7/17/24 Singing Frogs on Savoring Sonoma

Farmer Elizabeth was interviewed for Savoring Sonoma: The Hour which aired this past Sunday 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.

And in about a month (8/11), Elizabeth will be on a panel at the Gravenstein Apple Fair on Protecting Agricultural Diversity also with Clark Wolf as moderator. Other panelists will include Alice Waters, Dan Imhof, chef/owners of SingleThread, Albert Straus, Tucker Taylor, Hector Alvarez, Sarah Silva. That too will be a lot of fun, come and join!

Trials on the Farm

This past winter, as a farm we decided we were coming into 2024 strong with a crew that had a lot of knowledge and we wanted to experiment. For years our Brassicas have been struggling and we needed some new go to crops. Plus we had more land in our bottomlands than we are able to use well, so new things are in order. But not every trial was a success, or at least the first time.

Our first trial was Garlic. We planted this last October with seed from a friend who had just moved her farm from New York. Well, this week we harvested that crop and it’s looking great. You’ll have it in your CSA Boxes a handful of times hopeful well into this winter! Maybe next year we’ll try a couple other varieties as well.

Sugar Snaps was our second trial but a flat out failure (for this year). We planned to have a May harvest but the slug and bird pressure was so hard that we lost most of the crop before it was two inches tall. Some of us would like to do an early winter planted trial, see if we can get ahead of the slugs and birds (plus we have a couple other ideas for slugs this winter).

We expanded Winter Squash with almost 50% more planted this year. Some of the plants are over 3’ tall! Although we had good squash for CSA last year, we’ll have better this year and we’ll have some for beyond the CSA to farmers’ markets.

We will have Sweet Corn very shortly in the CSA. It is over 6 feet tall and plants a good number of ears. The first succession looks good, the second had a hard time germinating (possibly because of birds eating the seeds). We’ve tried a quick fix but we’ll see how it goes. There will be a second and third part of learning about the corn. First, we interplanted both crops with Winter Squash, not a Three Sisters, but a Two Sisters. Lastly, one of the reasons we stopped growing corn is that it is very woody and doesn’t turn back into compost easily. We have some new tools however and are curious to see how that goes.

Ginger and Turmeric were another failed (so far) trial. We didn’t want to give up hoop house bed space and so tried growing in boxes in the greenhouse. We started them late and we really think in ground growing would be better. We will not have any 2024 but maybe 2025.

Lastly, we’re trying out a several new ideas with Cover Crops. We failed with clover as an intercrop for winter squash but we now have new ideas on how to do that. And we experimented with some summer cover crops.

They say a farmer only has 40 chances/40 years to try something in their career. Sometimes that’s true but also, but thankfully in our system we often get to try out a couple to several times a year with multiple crops. We will keep trying and learning.

Produce Notes & Recipes!

This Week’s Box

Baby Bok Choi

Rainbow Chard

Green Cabbage

Broccoli

Summer Veg Rotation! (Slicer Tomatoes OR Eggplant)

Cucumber (SFF+ Harmony) OR Summer Squash (all others)

Family: Cegolaine Lettuce & Plums

We’re excited that our Summer Veggies are starting to roll in! We cannot count on having enough for everyone or a consistent rotation, so we will start rotating through with everyone.

Our first round of Eggplant is going to all of Santa Rosa (Maeso, Glass, Heavner, Devine & Guildford) and Harmony. Slicer Tomatoes are going to Singing Frogs and Russell.

Red Slicer to us means simply that  these are good red tomatoes for slicing, nothing special. We grow three varieties of Red Slicers: Estiva, New Girl (both hybrids) and Moskvich. It is the Moskvich which is coming in most strongly right now. It is an heirloom, not shockingly from Russian as the name literally means “one who lives in Moscow”.  You will find that we grow a lot of northern European and Russian varieties because these were bred to grow in colder climates and therefore do well in our cool valley bottom. We loves these for their rich flavor. As we get into the season and have more colorful heirlooms come on, we’ll write about those for you.

We wrote about Eggplant a little last week. Most of you are getting Italian Eggplant, either dark purple or our more of you have our favorite Annina which is a thin skinned and purple/white striped. There are also boxes with Chinese Eggplant, a variety that is new to us on the farm. We absolutely love this type for grilling or adding to a stir-fry, topping with a spicy garlic, miso sauce. I’ll put more info on our eggplant when we have a bigger share coming.

Grilled Cabbage (LizsHealthyTable.com)

• 1 Green cabbage

• 2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

• 1 clove garlic, minced

• Kosher salt

• Freshly ground black pepper

• ¼ small red or yellow onion, peeled and thinly sliced

• 1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary or thyme, optional

1. Preheat the grill to medium heat.

2. Place the cabbage on a cutting board and carefully cut in half. Keep the core and stem intact. Cut each cabbage half into 4 wedges for a total of 8 wedges.

3. Place 4 of the wedges on a large piece of aluminum foil (large enough to wrap around the wedges). Place the remaining 4 wedges on another large piece of foil.

4. Meanwhile, combine the olive oil and garlic in a small bowl. Stir to combine. Use a pastry brush to coat all sides of each wedge with the oil mixture. (Don't be afraid to get your hands a bit messy here.) Sprinkle each wedge with kosher salt and pepper, and top with the onion slivers and rosemary, as desired.

5. Seal each packet with the foil. Cut two more large pieces of aluminum foil and wrap each packet with a second layer of foil.

6. Place on the grill and close the lid. Grill until the bottoms caramelize and the cabbage is fork tender, 25 to 28 minutes. (Open carefully.)

There is such a big rotation this week it’s hard to decide what to put in for a recipe but I am excited about the Broccoli so here’s a good summer broccoli idea. The following can be done with cherry or regular tomatoes (you’d just have to chop regular tomatoes to 1” pieces.

Quinoa Salad with Roasted Tomatoes, Broccoli and Feta (from annies-eats.com)

1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
1 head broccoli, cut into florets
Olive oil
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup uncooked quinoa
2 cups veggie stock
4 oz. crumbled feta, divided

1. Preheat the oven to 400˚ F.  Place tomatoes and broccoli on the baking sheet., drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper to taste, and toss to combine well.  Bake, stirring every 10 minutes or so, until the veggies are just tender, about 30 minutes.  About 5 minutes before the baking time is up, add the garlic to the pan and toss to mix well.

2. Rinse the quinoa well in a fine mesh sieve before using.  In a medium saucepan, combine the quinoa and veggie broth.  Cook the quinoa according to the package directions, until tender and fluffy.  Set aside.

3. When the quinoa is cooked, add the veggies to the pot and stir to combine.  Stir in about three quarters of the feta.  Serve, topping with a sprinkle of additional feta if desired.

Serve with lamb chops or roast chicken.

Use quinoa to stretch leftover vegetables which makes it seem like never have the same quinoa salad twice.

From the farm crew: W e are really feeling like summer is underway, and this flush of summer vegetables is something to celebrate! There is nothing that brings us greater joy than slicing into a tomato in early July, after tending for the plants since February. We are excited by these new summer flavors, and anticipating more to come.

A last little note to say our friends over at Bodega Pastures are harvesting some of their lamb, the sell full and half lamb (a half is 20 lbs and can fit in a normal freezer).