Last week we harvested our kabocha squash, the first variety of winter squash to come in from the fields. Next up is our crop of beautiful amber-colored delicata squash- a reminder in the midst of a long string of hot and smoky days that fall is indeed approaching! We’re nearly to that wonderful time on the farm when lettuce and greens are abundant, and a little bit of everything you could ever dream of is in season. And while there’s so much food to look forward to, make sure to savor the zucchini, cucumbers, beans, and other high summer crops that will gradually begin to make their way out. Happy eating!

Right on schedule, our peppers have been ripening and steadily making their way into your boxes. Some of these gems are easily recognizable - the green bell pepper, jalapeno, and beloved sweet red pepper- while others may be slightly less familiar.

What a sad, difficult week it’s been for everyone. With wildfires burning near and far, smoky skies, and a heavy August heatwave, our minds have been far from the field. Despite difficult conditions, the crew has been working as hard as ever through it all with unrivaled optimism - it’s an amazing opportunity to get to farm with such resilient folks, and we’re grateful for it! Our hearts go out to those who have lost their homes or been displaced by the fires, to all of the firefighters and emergency staff working around the clock to protect us and the places we love, and to the beautiful river canyon, forests, and wild spaces that fire has forever changed. To everyone out there who works to keep this community safe in tough times - thank you for all that you do! It is imperative, now more than ever, to keep fighting for our world and environment in pursuit of positive, lasting change.

Despite the heat, we’ll still be out in the fields this week, working hard to make the usual veggie magic happen in your boxes. Farming is rain or shine, and with the help of our incredible crew, and the occasional cold lunch melon, we somehow manage to keep our cool. We hope you’re all able to do the same! In honor of heat waves everywhere, this week’s recipes all involve minimal cooking - we know you don’t want to turn on your oven.

This week, our story begins with a family of turkeys- five adults, ten babies - who have found a perfect home in the lush wild spaces in and around our fields. Turkeys are charming beings, and while we’ve occasionally found frustration with their antics (eating our table grapes the moment they’re ripe, disturbing straw mulch on our garlic, occasionally nibbling on row crops, etc.) we’ve managed to sustain a quiet peace. But much to our dismay, the turkeys had other ideas. In an astonishingly small amount of time, they’ve managed to decimate several plantings of lettuce, despite our best efforts and most furious fist shaking. Which brings me to this week’s box, which will hold an offering of lettuce from our friends at Coke Farm. We’re grateful for the support of farmer friends in helping us get this staple item into your boxes until our lettuce supply has made a comeback, and excited to beat the heat this coming week with refreshing summer salads. Enjoy!

It’s been a wild year for the farm thus far, full of twists and turns, challenges, and triumphs both big and small. Our membership is at an all-time high - a fact our farmers have taken on whole-heartedly in an attempt to feed as many folks as possible. One major constraint we’ve had to work around throughout this process has been the size of plantings made long before we knew what we were dealing with. The bulk of our planning is done in the winter, with seeding starting as early as January, and many crops going into the ground at the earliest opportunity. What this all means, really, is that we planted enough tomatoes in February for 700 CSA members, but are now harvesting and packing tomatoes into more than 850 boxes each week! Add to this the existing risks of farming, and multiply it out by many other crops, and it becomes clear what a puzzle we’ve been dealing with for the past few months.

As August approaches, we keep bustling to the same speedy rhythm - plant, harvest, pack, weed, rest, repeat. This is ‘peak season’ on the farm, an elegant way of saying that right now, everything happens all at once. Our crew is at its strongest and swiftest, using all the energy we can spare to get everything that needs doing, done. But with storage crops like onions and potatoes ready to come out of the field, the tempo can only increase from here on out. Wish us luck!

Ode To the Onion

by Pablo Neruda

Onion,

luminous flask,

your beauty formed

petal by petal,

crystal scales expanded you

and in the secrecy of the dark earth

your belly grew round with dew.

Under the earth

the miracle

happened

and when your clumsy

green stem appeared,

and your leaves were born

like swords

in the garden,

the earth heaped up her power

showing your naked transparency,

and as the remote sea

duplicating the magnolia,

so did the earth

make you,

onion

clear as a planet

and destined

to shine,

constant constellation,

round rose of water,

upon

the table

of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.

I have praised everything that exists,

but to me, onion, you are

more beautiful than a bird

of dazzling feathers,

heavenly globe, platinum goblet,

unmoving dance

of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives

in your crystalline nature

I’m happy to announce, with much joy and gratitude, that the ‘Forever Farms’ fundraising campaign has been a huge success! This 7-week campaign, led by the Bear Yuba Land Trust, Sierra Harvest, Briar Patch Food Co-op, and Tahoe Food Hub, raised over $780,000 towards the protection of critical farmland in Nevada County. Much of the funds raised will guarantee the purchase of the Birchville farm site where the majority of our produce currently comes from, to be held as agricultural land in perpetuity by the land trust. What an overwhelming relief it is to know that this incredible land we steward will be protected, that local land and food access will be that much more secure, and that our farm will be able to continue growing food for all of you far into the future. This is a huge triumph for local food and the future of our community, and we could not have done it without all of you - from the bottom of our hearts, thank you, thank you, thank you! To learn more about the Forever Farms initiative, or to donate, check out their website at https://www.bylt.org/foreverfarms/.

Last week marked the celebrated return of hundreds of shimmering dragonflies to the skies above our fields. It happens every year around this time - only a few at first, and then many more, floating quietly overhead. The nature of their flight is so unobtrusive, it’s easy to miss them until you take a minute to look up. For many of us, they act as a mark of the season, an ephemeral sign that time marches on and that we’re right where we’re supposed to be. And so we move through our days accompanied by these breezy creatures, until the moment comes when they vanish as mysteriously as they first appeared.

With all the scorching heat this past week, our crew is looking forward to the relative bliss of a week in the 80’s! This is the busiest time of year for us, with summer crops (and summer weeds) really coming into their own, even as we continue to seed and transplant for the fall. It never fails to amaze me how quickly things grow during this time of year - beans fatten and tomatoes ripen before our very eyes. Soon, we’ll be transplanting the first of our fall brassicas, like broccoli and kale, at about the same time as we’re saying goodbye to the spring iterations of these favorite vegetables. Beloved cool season crops will be back in good time, but for now we make room in our hearts, and in your boxes, for the undeniable summer bounty of beans, corn, melons, and tomatoes. Enjoy all that this week’s boxes have to offer, and stay cool out there!

This past week, it was time to take down our high tunnels. Since February, they’ve held our very first plantings of tomatoes, summer squash, and beets, offering refuge from rain and freezing temperatures on cold winter days, and promising an abundance of frost-tender vegetables at the earliest possible date. But the moment finally comes when sweltering summer sun renders these plastic tunnels irrelevant, and so the tops come down. Zucchini and the very first tomato harvests at last take place against a background of clear blue sky.

We’ve been truly grateful for the cool weekend days and bits and pieces of rain we’ve received over the past few weeks. Anything that keeps the heat of summer at bay for just a bit longer means much happier late-spring vegetables. Your boxes this week are certainly a reflection of this moment where spring and summer stand shoulder to shoulder - broccoli, lettuce, chard, beets, and more continue to shine while summer treats, like new potatoes, are just beginning to make an appearance. We hope you’ve all been taking in the end of spring as happily as we have, welcoming all the goodness that these days have to offer.

This moment in time offers us all an incredible opportunity to drive forward authentic, lasting change in our country, and we encourage all of you who are able to get involved and make this happen. To fight and dismantle these flawed systems is very, very hard work, but it is work that we absolutely can and must do.

Thank you for paying attention, and doing your part to make change happen.

This week, among many things, we’ll begin to harvest the first of our highly anticipated sugar snap peas. For many years, we’ve grown ‘bush’ peas with reasonable results- low growing, and, you guessed it, more or less bush shaped. Not entirely satisfied, however, we decided to try something new. Peas are a delicious, seasonally specific treat, and this we deemed very worthy of our attention. So with a little extra energy, we’ve grown and trellised a truly lovely planting of climbing peas, which have astounded us each week with their immense volume, stretching tendrils, and teeny, dainty flowers. Over the next couple weeks, as you snack away on the snap peas in your boxes, remember that they are carefully and lovingly grown, and picked entirely by hand! Truly a labor of love from our farmers, to all of you.

Welcome to our CSA! Here’s lots of helpful information about our CSA program.

Thank you for your support of our farm.

-Grace Debbeler, CSA Manager and Farmer

Many thanks to all who have already contributed so generously!!! We need to raise $250,000 for the BYLT to buy the property. As I write this, 237 amazing people have contributed a total of $32,395 over the 5 days since we started this phase of the project. That’s about $137 per person on average. If all of our 800 CSA members gave $137 each, that would add up to almost $110,000, getting us within striking range of our goal. Of course not everyone can contribute that much, and some can contribute much more. Please help us, and do what you can.

Well here we are, in the 25th and final week of the Winter CSA share. What a roller coaster it’s been. We are so incredibly grateful to all of you for supporting us as a farm, and for believing in the food we grow and the people who grow it! This has certainly been a year like no other, and is only the beginning of what has been shaping up to be our biggest season thus far. Whatever challenges we might meet, it’s certainly bound to be an adventure.

This week, our crew has been going about the task of mowing down our swaths of grass and cover-crop that flourish on-farm throughout the winter. The soil moisture that tends to keep us out of our soggiest fields until later in the year is not long for this world. Meanwhile, around the farm, and all over the ridge, our many amazing neighbors have been hard at work clearing brush and pushing it back from the roadways. The hum of chainsaws and weed-whackers has never sounded so sweet! Their effort has been inspiring, and reminds me of what I realize constantly when working with a big crew of people - that the breadth of what we can accomplish when we work together is truly incredible. Thank you to everyone out there for building renewed hope and strength into our community in whatever way you can. We hope you enjoy this week’s box and all it has to offer - happy eating!