As we look outside, it certainly feels like late autumn and early winter. The days are shorter. There’s a frost in the morning. On the farm we’ve transitioned our work day later, and now it’s sunset as we leave at 4:30 pm, we’re in a north-south valley with high west slope and trees so our sun sets even earlier.

Photo of Hot Compost on a Cold Morning shows Sean startled by the steam as we’re dumping from tractor into wheelbarrows to be applied to mint and daffodil beds, prepping for spring!

Continuing our series of Meet Your Farmer with Elle this week, getting you to know the people who seed, plant, tend, harvest, pack and delivery your produce. Elle has been working at Singing Frogs part-time a year. She grew up in Sacramento, and spent time cooking and gardening with her mom as a child. She attended CalPoly San Luis Obispo, majoring in Environmental Science. Her love for regenerative farming was sparked by a study abroad trip to Ecuador, where she lived and learned on a regenerative bamboo farm. After this, she spent the rest of her time in college gardening at the Student Experimental Farm, where she and her friends got to explore sustainable farming methods - from planting a food forest to raising chickens and ducks. 

This week we’ve had some more more regular frosts (last week they were very light), and as such we have had a lot of movement on the farm. Yesterday the 4 of our last 5 beds of tomatoes came out plus shishitos, bells and jalapeños, which have or will become winter beets, frisée, raddichio, lettuces and fennel! But we’ve also been moving in other directions...

Last week I mentioned our first Cover Crops went in, this week before the rain Friday many more will. We grow Cover Crops in our lowest fields over winter because we cannot grow food crops down there. Most every winter we flood there and if flood water touches food, it may not be safe to consume since we don’t know where the water came from.

Finally we had our First Frost last Friday, and another even lighter frost this morning. We are in the cool Atascadero Valley Bottom, and over the years we’ve chatted with other farmers over and over and found that we’re almost always the coldest farm in the county. This is great on hot days and allows us to grow great greens, but the last and first frosts can be hard on us. Until 2020 we almost always had our first frost right at or before Autumn Equinox, but the last few years it’s been mid and late October.

With last week’s newsletter we received quite a few comments on the photo of Mocha the Goat. We all love animals, and I’ll take this moment to talk about animals on the farm (photos in this week’s email).

In our 17 years here we’ve had quite the menagerie of animals. We’ve had up to 500 laying hens, plus bees, ducks, cats, dogs, goats, sheep, and of course Charlie the Llama. Let me start there, since you all get emails from Charlie the Llama. We inherited Charlie when we moved onto the farm almost 18 years ago. The prior farmers took advantage of the fact that llamas are very clean and always use the bathroom in the same location and brought him inside to watch TV. As a result, he was extremely sweet with humans….

We’ve got the Fall Blues. It’s not all a bad thing.

October is a time of heat waves and this heat wave has been a doozy. And the beginning of this heat wave we had several days with 50 degree shifts and even one 60 degree shift from 43 degrees in the morning to 103 in the afternoon. That is harsh on all living creatures, from human to the goats, certainly the plants and even the soil organisms. All of us have been feeling a little Blue abut the heat and our inability to do our normal work. Our veggie crops are doing fine because we’ve been babying them. We’ve been irrigating more frequently but also, have been holding out from planting. Last week we did not plant a single new plant on the farm because these babies would have fried. That is NOT a good thing, it means a gap at some point this winter. This Monday, despite the heat, we forced in a bed of Toscano kale and one of Little Gems because the heat looks like it is coming to a close.

Meet Your Farmer: Bobby Bobby Bobby

Bobby has worked at Singing Frogs for just over 12 months and during that time has become an invaluable part of our team. Bobby initially became interested in agriculture while living in Ecuador. His first mentor was Charito, an indigenous abuela who lived and farmed high up in the Andes. Her dedication to growing food and her joy for feeding those around her was an inspiration that he still carries to this day.

As a small farm, we have been asked frequently what our stance is on Measure J.

             Singing Frogs Farm is in opposition to Measure J.

Here are some of our thoughts: There seems to be a bit of propaganda on both sides. Yes, a large portion (some say as high as 90%) of US meat is raised in CAFOs. Yes, we have a couple of CAFOs in the county. Yes, we absolutely are anti-CAFO. Those CAFOs however are smaller that the big big CAFOs we see in documentaries but still a problem. Overall, Measure J seems to be well intention but misguided… a quick write measure that would be quite problematic. One big problem being it doesn’t value the merits of ranches, only size. We would love to have legislation that helps reduce CAFOs, this is not it.

Happy Autumnal Equinox! This weekend is the Autumnal Equinox, a very important milestone in our farming calendar…

     …. and according to the calendar it will then officially be Autumn, although we consider the Autumn Equinox really the middle of the autumn season. This is the end of the season of harvesting the big tropical fruits (tomatoes, eggplant, peppers), and the beginning of fall crops. We harvested our first Winter Squash and set them to curing in the barn last week: first Red Kuri and next Delicata! And we took out our first bed of tomatoes Monday, red slicers, and replaced with a new planting of Rainbow Kale that will take us well into 2025! As an early crop of Basil is coming out of the hoop house, we’re seeding Spinach and January carrots!

Photo - 2 Praying Mantids scouting for food (pest insects) on a bed of Statice Flowers

It’s been a busy last week as we are planting out more and more fall and winter crops. The farm looks stunning right now. We are highlighting another of our fabulous farmers that keeps this place rockin’ this week, Sean

Sean has been farming with us for one and a half years now and that’s just some of his farming, he worked at a larger scale, organic farms in Connecticut & Pennsylvania for three years before joining us. Actually, we offered him a position after two years, and he deferred to stay closer to his girlfriend who was finishing nursing school. The next year, we offered him a job again and thankfully he accepted. They both moved out here & she works at Sutter Hospital.

From all of us on the farm, we want to wish you a happy September! In the farming world, the start of September is very welcome, as it signals the changing of the seasons and the slowing down of summer. There is something tangible in the air as the mornings are getting colder and the days are getting shorter. As with the season changes, so does our farm crew. We have a pretty rocking team right now, and want our CSA members to get to know the folks who are growing your food and packing your boxes. Consider this the first installation of Meet Your Farmer!

With farming, we are living in the present, the near future and the distant future all at the same time. In the present, we are hyper seasonal with our produce and flowers, things are always changing. You see that in how add-ons change every week. In the near future, we’re weeding and keeping on the crops that are coming up. And in the more distant future we’re planting crops, seeding crops, ordering seeds and making notes on what we could do better next year.

Present! We are enjoying our current summer crops rolling in! It’s the season of Solanaces: Tomatoes, Peppers, Eggplant! This week’s Tomato Quarts have even more Colored Tomatoes and Heirlooms coming in. We are excited about some of the new purple and multicolored varieties we got from Wild Mountain Seeds.

Today Field Manager Sarah wanted to share and highlight an organization she has been volunteering with and whose work she is deeply aligned with to spread awareness. North Bay Jobs with Justice (NBJwJ) is a growing, grassroots coalition of over 30 labor and community organizations fighting for economic and racial justice. After the 2020 fires that decimated Sonoma County, a movement started to advocate for the farm workers impacted.

This week is the last week on the farm for Lola, our Farm Manager. Lola has been working full time with us for three and a half years and along this time has taken on more and more responsibility. She has kept this farm growing. Don’t worry, she’s not leaving us hanging, she’s helped train a cadre of amazing people and has already stepped back from leading to provide support as they have taken the reins.

Lola is exceptionally dedicated, hard working, detail oriented and thoughtful… plus she has a great sense of humor, her laugh soars through the fields and she is a deep conversationalist. Lola is also an amazing chef, especially of veggies. Last summer when Elizabeth was on vacation she took over the newsletter one week and I love what she wrote.

“Whenever I am asked why I’ve gotten into farming, the answer boils down to a pretty simple truth: I love food. I love to grow food; I love to cook food; I love to eat food; but above all, I love to share food with those around me.” And share food Lola does. She’s shared the food that she’s been a part of growing with you the last several years.

If it’s not already on your calendar, we highly recommend the Gravenstein Apple Fair this weekend. It’s a sweet little fair but a big event at Ragle Ranch, and it’s a fundraiser for Farm Trails which has been a tremendous support for farms in Sonoma County for over 50 years.

Farmer Elizabeth will be speaking on the panel “Protecting Agricultural Diversity” also including Alice Waters, Dan Imhoff, Kyle & Katina Connaughton (SingleThread), Albert Straus (dairyman), Tuker Taylor (gardener at Kendall-Jackson), Sara Silva (Green Star Farm), and Hector Alvarez (Hector’s Honey) with moderator Clark Wolf. It should be fun! Saturday at 1:00pm and Elizabeth is first in the line up.

Today’s newsletter by Field Manager Sarah (2nd from left in photo).

You guessed it, corn! For the first time in over 12 years, we have super sweet corn in your CSA boxes. One of the most important elements of our farm crew is the collaboration between crew members and the Kaisers. There are many ways this manifests on the farm, but the most tangible is in crop planning and experimenting with new products. We are trying a few new things this year, but one of the most substantial is sweet corn (see 7/17 newsletter for more). Jose, who joined the farm in March, was born and raised in South America and has experience farming in that hemisphere. Corn has deep roots in South American culture and cuisine, and Jose was a big advocate to bring this new crop into rotation at Singing Frogs. So with the collaboration of Kaisers, and crew support from Lola and Sarah (mid two in picture), dreams have come true!

The person who writes this newsletter is primarily Elizabeth who took a vacation this past week, getting home late last night and so I cannot give much of a Farm Update. I do know that it was hot! Very hot! Like 100 degrees hot on the farm. I do know that our crew really rocks, you all received emails from Sarah and some of your from Lola too. I did a farm walk this morning and it’s beautiful.

This farm is far far more than Farmer Elizabeth although it is me that you hear from most often… it is the crew who works on the hot days, shows up every morning, seeds, preps, plants, weeds, harvests and tends for the 300 beds, 90 varieties of veggies, 20 varieties of fruits plus 90 varieties of flowers. They are hard working, idealistic and dedicated to building a healthy planet, a healthy food system and growing great food!

Of note… photo of our weasel friend taken and shared by Lola.

Farmer Elizabeth was interviewed for Savoring Sonoma: The Hour which aired this past 7/14/24 on KRCB 104.9, Northern California Public Media. If you missed it, you can certainly still listen to it on their site (above). They switched dates on us, otherwise we would have written about it last week.

Host Clark Wolf is hilarious and I was smiling and laughing through much of the production as we had fun talking about growing fresh food, nutrient density and farming but also singing frogs looking for their lovers and much more. I hope you’re able to listen, and find it entertaining.

We made a really big change to our farm eco-structure the last two weeks specifically for our hoop houses. We are taking out two very large Cottonwood Trees that we planted 17 years ago from little saplings pulled out of Paul’s mom’s yard. They have grown so much that they completely shaded one and half of a second of our hoop houses (we have five total). It’s been sad, really sad, and it lets in a little more wind, but it’s been necessary. We are also leaving a tall stump thoughtfully, recognizing that these riparian trees will sprout back up in a big bush, which is honestly just what we want.

But check out the view from above!

It’s been a hot full week. Hopefully this sleeping honeybee at dawn all covered in fresh dew is refreshing to you.

This week’s newsletter is only Produce Notes & Recipes.