Olive harvest has begin —
The Full Belly Harvest Festival took place last week long before the big Fall harvests were done. The only Fall harvest we had completed was our almonds, and that was achieved by farm owner Paul Muller and several assistants working long dusty days while missing some of the staff that had helped in years past and have now moved on to other jobs.
Observant Harvest Festival campers enjoying the peace of our walnut orchard might have noticed that while there were many walnuts on the ground, most of them were still on the trees. I think this is the first Hoes Down that has seen campers in the walnut orchard before the harvest has even started.
Our employees probably find it amusing that we profess to our guests that the Harvest Festival is a time to put your Hoes Down — the crew barely took a breath away from harvesting Winter Squash, again something that some of last weekend’s guests might have noticed lying in many of our fields as the vines die around the fruit, exposing it for our crews that walk through picking it up one-by one and placing it into big bins that will be stored over the winter. The photo is Bonifacio’s estimate of how many boxes we need to sell!
It is a time to celebrate though, an inflection point as we turn the page on Summer tomatoes and say goodbye to another season of melons and peaches. Andrew spent several days last week planting garlic and the crew has been weeding the carrots. We are starting our olive harvest this week. Soon all of the tomatoes will be untied from their trellises and all of the trellising stakes will be taken out of the ground.
Our loyal and much appreciated CSA members have all noticed the abrupt appearance of greens and turnips in the CSA boxes — Mother Nature’s way of saying that the long days of Summer have turned over to the cooler nights of Fall. Thank you all for seeing us through another Summer. Blessings on your Fall meals.
—Judith Redmond
