pictured above: What's left of the upper Bean Lakes which feed Bean Hollow Reservoir. No one that I've spoken with recalls is this low in living memory.
NO BAGELS THIS WEEK, BUT CHEF TIM'S BAGELS WILL BE BACK NEXT WEEK
I'm writing this via generator as we weather the 2nd weekend power outage in 2 weeks. Stressful what with so many apples and pears in cold storage for the coming weeks. We're in the final 10 countdown! 9 weeks left to this CSA Season. As many of you know we have done Winter CSA seasons in the past, but what with the drought and not being sure whether we'll manage to get crops in the ground and kept watered till the rains (hopefully), we will likely only do a week to week online Farmstand option versus a committed subscription. We will definitely be taking a break from packing boxes from Thanksgiving through the New Year. Stay tuned for Winter plans.
Other updates from the Farm: The drought has really hit Fifth Crow Farm finally. While Butano Creek, where we pull all our irrigation water from, has flowed at a relatively normal level through most of this summer, a couple weeks ago the flow started to drop. Last weekend we were unable to water or fill our irrigation tanks. It's been hit or miss through the last week. We managed to water some things, not others... The flower field which is at a different location and pulls from Pescadero Creek, is basically on it's own as the creek is mostly dry with an occasional puddle. With shortening days, we think much of what is planted (much of which is also mulched) will likely continue to grow and hopefully we can still get all you flower share holders flowers through the end of the season. We have lots of dried flowers form this season, so if things dry up, well.. you may get some dried floral arrangements instead ;) (we were thinking of doing that for the final share anyhow). Most of our Fall harvested crops are far enough along that we will still manage a harvest without water. We've cut and begun to cure most of all the Winter Squash (Butternut isn't quite ready yet). Dry beans are pretty much all out of the ground, drying and awaiting threshing. Tomatoes have very deep roots at this point and don't need irrigation. Salad greens and broccoli, cauliflower, etc. DO need water though.
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT THIS WEEK:
More seckel pears! Reminder, they are a bit ugly, but they're delicious. The little black spots are from "Pear Scab" which this variety is very susceptible to. There are almost no fruit unaffected and probably about 35% are being given to the chickens cuz they're toooo ugly. We've sorted out the prettiest for you all as they are so incredibly delicious despite the damage. Feel free to swap them out. When fully ripe they have a spicy sweetness so sweet you might think you were eating canned pears.
Alkemene Apples- Floral, lively, honeyed, mutation of Cox’s Orange Pippin from Germany. Sooo sweet, but nice tartness as well. One of Mike’s (my husband) favorite apples.
We still have lots of Arlet, but this may be the last week as we're running out of inventory. Chehalis, Fiesta, and Mollie's Delicious are on the way.
For those of you who missed my separate e-mail, we have launched a GoFundMe Campaign for our Crew/Harvest Manager Raul and his family. Thank you so much for those of you who've contributed. We've already reached around $20,000!! We're all so so grateful and humbled by the community's generosity. Raul's home was burglarized a few weeks ago and the losses were devastating for them. The police say even in they eventually catch the perpetrator it is unlikely they'll recuperate any of their losses. After a couple weeks of not being able to sleep, I hope this provides them with some emotional relief, knowing help and support are there. If we go above our goal the extra funds will go to the Pescadero Sustainable Agriculture Scholarship Fund that provides scholarships to kids of Farmworkers who are pursuing higher education within our community. Here's a link to the campaign if you'd like to contribute: https://gofund.me/8cefb869
