

1 small radicchio – cored with outer leaves and thickest white portion removed, thinly sliced

Preheat oven to 375. Clean and trim beets, leaving skins on. Toss beets with orange juice and oil. Add a little water in bottom of pan with clove of garlic and roast beets covered loosely with foil. Cook beets, depending on size, until they can be easily pierced with end of knife, from 10 to 20- minutes. Add both juices and vinegar to a bowl with shallot and zest. Whisk in olive oil to emulsify adding salt and pepper to taste and set aside. Remove beets from oven and cool. Peel beets, and then cut into small slices. Toss radicchio and dressing and cover bottom of platter. Arrange endive, mandarins and beets on top. Drizzle with any remaining dressing over top and cover with nuts. Serves 6.

Enjoy half of this comforting soup now, and freeze the other half for a quick meal on a busy day. For best results prepare the croutons shortly before serving.

To prepare the soup, sort and wash the beans, place in a large Dutch oven. Cover with water to 2 inches above beans, cover and let stand 8 hours or overnight. Drain beans and set aside. Heat olive oil in Dutch oven over medium heat, add onions and carrot and cook 8 minutes, stirring frequently. Add garlic; cook 1 minute, stirring frequently. Increase heat to high and add wine. Cook until liquid is reduced to ½ cup, about 5 minutes, add salt, pepper, and rosemary sprigs, and cook 30 minutes, stirring constantly. Stir in beans, water, and broth, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour and 30 minutes or until beans are tender. Add chard, cook 15 minutes, or until chard is tender. Discard rosemary sprig. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Croutons: combine olive oil and bread toss to coat. Add chopped rosemary, toss to combine, arrange bread in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes or until golden, turning once. Ladle soup into bowls and divide the croutons evenly among bowls. Sprinkle with Parmesan Cheese. Cooking Light November 2006

Soak raisins/dates in brandy or sherry and set aside. Combine persimmon pulp with soda and set aside (will solidify slightly). Combine sugars and eggs and mix thoroughly. Add oil and applesauce to sugar/egg mixture and then add dried fruit/liquor mixture and persimmon mixture. Slowly add in the flour and spices so that the mixture is a medium consistency. Pour into a lightly greased bunt pan and cook for ~75-80 minutes or until knife comes out clean. Very heavy cake, but delicious!

What’s in the Vegetable Box? Spinach, Beets, Carrots, Sage, Parsley, Tokyo Turnips, Sugar Pie Pumpkin from Short Night Farm, Potatoes, Watermelon Daikon from Riverdog (the Daikon and Turnips are great eaten raw used with on a vegetable platter with a ranch dip).

What is in the Fruit Bag? Persimmons, Apples from Coco Ranch, Mandarins from River Dog, and Raisins from Capay Canyon Ranch.

Well, last week of the quarter. These are important events in the life of the farm, now creating an entire life of their own 4 times a year. At the end of each quarter we say goodbye to some new friends who have tried the system and found it not reasonable for them, goodbye to some old friends whose lives have made it necessary, for whatever reason, to make an adjustment in eating habits or in location, and then we say hello to some new friends who have grown excited by the promise of getting closer to the source of the food on their table. Often, these people also come with the hope of learning more about the new stories being told about healthy, local food. They come hoping to hear, see, touch, and ultimately ingest and become part of a healthy, believable, an accountable movement toward individual choice and responsibility that they may become intimately associated with on a day to day basis. Is this true? In some cases surely, but we here at Good Humus Farm believe it to be true every single time we deliver boxes to your neighborhood. We have truly bought into the story that is being written in these days about the change in the way that people of this world perceive their world. We believe that we are engaged in the enviable task of bringing to you each week a little of the bounteous excess that is provided us by a truly nurturing planet. We do believe that we are adding our labor to a processional chain that links all of us to a viable future in service to that which sustains us.

At this point, I would like to acknowledge the farming community around us, people that share closely our lives and work and in whole lives we share. They are frequent contributors to our farm in so many ways, similar to yourselves. As we head into the season of the High Holidays, the gathering of family and friends in warm community calls to us. It is appropriate, therefore to remember the contributions of the people who surround us and nurture our existence. While not the only community, our rural neighbors are the community in which we interact most physically, and in whose stories we participate daily. And such stories they are. As we have grown into this rural way of life together, each of us has lived out our own individual life stories. And in ways both casual and, occasionally, intimate, I have been both surrounded by and helped to surround each of these lives. As such, I participate in their stories and they in mine. The local pioneering farms of the organic movement, such as the Beeman/Pelican farm, Odyssey Orchards, the old Good Humus Partnership, Fiddler’s Green and Leeside Farm, later to be Full Belly Farm established a fertile ground to germinate the growth of Stonefree Farm, Terra Firma, Everything Under the Sun, Riverdog Farm, Terra Firma, Durst Farms, Blue Heron, and many others from our local area that are familiar to all of us. And now the story is continuing into the next generation in Yolo County, as sons and daughters of those farms step up to put their own imprint on the evolving story of the local and organic movements in Yolo County. In this great networked community, arguably now the most productive organic community in the United States, we are the beneficiaries of their know how, their marketing expertise, their contacts, their moral support, and the publicity generated by being part of such a vibrant structure.

Sadly, each community has its losses and over the past few years my community has taken its hits. And so it is with the end of each quarter in the CSA. We take our hits and lose some friends and inspirational figures, but their memory continues within the community and contributes to the vibrancy of its future. And new come forward with their own contributions to take us into the next generation of local, healthy food production. Jeff

Combine vinegar, sugar, juice, mustard, salt, and pepper in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, cook 1 minute. Remove from heat, and stir in sour cream. Drizzle warm dressing over spinach mixture, toss well. Sprinkle with bacon, serve immediately. Yield: 6 servings. From Cooking Light November 2006

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut squash in half and remove seeds. Place cut side down on a baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, or until it can be pierced with a fork, but is still somewhat firm. Melt butter

in a small saucepan over low heat, stir in honey, dried fruit, walnuts, cinnamon and nutmeg. Turn squash over and fill with dried fruit and nut mixture. Bake uncovered for another 20 to 25 minutes until squash is tender and topping is browned and bubbly. Rhonda & Tony Gruska Monticello Bistro

1 pounds each turnip, potatoes, carrots, and rutabagas, peeled and cut into 3/4-inch-thick

2 medium red onions, cut into 1 inch-thick wedges (before cutting into wedges, cut off top and peel each onion, then cut off roots, leaving root end intact)

Position 1 oven rack in top third and 1 oven rack in bottom third of oven and preheat to 425 degrees. Whisk 1/3 cup olive oil and chopped fresh herbs in large bowl. Add turnips, potatoes, carrots, rutabagas, and onions and toss to coat. Place the whole beets at one end of a sheet pan to keep them from discoloring the other vegetables, then divide remaining vegetables between prepared sheet pans. Sprinkle to taste with salt and pepper. Roast 50 minutes until easily pierced with a fork, turning once, about halfway through cooking. Remove sheet pans to cooling racks. Plunge beets into cold water, slipping skins off when they are cool enough to handle. Cut beets into 3/4-inch-thick pieces and place back on one of end cookie sheet with roasted vegetables. This can be done several hours in advance. Next, whisk balsamic vinegar with remaining 3 tablespoons oil and drizzle over roasted vegetables. Bake at 400 degrees until heated through. Serve immediately. Rhonda & Tony Gruska Monticello Bistro

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut squash in half or quarters, remove seeds and place on a baking sheet. Roast until it can be pierced easily with a fork and is starting to caramelize. Cool completely. Remove skin and beat squash pulp with a mixer until very smooth. Sprinkle gelatin over cold water in a medium sized metal bowl. Allow to soften 1 minute. Whisk egg yolks and sugar into gelatin mixture and set bowl over a pot of simmering water. Beat mixture, with a portable mixer or by hand, until mixture doubles in volume and becomes a thick cream. Remove from heat and continue beating about 5 minutes, until cool, and when you lift the beaters, it dribbles off in a thick, sticky ribbon. Beat in pumpkin and spices. Cover and refrigerate about 1 hour, until chilled but not set. Using clean beaters, whip cream until thick but still soft. Add vanilla and continue beating until stiff peaks form. Fold whipped cream into pumpkin mixture gently but thoroughly. Transfer mousse to a decorative serving bowl or simply spoon mousse into individual glasses or bowls. Chill at least 4 hours or overnight. Rhonda & Tony Gruska Monticello Bistro

What’s in the Vegetable Box? Salad Mix, Radishes, Carrots, Mai King Choy braising mix, Butternut squash, Pepper. Leeks from Riverdog and Garlic from Short Night Farm

What is in the Fruit Bag? Lemons, Hachiya Persimmons-these are the ones that only can be eaten dead ripe, set them out and wait until they are very soft, and Walnuts from Short Night Farm

It appears that there is rain on the way this Wednesday, at least says my high tech weather forecasting station, Francisco Montes. I prefer to say “Si Dios quiere”, which is a great saying that incorporates an entire cultural disposition toward prediction of events. I find it really useful in weather. Cuca is the champion of si Dios quiere on the farm using it to say goodbye, I’ll see you on Monday, si Dios quiere, if God wants it. Are you expecting to have that tractor running soon? Bueno, si Dios quiere. Will we get the order for the Coop out tomorrow? Si, si Dios quiere. Cuca, when will you feel better? Manana, si Dios quiere. Cuca, how do you feel today? Mejor, gracias a Dios. It’s a two-edged sword out here, able to be used to either deny responsibility or to let go of unnecessary worries. I love to hear its use around here, as it is also often offered as a good luck message,

similar to “Vaya con Dios”, “Go with God”. So it’s fun to hit Francisco with a “Si Dios quiere” when he tells me about the weather prediction, because we both know that the accuracy of weather prediction here on the farm is as much based on Si Dios quiere as it is on the millions of dollars spent in these changing times.

We gave a tour to a young man from Uganda last week. He is a guest through the helpfulness of Engineers without Borders. We all introduced ourselves, and his first question was what are your problems? I immediately flashed on his country, and the problems farmers must face in that decidedly Third World country. It was really hard to answer that question because we are so blessed on so many ways. I ended up telling him that we have no problems here to compare with what he would consider problems, and our situations are so dissimilar. All I could say was look, this is California. The climate is incredible, the market is right here, the water and the power to pump it are readily available, and the infrastructure is relatively stable and supportive. We have both hope and faith, borne of experience, that we can plant a tree and be around to harvest it in 10 years. As I looked at him and watched him laugh and talk of his future in farming, I was amazed at his willingness to embark on a farming venture. He was here actually trying to make up his mind whether to expand his current subsistence farm. I told him that he honored himself retaining his hope for the future.

As we found out more about his situation, it gave us pause. The surface water was seasonal, two rainy seasons and two dry. The only well was in the middle of town and people drew drinking water from it. Power was very intermittent, a few hours a day. There were no freezes, being near the equator, at an altitude of about 3000 feet. Everyone around was doing the same kind of farming and he was hoping to distinguish himself in some way. The two Americans that came with him had been helping in the village for some time, and said that he was a very talented farmer and his farm was among the most well cared for in the region. The village was a long way from major markets and no transportation reliably available to taker produce to market. I didn’t really ask but my impression has been that the political situation is not stable. How could I say we have problems? We agreed that faith and hope were two essential ingredients for the success of the farmers in his village. It is so hard to plant year after year without the hope for and faith in a harvest. And so here he was, speaking across the chasm that separates our experiences, and I really felt the inadequacy of anything I could tell him in terms of our farming practices.

After he left, I reflected some on our situation. As we had talked, it had come out how much we agreed that the faith and hope of the people on the land was so necessary to long term agriculture. Even though I have been lucky to have lived in a very stable time in American history, I realize how easy it is to take for granted, and not to cherish (Gracias a Dios) the gift of being able to plant with the certain knowledge of harvest. This acknowledgement of the gift, however, doesn’t absolve us (Si Dios quiere) of the responsibility to live our lives to preserve for future generations the reasons to have hope and faith in the acts of planting and harvesting.

Sugar And Orange Coated Walnuts

Be sure all nuts are coated well. Pour onto wax paper and separate at once and let dry and cool to touch

Separate eggs, put whites into a small bowl. Grate lemon rind, squeeze juice. Mix together in heavy saucepan: sugar, cornstarch, flour and slat. Stir in boiling water gradually (or it will lump). Cook over direct heat, stirring constantly until mixture is thickened. Beat yolks slightly and stir in some hot sugar mixture along with rind, juice and butter. Stir and cook until clear and thick. Cool and fill already cooked pie shell.

Meringue Beat 4 egg whites until stiff. Add 1/8 teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon lemon extract and ½ cup sugar. Spread or plop onto of pie, and then bake for 12 minutes at 350 just until browned.

A quick vegetable stock made with herb and vegetable trimmings packs flavor into the rice. The tough, green parts of leeks and the stems of parsley and cilantro impart great flavor. If time is tight, use water instead of stock, and add another ½ teaspoon sea salt to the rice.

To prepare stock: combine first 10 ingredients in a medium saucepan, bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 25 minutes. Strain through a cheesecloth lined colander into a bowl, and discard solids. Set aside 3 cups stock, reserve any remaining stock for another use. To prepare rice: Preheat broiler and place chilies on a foil lined baking sheet, broil 8 minutes or until blackened and charred turning after 4 minutes. Place in a zip top plastic bag and seal, let stand 15 minutes. Peel and discard the skins. Cut a lengthwise slit in each chili, discard seeds and stems, set aside.

Heat oil in saucepan over medium heat; add 2 cups leek and rice, sauté 5 minutes. Add 2 ¾ stock, ¾ salt and bay leaf, bring to boil, cover and reduce heat and simmer 18 minutes or until liquid is absorbed. Remove from heat, discard bay leaf and fluff with a fork.

Combine ¼ cup stock, roasted chilies, parsley leaves, and cilantro leaves in a blender process until smooth. Gently fold chili mixture into the rice. Sprinkle with cheese. Yields 6 servings.

1 bag of braising greens, washed and drained.
1 piece of bacon
Genuine Maple syrup, to taste
Salt and Pepper, to taste
Fry up the bacon till crispy. Remove the bacon, crumble it, and pour off all the bacon grease. But don't wash the pan, leave a skim of grease in the bottom. Put the pan back on the medium-high burner. Add the braising greens. Add Maple syrup (try starting with 1 teaspoon, and add more to your liking). Sprinkle on the bacon. Cook until greens are wilted, about 2-3 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy! Serves 2-4 people

What’s in the Vegetable Box? Salad Mix, Sunchokes (the whitish knobby ginger looking root), Chard, Arugula, Radishes, Butternut Squash and Carrots from Riverdog Farm

What is in the Fruit Bag? Fuju Persimmons, White Figs, and Apples from Greg House

I’ve wanted to say thanks to you all for a while now. You really can have little idea how great it is to be producing food for a very specific set of people who know us, know our farm, and who, because of that knowledge, have decided to support our efforts through the purchase and eating of the food that we produce. As the years have stretched out and our CSA has gained a history, it has become more and more comfortable, knowing that our livelihood is dependent on you. Ha! Can you believe that when we started out in organic farming, small as we were, we would have to sell a portion of our fruit and vegetables to conventional wholesalers in San Francisco and Oakland? About 1980, I would go to Veritable Vegetable in SF, drop off say, the apricots they had ordered, and then go back across the Bay Bridge to Oakland, change the label so it didn’t say organic in order to protect the sales Karen, Bu, and Mary Jane at VV, and offer the rest of our harvest to the conventional wholesalers on consignment. Our relationship with those guys, and they all were at that time, was pretty one-sided. We needed them to survive and they didn’t need us. But by delivering good quality produce, we established first a small business relationship and then a little camaraderie with the street vendors who hawked our boxes to the smaller grocery and restaurant people who liked the look of it. They negotiated a price, the money passed hands and after subtraction of their cut, the commission house sent us a check. It was quite a game, full of personalities and manipulation, and it was a fine line that I traveled in establishing a, well, relationship is too strong a word, but a presence in their minds. Oh, boy, and how it paid to know someone who knew the market and could steer and guide you to the houses that would take a chance on a small, young grower and his bunches of beets or boxes of lettuce, and what’s more pay a fair and honest price. I would love to set down those memories someday when I’m not busy and it snows in July.

But what I am getting at is the change in relationships. In those days I could count very quickly the people to whom we owed thanks through the year for keeping us afloat. The ladies at Veritable, the produce buyer at the tiny Davis Food Coop, and our friends at the Davis Farmer’s Market. Being at the whim of a very few relationships meant that everything we did was invested into pretty murky, mobile, and limited group.

How that changed with the coming of the CSA program! The comfort of having a hundred voices saying thank you for the wonderful fruit or food, is so different than calling the salesman that is in charge of your and fifteen other apricot accounts and hope that they ask you to bring more. The realization that we are in touch with and know and are known by most of the people that eat our food is one of the greatest gifts of the past 20 years. It means that the people who want to produce food for their people are in touch with the people who want to know their food and the people who produce it. In the middle of a sort of frightening societal trend away from human interaction, this is such a special statement. Perhaps we are on the verge of something bigger than we know.

All I can really say about this is that it is a blessing to have been in the right place at the right time, so that our impulse to provide healthy food to our community has coincided with the desire of all of you for a larger responsibility and understanding of that which sustains us all. For that reason, I can say thank you very much, everyone who uses our CSA, or any other CSA, for taking action on that desire for a new way of eating and living. And many, many thanks to the friends we’ve met over the years who have taken us along with them through their journey.

Sadly, sadly, sadly, we lost a young friend and son of two of the original members of the Good Humus partnership. Che Barnes, brother to Noah, Thad and Freeman, died in an air collision while conducting a search and rescue mission for the Coast Guard. Annie and I were privileged to be part of the memorial service at McClellan Air Force Base as the guests of his brothers and father, Martin. His loss has reminded all of us of the rare beauty of a life being lived in the service of others and the terrible finality of chance events. It also reminds us of how interconnected we are, how we think that we lead our individual lives separately and do not have an effect of each other. We may work in our individual fields, possibly alone day after day, and may not see our neighbors for a month, but for this organic faming community when one of their sons is lost, the community members feel that loss. There is a sign on the High School Bill Board that is honoring Che that everyone can see as you pass through Esparto. Growers and customers at the Davis Farmers Market where Che spent many markets with his parent’s, wept and embraced others with the knowledge of his death. The crew members at their farm that have known Che and his brothers since they were nine years old and played with their children cried for his loss, shaking their heads in disbelief. We are intertwined in this life of ours with those around us, with you as our community members, deepening relationships makes it so much more meaningful and rich, and the loss is so much harder. Jeff & Annie

Sunchokes are tubers that have a delicate flavor that is slightly sweet and nut-like, similar to jicama and water chestnuts. Sunchokes store their carbohydrates in a form of inulin, a starch that is not utilized by the body for energy, as opposed to sugar. They are recommended as a potato substitute for diabetics since they are filling but not absorbed by the body, and because they also show indications of assisting in blood sugar control. In reference to the question about Jerusalem artichoke as a source of insulin, I believe the carbohydrate in Jerusalem artichoke is INULIN. Insulin is the (protein) hormone that controls glucose absorption by animal cells. If eaten, insulin is broken down to its component amino acids, which is why insulin is injected intradermally by dependent diabetics. Inulin is a carbohydrate which breaks down to fructose. Fructose is not used to treat diabetes, but is considered a better sugar for most diabetics because it must be converted to glucose before being absorbed by cells.. Jerusalem artichoke flour is also recommended for those who are allergic to wheat and other grains. High in iron, potassium and thiamine, low-fat sunchokes also feed the healthy bacteria (lactobacilli) in the intestional tract. However, they can cause flatulence in some people and first tastings should be in small amounts. For those sensitive to gas-producing foods, pre-cooking before baking or a good boiling is recommended, and eating them raw should be avoided. On another note, one strange case of an allergic reaction has been linked to inulin, which may be a subject of interest to those who suffer swelling and breathing difficulties from other foods.

The Author says: "This thick soup has less cheese than a traditional cheese soup, allowing the Sunchoke flavor to dominate. Add more cheese if you prefer. Serve with roasted thin black bread triangles. With a salad, you have an unusual and filling meal-in-one." --Marian Morash

1 pound Sunchoke
2 Tbsp lemon juice
2 stalks celery
1 medium onion
6 Tbsp butter
2-1/2 cups chicken broth
3 Tbsp flour
1-1/2 cups medium-sharp Cheddar cheese
2 tsp dry mustard
1/2 cup cream
salt
Cayenne pepper
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Wash, peel, and roughly chop chokes and keep in water to which lemon juice has been added until ready to use. Chop celery and onion and cook in 2 tablespoons butter until slightly wilted, approximately 10 minutes. Add chokes and 1-1/2 cups chicken broth, cover, and cook for 10-15 minutes or until vegetables are cooked through. Puree in a blender, food processor, or food mill. In a medium-size saucepan, melt 4 tablespoons butter, add flour, and cook for 2 minutes without browning. Remove from heat and whisk in 1 cup broth, then cook for 5 minutes. Add cheese and mustard and stir until blended. Stir in choke mixture and cream and cook until soup is heated through. Season with salt, cayenne pepper, and Worcestershire sauce. Note: For a thinner soup, add additional chicken stock. Yield: 4-6 servings From: Victory Garden Cookbook by Marian Morash

8 ounces Buckwheat noodles (I usually use up to 16 ounces of regular pasta like Bow Tie and it works well)

Sort and rinse lentils well; cover generously with water and bring to a boil with bay leaf and salt.

Cook at slow boil until tender 15 to 20 minutes, do not overcook! Drain, save liquid. Toss with little olive oil. Add salt, freshly ground black pepper, and set aside.

Cut chard leaves away from stems, wash them well, and slice leaves into strips about 1 inch wide (I use most of the good parts of the stem too.)

Slowly warm 4 tablespoons of the oil in skillet with the garlic and cook for 1 minute, taking care that the garlic does not color. Add carrots, celery and leeks and stir to coat them with oil. Cook for 1 minute over medium heat with some salt. Then pour in 2/3-cup water or stock and add the carrot. Stew until vegetables are tender. If liquid evaporates, add more so that there will be a little sauce at the end (I usually use the lentil liquid). Add lentils.

Cook noodles, and then add them to vegetables. Toss everything together; add parsley, Parmesan, and the rest of the oil.

Salad Mix, Acorn Squash, Lemon Thyme, Green Peppers, Carrots and Curley Kale from Riverdog Farm and Gala Apples from Coco Ranch.

Fuju Persimmons (the ones that can be eaten like an apple, you do not need to wait for them to be mushy and soft) Quince, Dried Apricots, Pomegranates and Apples from Coco Ranch

Last week I started with the notion of talking about the finishing of the crop year and wandered off into putting the summer to bed through remembering some high points. But putting the farm and its summer energy to bed is more than that, because we are also preparing a “bed” for the winter. And that is a curious mixture, because it involves both the active assisting in the creation of a good environment for the life of winter to do its work, and the protective covering of that environment from the winter excesses of nature. All that seems like a lot of work, and it can be, but because everything is slowing down, the crises that mark our progress through the year seem to come at a slower pace, too.

Interesting notion, that we on the farm measure our progress through the passing of crises and that our pace is determined by the speed at which crises occur. But it’s true, I’ve long been aware of the anticipation that exists within me, of the projection of my activities, for the next crisis. I’ve noticed that this exists in families also that do a lot of entertaining, that life exists kind of in anticipation of the next event, and that the time in between events can sometimes cease to exist except as a place to prepare for the next event. That is a good picture of how my life sometimes feels when the crises of farming and farming lifestyle and farming business come close on each other’s heels. It can seem as if my life is spent anticipating, reacting and recovering from crises, and my ability to do that becomes my ability as a farmer. So the speed with which crises occur, and how well I deal with them can be pretty important to me in defining how the season has gone.

So when the autumn comes and the atmosphere becomes a protective blanket over the farm rather than a transparent, shredded wisp through which pours the fierce heat and light of the summer, all calms down under it’s protection. A crisis may build slowly, gaining the momentum to become a pressure point that needs attention and release, but it can be seen, adjustments made and entered into with more calm. After over 30 years of living that rhythm, we’ve become adept at being aware of what is necessary to prepare for and survive the onset and duration of crisis management, and have become so thankful for the time in the fall when the periods between crises lengthen and a little foresight creeps into our lives. What a blessing.

That aspect of our lives is a strong part of our sense of the fall, of the wet blanket thrown over the fires of the summer, of the cooling cover that heals the burns and starts the regenerative process that allows us to look forward to the burst of vitality that is the spring of the year. In the same way part of the fall work is “putting to bed” or providing the covering protection for our ground and plants that nature gives to us. So this fall as in every fall, we select the land that is going to go uncovered, to sacrifice, so that we can earn our living, and so that you can all have the benefit of fresh vegetables all winter. This is a sacrifice because in order to raise the crops we eat, we keep the soil in our rows and beds free of the covering weeds that would shelter the soil from the pounding rains, free from the mulch that would protect the soil life from the temperature swings, free from the deep rooted perennials that would pierce the lover layers and drain away the excess water at a quicker rate to prevent drowning anaerobic conditions, free from all the plant life that would provide the barricades to washing away or erosion of the habitat of all the life of the soil. And so it is a real sacrifice, we know it and do what we can to keep that sacrifice limited in severity. In the best of times, we plant winter cover crops that provide some of the services mentioned above. We rotate that sacrifice through our fields in an effort to allow recuperative time to each field or part of a field. We provide border plants that protect the edges of the field from washout floods from uphill. We mulch with a neighbors hay to shield some areas from the pounding rain. And we stay off, as much as possible, the wet ground, because we have learned that all activity has an impact, and it is always necessary to find ways to minimize impacts. But there is not a doubt that on a rainy day in January, needing to fill a box, we will slog through the mud, squishing all the life giving air out of the mud, making bricks of some of the best farmland on earth. Doing all these things with the full knowledge of our impact and its effects, and with the intention always of minimizing our effect, is the duty that we have to that six inches of topsoil that provides us life on earth. And we are able to keep having that impact, necessarily requiring that sacrifice, only by minimizing our disruption and maximizing the protection of that which we impact to the best of our ability and in the best way that we know how.

As I think of it now, the best way I can put the farm to bed is by looking around and seeing the healing processes of nature, mimic those by providing some of the elements of healing, the nutrients, the cover, the peaceful lightening of the footsteps so well employed in the processes all around us. Doing that well is putting the farm to bed in the Great Central Valley of California. Jeff

The texture is chalky and dry. It’s tough to slice, and there’s no pint in tasting it raw since it must be cooked to be enjoyed. But what makes the quince alluring enough to overcome such drawbacks is its perfume, which lingers with the fruit after cooking. Quince is an old fashioned fruit. Once valued for its pectin as well as it hardiness in the garden. It revels hints of both apples and pears in its shape and the patterns of the seeds. It is a rustic version thought for its shape is often ungainly and its skin is sometimes coated with a soft down. When ripe, in the fall the fruit will be hard, aromatic and golden. Quince go beautifully into dishes that contain pears and apples, but they take longer to cook than either, so if you wish to add some to a dish it is a good idea to cut them more finely than the other fruit. Grated quinces can be added directly to quick breads and pancakes. Generally I find that poached quinces are the most useful form to have. Each fall I poach as many as I can in syrup until they turn deep pink, then keep them refrigerated in their syrup and use them over the next few months, adding them to compotes or poached pears, tarts tartins, apple galettes, pies, crisps, and so for the. Anything that is made with apples or pears is even better when quince is mixed in.

Peel 4 quinces, reserving their peels. (As you work, set aside peeled quinces in a bowl of water and lemon juice to prevent browning.) Place quinces in a large saucepan-one big enough for quinces to fit in one layer on the bottom. Add peels, which will bring out a pink color, and add the ingredients for one of the poaching liquids below. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat, reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and poach quinces, turning occasionally, until tender, about 30 minutes (depending on variety, size, and ripeness.) Allow quinces to cool in poaching liquid, then transfer to a bowl, and reduce liquid over high heat until syrupy, about 20 minutes. Strain and pour over quinces. Set aside to cool; serve at room temperature.

Pork Shoulder is an ideal cut of meat for slow cooking because it retains its moistness and delivers a lot of flavor. Here, it’s braised in balsamic vinegar and red wine, both of which balance the sweetness of the fruit and contribute a delectable kick to the sauce.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. In a 6-8 quart oval roasting pan brown meat on all sides in hot oil. Remove the meat from the pan and pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the fat. Sprinkle meat lightly with salt and pepper, set aside, reduce the heat to medium. Add the onions to pan and cook about 5 minutes or until tender. Add the bay leaves, rosemary, vinegar, wine, dried plums and apricots, figs and quince. Bring to boiling and cook for 1 minute. Remove pan from heat. Return the meat to the pan, cover and place in oven for 2 ¾ hours. Add apples cover and cook 15 minutes more or until meat and apples are tender. Remove meat and fruit from the pan using a slotted spoon, cover meat and fruit loosely with foil to keep warm. Remove and discard bay and rosemary leaves from pan. For sauce place pan on range top and cook uncovered over medium heat about 15 minutes or until the liquid is reduced to 1 ¼ cups, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan to release any brown bits. To serve slice the pork and arrange it on a plate with the fruit. Spoon some of the sauce over the pork.

The three pome fruits meet in this delectable pastry. I especially like this tart when made with puff pastry, which our local bakery makes far better than I do. If you can arrange to buy a 16 ounce piece of fine puff pastry from a bakery, obtain frozen make by Dufour, or are willing to make your own, then use puff pastry. Otherwise use a Galette Pastry.

Roll chilled puff pastry into a square ¼ inch thick. Place it on a sheet pan and refrigerate until ready to bake. Peel and core the apples and slice them into wedges ¼ inch thick. Peel and core the pears and slice them a bit thicker. Toss the fruits with the cinnamon and the sugar. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Remove the pastry from the refrigerator, loosely arrange the fruit in the middle, drizzle the butter over it, then pull the opposite corners toward each other, they won’t meet. Bake for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 375 and continue baking unit the pastry is puffed and golden and the fruit is tender. 40-50 minutes. Serve with softly whipped cream or crème fraiche.

Salad Mix, Spinach, Sorrel, Chard, Pomegranates, Pumpkins, and Yellow Onions and Red Beets

Grapes, Fuju Persimmons (the ones that can be eaten like an apple, you do not need to wait for them to be mushy and soft) Almonds from Capay Canyon Ranch, and Apples from Coco Ranch

Well, not really, not in California, but it’s the thought that came to me this weekend characterizing the feeling on the farm this past week. After the pounding rains of two weeks ago, we spent a week just dealing with its muddy remnants, downed branches, and detours. But then the last school group of the year left the farm, the ground dried a little, and the blades and hearts of the new crop of winter weeds burst green from the earth.

Annie and I sat down at the end of one day last week and toasted each other’s completion and the farm’s completion of the journey through the summer. And in that breathing-out moment, we realized that truly, all things considered, another summer had passed, and, global warming or not, things had changed.

Previous to this we had gone through the motions of preparing for the winter to come, trying to keep up with the late summer planting schedule, interring crops that had finished, ordering seed, but the end of summer wasn’t real yet. There was still water to move, breakdowns to fix, crops to hoe, farm visits to prepare for that kept us bustling through the slowly shortening days of the early fall, which in California are suspiciously similar to summer with slightly longer evenings. So we went through the motions of preparing for what we knew, in some vague primordial and instinctual way, was coming, but couldn’t really think about yet. We did this only because experience has taught us that bad things happen, like no harvest in November and December, if we don’t fool ourselves and the plants into thinking in late July and August that someday, someway, the heat and sweat and overproduction might end. So, that’s life, right up until the moment that it happened!

The first rain this year, felt like a warning from Mother Nature of what life could be like if she wasn’t basically compassionate, of what she might be like if her immune system decided we didn’t belong here. A time of laughing nervously at jokes about beachfront property. But all of us weathered it, dug out, and said, “Well, I guess its winter”.

Part of going to bed or putting the farm to bed, is the moment when we sit and look back at the recent past, like one day or one summer, and reflect for a bit. And so Annie and I sat and were able to marvel at the wealth of the summer. Surrounded by it in the madness of the summer, we skimmed the surface of the wealth of this place, packed it up in various ways and transported it to marketplaces for consumption. It is hard to realize the wealth all around in the middle of the harvest process, but every time a child or class left their mark and were marked in return, or a bell pepper or tomato, or potato went to someone else’s hand, the resulting smile or nod reminded us of the wealth we were handing along. There were more school classes here than ever before. The fruit trees and perennial crops were bountiful in their gifts. The wild areas are assuming their own personality. And the summer vegetables continue to remind us there are no end to the ways that we can err through excess management, excess haste, and excess speed. So many people enjoyed their time here that we wonder if there is not some new facet of this land making itself known. Thus, in the last week or two, the summer has been put to bed, and the winter is rising. Jeff

Sorrel Frittata

Frittatas make a wonderful light meal; they are tasty served at room temperature.

Melt butter in medium skillet over low heat. Add onion and cook 5 minutes, or until softened. Add sorrel and cook until wilted. Set aside. In a medium love, beat eggs until frothy. Add sorrel, parsley, cheese and bread crumbs. Season with salt and pepper. Preheat broiler, in a medium ovenproof skillet, heat oil over medium high heat, swirling to coat the pan. Add egg mixture, reduce heat to low and cook, until golden brown, watching carefully. Do not overcook. Let frittata cool in the pan for a minute, place in a serving plate over the skillet and invert. Variation: I think I would add some cooked rice (2 cups) to the egg mixture and cook it all in the over until golden brown.

Pasta with Sorrel and Feta

Sauté vegetables in oil and stock, wine, corn, and tomatoes. Heat up then quickly steam sorrel in sauce and pour over cooked pasta, toss with feta and garnish with Parmesan cheese.

Add the lemon zest and juice, dill, salt, pepper and scallions. Blend until smooth, pour into a bowl and blend in the sour cream and yogurt. Cover and refrigerate until very cold. Taste for seasoning it should be nice and lemony. Garnish each bowl with chopped chives and blossoms.

To Roast: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Rub each beet with olive oil and place them in a baking dish. Roast for 40-60 minutes or until tender when pierced with a fork. Let cool before peeling.

To boil or steam: Steam whole beets over boiling water in a covered container until tender, or cook in boiling water until tender. Cooking times varies with the age of the beets. For boiling whole young beets, allow 30-40 minutes. For steaming whole young beets allow 50-60 minutes. Cook older beets 10-15 minutes longer. There should be no resistance when you test them with a knife.

Salad of Winter Squash, Pomegranate & Chicory

Peel off skin, halve squash and remove seeds. Cut into 2 inch sections. Cut flesh into thin julienne strips. Drop into boiling salted water, return to boil, and then drain at once. Drop into bowl of ice water and drain. Spread on paper towel to dry. Combine ginger, salt, lemon juice and vinegar in jar and shake to blend. Add oil and shake again. Combine ¾ of dressing with squash. Toss and refrigerate until serving time. To serve, toss remaining dressing with chicory, add squash and pomegranate seeds and mix gently.

Persimmon Apple Crumble

Filling

Mix flour, salt, and sugar in a 9-inch pie pan. Make a well in the middle and add milk and oil. Mix until all ingredients are blended. Form evenly to cover bottom and edges of pan.

Cut butter into small pieces, blend in flour, sugar, and almonds using hands until a course mixture is formed. Starting on the outside, crumble the topping over the filling until completely covered.

Bake crust and filling for 25 minutes at 375 degrees using the center rack. Remove crumble from oven and add topping. Bake additional 25 minutes or until top is golden brown.

Eggplant, Winter Squash-Butternut, Basil, Dried Peaches, Salad Mix, some parsley, and Red Russian Kale along with Scarlet Turnips from Riverdog Farm

Last week was wild; the storm that came in on Tuesday was a duzzie! We had branches breaking all over the farm, and leaking drips in many places in our house. The 9^th grade Sacramento Waldorf School was slated to come on Tuesday, but with the high winds branches braking, and all the rain- definitely a dog dish full, it was too dangerous to have visitors. I have learned for myself that I need to pay attention to the weather, when the conditions are that severe, it really is time to hole up, not try to plow through the normal planned day, it really is a time to stay home, batten down the hatches and weather the storm the best we can. The roads were definitely flooding too so I cancelled the first day of the week long farm to school visit with the kids. They were to come on Wednesday morning. What a relief! Then as we were all loaded up and ready to go on the CSA run to Sacramento Jeff looked at me and said he really didn’t want to go out into the storm. The van was packed, but internally we both wanted to build a fire, drink some tea and wait it out. It would have been hard to call 100 folks to say we are delivering on Wednesday, so after the momentary hesitation he jumped into the van and took off. He survived the drive without any mishap!

On Tuesday my niece Jenny who has worked with me on our farm to school programs weathered the storm and came out to help me organized our new shop kitchen so it would be ready for the kids to cook in during the week. It was soooo much fun, Jeff and I had stayed up until midnight the night before hanging cabinets and putting up counters in the kitchen, then Jenny and I were able to I fill it up with all my canning supplies, big cooking pots, spices and herbs, supplies for cooking, dish racks, a coffee pot (which the crew can use too), & dishes. I had our house kitchen stuffed to the brim along and more supplies in our “stuff it all in the storage room”, it was so great to find and put them all together in one room and have it all organized. We were working all day then we moved on to the new house as this is where the kids were going to eat and possibly sleep if it rained on Wed too! By the time we finished we were definitely ready for the kid’s arrival and I was totally pooped out. On Wednesday when they arrive there still was some wild weather and it set the pace for the week-wild and chaotic! Jenny and I had the week planned, when we would have meals, the work rotations, and work activities, but I am not sure anything happened when it was suppose to or that we did what we were planning. With about 3 inches of rain, the fields were saturated and full of water, I did not want 24 sets of feet compacting the soil, so Jenny and I were shooting from the hip the entire time which made for chaos in itself. We ended up making wreaths with them with the help of the ladies from our crew, pulled all the broken branches to the burn pile, were able to do some work in my garden spreading chips and dead heading old flower heads, they did some propagation with a friend of my Kendal that comes out weekly (she and I are planning to have a plant sale possibly next fall). But what they did the most was cook and eat and they ate well! I had organized that a cook would help direct each meal, but there wasn’t anyone I knew that could work cooking with the kids all week, so we had 4 different “chefs” come in to the kitchen to direct the cooking pot. That alone was a bit crazy, but everyone was great, learned a lot, and we never were short of food. They made tomato soup from scratch, plum jam for their toast, and they pressed apple juice for their meals. They camped in our drying yard where there is only stacks of drying trays left, it is right out our bedroom window, and those kids were wired-they were at it until close to midnight both nights, but you know Jeff and I can sleep through anything. We had lectures and conversations about the farm-Jeff in another life I am sure was a College Professor who loved to lecture (when growing up the kids pleaded for not yet another lecture!), they helped at the Wednesday Farmers Market-they did so well Katie and I just sat back to added out bit of wisdom once in awhile other wise they ran the show. Over all those kids were on an adventure, they loved it, didn’t seem to mind the wet, mud, and would start singing in the midst of doing a job. They were a great bunch of kid’s well really young adults, and I think we all felt good about their experience here at the farm, and let out a sigh of relief when they left.

As Jenny was leaving on Friday she said to me that she loves working with the class visits on the farm. She graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in Outdoor Education and has worked for the city down there doing some event planning. She said that they gave her and event to organize but really it was all organized and there was no room for her to create or put herself into the event. Here at the farm we had plans that got thrown out the window time after time, and I depended on her to help me figure out what to do next. I think that is the lesson that I have learned as a farmer living out on the edge away form town. The weather comes in and what ever was planned for the day gets changed, or something comes up in the middle of a project that is not related to what we are doing. Constantly we are made to adjust to the moment’s crisis or needs, and then of course there is the problem of not having the right ingredient for a recipe or part for a repair. Improvising it the name of the game when ever possible, I guess that is why I really don’t “follow” recipes I never have everything nor the forward planning to get it before I need it. It means that in situations like the farm visit, we don’t get too stuck on what can’t happen, we just roll with what it in the moment-but at times I have to admit it can cause a little hair pulling and possibly graying too.

Today it is raining again, and tomorrow we have our last school visit of the year. The 3^rd grade Davis Waldorf kids are coming for an overnight, but we shall see how that unfolds-Have a great week-Annie

Feel free to jazz up with a few springs of fresh thyme, or a teaspoon of curry powder, or other spice mix or simply a couple of cloves of garlic. Other vegetables you can use are anything hard and fibrous really, carrots, jicama, parsnips, celeriac, waxy potatoes.

1 pound turnips, radishes, trimmed or daikon radish, rutabaga, beets, carrots, peeled and cut into chunks.

Chopped parsley for garnish Combine the butter, radishes and stock in a sauce pan sprinkle with salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Cover and adjust the heat so the mixture simmers, cook until the roots are tender, 15-20 minutes. Uncover and raise the heat to boil off almost all the liquid so that the vegetable becomes glazed in the combination of butter and pan juices, this will take 5-10 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning, add a little lemon juice and garnish and serve.

1-2 tablespoon balsamic vinegar (I used fig which was yummy Sauté chopped onion and minced garlic in olive oil until translucent add chopped braising mix and cook until mostly wilted, then add the balsamic vinegar, you could add a goat cheese too. Make the polenta by bringing to 2 cups water boil, then adding 1 cup of polenta. Simmer slowly until done, add 1 teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon of butter, and stir in. Pour into a flat pan and let cool a bit until it sets firm enough to cut into wedges. Serve with greens on top.

The fruit that’s doing the hinting is the humble dried apricots, which might seem bizarre at first glance, or even at second glance. But something subtle and magical happens when the apricot flavor modestly blends into the soup. Try this easy, intensely seasoned, oil free winner, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Optional Garnishes of Extra slivers of dried fruit or a swirl of yogurt or a sprig or two of cilantro or parsley

Cover beans water and allow soaking for 8-12 hours changing water once in awhile. Place the lentils and water in a soup pot or Dutch oven and bring to a boil. Cover, lower heat to a simmer, and cook for about 15 minutes. Add the onion, cumin, and mustard, and continue to simmer, covered, until the lentils are very soft. Add small amounts of additional water, it it seems to thick. Add the garlic, apricots, and salt, cover and let it simmer for another 15 minutes or so. Stir in vinegar, black pepper, and cayenne to taste. At this point the soup will keep for several days. Serve hot topped with a garnish.

Mixed Peppers, Mixed Eggplant, Winter Squash, Parsley, Grapes, Chard and Cabbage from Riverdog Farm.

Flame Grapes, Pomegranate, Raisins from Capay Canyon Ranch and Apples from Coco Ranch

What do farmers do when they take a week off from deliveries? This last week Jeff and I tried to catch up with unfinished chores. Jeff planted seeds, the crew transplanted seedlings from the greenhouse, and I think that we are ready with winter crops and the rain that is coming. It feels good to know that seeds are in the ground for this coming winter season, that the transplants are on time, looking good, and where they belong. Jeff was on his tractor most of the week, cultivating some of the crops that were planted a month ago and getting ground ready for what the crew just transplanted into. He turned under finished fields, cleaned up the orchard, the potato patch is no longer with us………..Over all we are most nearly ready for the rains. The guys have almost picked up the entire dry yard, there are stacks of drying trays still waiting to be moved to their winter storage spot, and slowly everything is getting put away. The fruit sorter is still up in the middle of the barn, that will get taken down when the rain hits and outside work is not possible. The ladies cleaned the dried herbs and got them separated into varieties and stored in containers for later use. If we try to clean them after it rains the dried leaves take up water and they are not crackly dry and easy to remove from their stems (small details that make a difference)! I tried to get the house back in order after a summer of neglect but mostly after weeks of focusing on organizing the Hoes Down Kids area. I made progress, but of course got side tracked into the shop kitchen organization. This week we have 24-9^th graders coming from Tuesday to Friday and we are providing all the meals, and a place to cook it. The kitchen as most projects around here are half finished, so we are putting shelves into the cabinets, and Jeff is finding more cabinets that we salvaged from a friends kitchen remodel to add to the shop kitchen. It is actually very exciting to be organizing this kitchen with all of my large pots, canning supplies, equipment that is spread out between storage, and stuffed into nooks and crannies in my house kitchen. It is almost like moving into a new space, maybe a preview of our next move into the new house. I spent a lot of time this week meal planning for the visit, and ordering food from our local farms. It was kinda fun! I also needed to find help with cooking while they are here. With the kids coming along with the rain, I think that their first job will be to clean the construction mess in the new house so they can sleep there during the rains that are forecasted for Tuesday.

Mid week the Last Crop a documentary about our farm and farm preservation was shown at the Department of Food and then also with Slow Food Yolo where almost 100 people showed up! On Saturday it was our daughter Claire’s 20^th birthday and on Sunday our 34^th wedding anniversary which we spent at a wedding of one of Zach’s school mates and friends of ours. We sat there thinking of our own wedding so many years ago at my parents farm in Santa Rosa where it rained so much that all the cars parked in the field got stuck and my uncles were in their glory pulling them out with the tractor, to thinking about our son and his friends old enough to get married. Funny I don’t feel old enough to have a 34^th wedding anniversary, that image is still for my parents. And to realize that we haven’t been to a wedding in a long time because all of our friends are married.

It was a full week, no vacations, but a break none the less. The weather cooled and fall certainly arrived. I heard folks talking at the market how they love summer and don’t want the fall and winter to come so soon. The stress lessens with the weather change, more sleep is possible each night, and harvest doesn’t is so demanding, we can let it slide a day if it rains. With the fruit, if you don’t pick it on time, it is lost, if it isn’t sold on time, it can be cut, but a loss in value and if it isn’t cut soon enough it is lost. I love the coolness, the darker mornings, and shorter evenings, I guess I am not sad to see summer coming to an end, it is a relief to me, relief from the heat, a relief from the pressure of harvest.

On that note I think I will end, have a good week, dance in the rain this week, soak it up like you are the parched hills that surround us, revel in the season changing, marvel in the new foods that are coming, rejoice in this life we have, it is forever changing, and forever the same. Hugs, Annie

Parsley is a centerpiece of Middle Eastern tabbouleh, French persillade, and Italian gremolata. Use it as an all purpose herb to add vibrancy to soups, sautéed vegetables, meats, and seafood. Use stems in bouquet garni for stocks, poaching liquids, and braises. Add leave whole to salads or chopped

Cabbage has a bad rap: a cellar backup to thicken soup, a colorless heap to toss with mayonnaise, an after thought at the family picnic. But lately its reputation has shifted as savvy chefs realize that , cooked right, this sweet nutty vegetable can hold its own against most sophisticated fare.

Cabbage has nutritional clout. One cup of cooked cabbage contains half the recommended daily amount of vitamin C, less than a gram of fat, and 3.4 grams of fiber. That’s almost twice the fiber of a slice of whole wheat bread at half the calories. It is packed with calcium, iron, and folic acid as well. And cabbage is loaded with disease-fighting phyotchemicals that may help prevent heat disease, stroke, and some cancers.

A study by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle found that three or more servings a week of cruciferous vegetables-the family of vegetables that includes broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale, as well as cabbage-cut the risk of prostate cancer by 41%. Other studies point to lowered risks of lung, cervical, breast, endometrial, tongue, liver, bladder and colon cancers and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Although some studies suggest that raw cabbage offers greater protection than cooked.

Many folks just don’t know how to cook cabbage. Boiled cabbage disintegrates and release smelly chemicals called sulfides. The trick is to steam, stir-fry ro braise cabbage briefly-just long enough to release its sweet flavor, yet leave some bite.

The pungent flavors of turmeric, mustard, and curry powder go well with grilled pork loin or lamb.

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add shallots and garlic, sauté 2 minutes. Add mustard, curry and turmeric, cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Stir in cabbage and remaining ingredients, cook 5 minutes or until tender, stirring frequently.

Heat vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium heat, add tofu cubes and cook 9 minutes or until golden brown, stirring occasionally. Remove from the pan.

Add cabbage to pan and cook 45 seconds or unti cabbage wilts, stirring constantly. Stir in tofu peas, green onions, and salt, cook 3 minutes or until thoroughly heated stirring occasionally.

This late season squash is roasted to coax out its subtle sugars before being mixed with citrus juice, chili and cilantro.

Put oven racks in lower third of oven and preheat oven to 450 degrees. Halve squash lengthwise then cut off and discard stem. Scoop out seeds and cut squash lengthwise into ¾ inch wide wedges. Toss squash with black pepper, ¾ teaspoon salt and 2 tablespoons oil in a bowl, then arrange cut sides down in 2 shallow baking pans. Roast squash, switching position of pans halfway through roasting, until squash is tender and undersides of wedges are golden brown 20-35 minutes.

While squash roasts, mince garlic and mash to a paste with remaining ¼ teaspoon salt. Transfer paste to a small bowl and whisk in lime juice, chili (to taste), cilantro and remaining ¼ cup oil until combined. Transfer squash browned sides up to a platter and drizzle with vinaigrette.

Mixed Peppers, Tomatoes, Basil, Potatoes, Onions, Squash and Cantaloupe from Short Night Farm

Gallery 625 and the atrium of the Erwin Meier Administration Building at 625 Court Street in Woodland. The event, in its second year, will begin at 3:30 p.m. and run through 9:30pm To purchase tickets for the Art Farm fundraiser, or for additional information on California Arts Day go to www.yoloarts.org, or phone the YCAC at 530-406-4844.

Spring Greens Quiche

Two Crust 9” Pie Shell

Risotto with Asparagus, Fresh Fava Beans and Saffron

SPRING FLOWERS BEGIN:

Tuesday April 6^th the Spring Flower Shares will begin for this quarter, make sure to pick up your bouquets with your box. If you would like to add a flower bouquet to your table give us a call and send in $56.00.

SPRING FLOWERS BEGIN:

Tuesday April 6^th the Spring Flower Shares will begin for this quarter, make sure to pick up your bouquets with your box. If you would like to add a flower bouquet to your table give us a call and send in $56.00.

ORANGE BEETS AND OLIVES

Beet Salad with Mandarin Radicchio & Endive

Sugar And Orange Coated Walnuts

Sorrel Frittata

Pasta with Sorrel and Feta

Salad of Winter Squash, Pomegranate & Chicory

Persimmon Apple Crumble

Filling

NO DELIVERY

Spring Greens Quiche

Two Crust 9” Pie Shell

Risotto with Asparagus, Fresh Fava Beans and Saffron

SPRING FLOWERS BEGIN:

Tuesday April 6th the Spring Flower Shares will begin for this quarter, make sure to pick up your bouquets with your box. If you would like to add a flower bouquet to your table give us a call and send in $56.00.

SPRING FLOWERS BEGIN:

Tuesday April 6th the Spring Flower Shares will begin for this quarter, make sure to pick up your bouquets with your box. If you would like to add a flower bouquet to your table give us a call and send in $56.00.

ORANGE BEETS AND OLIVES

Beet Salad with Mandarin Radicchio & Endive

Sugar And Orange Coated Walnuts

Sorrel Frittata

Pasta with Sorrel and Feta

Salad of Winter Squash, Pomegranate & Chicory

Persimmon Apple Crumble

Filling

NO DELIVERY

Tuesday April 6^th the Spring Flower Shares will begin for this quarter, make sure to pick up your bouquets with your box. If you would like to add a flower bouquet to your table give us a call and send in $56.00.

Tuesday April 6^th the Spring Flower Shares will begin for this quarter, make sure to pick up your bouquets with your box. If you would like to add a flower bouquet to your table give us a call and send in $56.00.