Certified Organic Vegetables, Fruit, Flowers & Wool Since 1985
The CSA truly is a team effort, as is almost everything we do here. Everyone’s work has an impact on the many boxes we send out each week, whether they spend most of their time in the field, in the orchards, in the shop, with the animals, or on tractors. And (almost) everyone ends up packing CSA boxes at some point; even the farm kids have been helping out recently!
That being said, there are a few individuals that play a larger and more direct impact on our CSA members’ experience and we’ve had several big changes in the core CSA team this year. Judith and Becky both retired at the end of 2021, which has changed how the office operates, and not just regarding the CSA. And now we find ourselves rapidly approaching another change in the team – the departure of one of our delivery drivers, David, who will be moving to Boston for his wife’s job. [Read more…]
The song “Old MacDonald” covers the sounds that farm animals make, but what about us humans? We do most of our communication with the outside world via email and phone, but on the farm, it’s either face-to-face or over the radio. Face-to-face looks like it would at any workplace except instead of heading to someone’s desk, you’re likely heading out to the field, or to someone’s station in the shop or the kitchen. We also have “all staff meetings” most Friday mornings, a rare time when everyone is in one place at one time. It’s a great opportunity to share announcements with everyone, and we also do a group stretch, usually led by Andrew, followed by brincas (jumping jacks) before starting the day. But most of the time on most days, people are spread out from the hub of activity around the shop and the office to a few miles up the road in Rumsey. We have poor cell reception, so the radios get a lot of use for quick questions, check-ins, and updates. All chatter over the radio is broadcast to every radio, so everyone can hear what’s going on, whether they want to or not.It’s quite the chorus of voices and communication styles and it took me a little bit to learn who was who, as well as the various nicknames people use, but now is something I don’t need to think about. [Read more…]
It’s August, which means it’s time to start prepping for fall. It can be difficult to think about the next season and its crops when it’s so hot and we’re so busy harvesting and packing summer produce. However, all of those peppers, tomatoes, and melons will eventually wind down and we need to have the cooler season crops ready to take over at that point. [Read more…]
What do you do when you have a lot of hot peppers? If they’re hot because they’re spicy, we make hot sauce! If they’re hot in temperature, then we need to cool them down. The faster we can cool them down, the longer the shelf life and we want to get all of our peppers to our CSA members and other customers in the best condition possible. [Read more…]
What are the furry, feathered, and hooved residents of the farm up to as we pick, wash/sort, and pack the summer’s bounty? [Read more…]
The news from the farm is that tomatoes are here. The trickle of tomatoes has grown each week and has now reached the point when we have enough to put them in the CSA boxes, which is exciting. [Read more…]
We’ve reached one of the important milestones of the summer: we’ve started harvesting peppers! [Read more…]
What’s the news from the last week (or so)? [Read more…]
When most people think of summer crops, often the ones that come to mind are tomatoes, eggplant, and melons, but a key crop that often goes forgotten is sunflowers. We grow a lot of sunflowers and it’s not just us; they’re the sixth most valuable crop in Yolo County, grown on over 20,000 acres. Driving around the County right now, you’ll see countless fields of sunflowers all in bloom. Almost all of those fields of sunflowers aren’t harvested fresh; they are grown to be hybrid seed stock that will be sent around the world to be planted for oil. Unlike the fields for seed, our sunflowers are for cut flowers, for folks like you to bring into your home! Last year we harvested over 15,000 bunches of sunflower from May through October, with many more heads going into mixed bouquets. They’re a significant summer crop for us, thus worthy of a deep dive in the Beet. [Read more…]
Among all the good things that happened last week, as well as the mundane, and some “milestones” (on Wednesday we had our first 99 degree day), we also had two power outages. The one Tuesday was relatively brief, just a few hours in the morning, while the one on Thursday started in early afternoon and we didn’t get power back until 11am on Friday. Neither were Public Safety Power Shutoffs; both were caused by cars colliding with power poles at the entrance to the Capay Valley, cutting off electricity to the entire Valley. [Read more…]
This past week our sheep got their annual shearing. Midday on Thursday I headed up to the sheep barn to survey the scene. Rye graciously answered my (many) questions while ably shearing our flock and I’m condensing and passing along that information here. [Read more…]
The old saying goes “April showers brings May flowers.” We did get some rain in April: half an inch on Saturday the 16th and then some scattered trace amounts last week, despite some very dramatic skies that suggested the potential for more. Given our Mediterranean climate, we likely won’t get more until fall and we’ll be using our irrigation system to get flowers for May, and through the summer till it rains again. But given how little we got during this year’s rainy season, we’ll take what we can get. [Read more…]
A farmer, regardless of what they grow, wears many hats: agronomist, soil scientist, hydrologist, entomologist, pathologist, meteorologist, mechanic, salesperson, driver, regulatory specialist, and more, in addition to participating in agriculture-related advocacy and social groups. Plus being a parent, spouse, sibling, and friend, and roles in religious institutions, political groups, sports teams, and community groups, time for hobbies, and some have off-farm jobs. [Read more…]
Cache Creek – photo credit Ben Lindheim
Now that it’s April, we can officially say that we didn’t have a “Miracle March” to provide the precipitation that we needed after the historically dry January and February. We got about half an inch on Monday, which is certainly better than nothing. It was refreshing and was enough to pause some of our tractor work for a few days, but by the end of the week, the farm was once again humming with the sound of tractors – transplanting, mowing, cultivating, prepping beds. [Read more…]
It’s Monday morning and it’s raining! Not the “Miracle March” that we would’ve liked, but some rain is better than none. With all the dry weather, we’ve been able to get a lot of transplants in the ground. By the end of the workday on Saturday, our first field of tomatoes was planted, as well as our first summer squash! All the planting requires bed preparation, which means a flurry of tractor activities: mowing the cover crops, some tillage, adding compost, and then forming and shaping the beds to form a nice surface for seeds or transplants. [Read more…]
There is no shortage of ways to tell that it’s spring on a farm, but my favorite is probably when we start harvesting asparagus. It’s delicious, here for a relatively short period of time, is the only perennial vegetable we grow, and is fascinating for more reasons than that, thus worth taking a deep dive. [Read more…]
Last week we got a box in the mail with a bright green “LIVE ANIMALS” sticker on the side.
And what was inside this box? Beneficial insects to help us combat aphids! In this box, we had lacewings and Aphidius colemani, aphid predators and aphid parasites, respectively. Unfortunately, during certain times of the year, and especially on certain vegetables and flowers, aphids become a problem. We don’t want aphids on our plants at any point in time (they can damage or kill young plants, they can spread viruses between established plants, and our consumers won’t want aphids on their produce) but they’re inevitable. The best strategy for reducing damage from aphids is to grow strong, healthy, resilient plants, but even when we do this, the spring-like weather we’ve had recently is perfect for an explosion of aphids and demands further action. [Read more…]
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