One of the things that’s exciting about the CSA is truly eating seasonally and this week’s box feels Ultra-Seasonal with two items that you really can not get out of season: Fava Beans and Garlic Scapes. AND these are two items that I really only see locally. As such, you may not be super familiar with them and I’ll spend quite a bit of space writing them up. This is one of the joys of a CSA, exploring the seasons through food.

Photos of Ultra-Seasonal Farm Goods… Scapes, Favas AND Clarkia

We have 23 new members joining us today for a June start! Our CSA is now back to having a waitlist. For those of you new in this third and final wave of the season, but also those of you who joined in April or May… please, please don’t hesitate to reach out with questions.

Photo of Cosmos flower with native bee this morning.

Every year on the farm we do a few trials but this year with a team of very astute farm managers (Sean, Sarah and now Bobby!) we are doing a lot of trials and hopefully will be taking our varieties and diversity of veg to a new level for this year and beyond! Having farmed for 18 years sometimes you get into the, “well we’ve always grown X” or “X just doesn’t do well” even though it’s been 12 years since we last trialed it. I love being pushed by younger energy, change is hard and yet the one constant in life, right?

Photo of Bobby watering in new Winter Squash.

It’s nesting and fledging season, a busy time for birds on the farm.

Read more about the Canada family that made their home in one of our ponds, the barn swallow drama, a bird nest in the Fava beans we harvested for you yesterday and much more!

We love supporting Mother Nature while growing food for you in a healthy and vibrant ecosystem.

We’re thrilled to have accepted the Land Stewardship & Regeneration from Northern California Public Media, our local PBS and NPR stations this past weekend. This is the 7th award

In more day-to-day news… today’s newsletter Celebrates Cucurbits. We’re thrilled to have Summer Squash or Cucumbers in all CSA boxes again today and we have many more Cucurbits coming down the line.

Today’s Baby Bok Choi is very “lacy” with pin pricks from Flea Beetles. We’re sorry, we really aim to give you more model produce but aside from this they are delicious and luscious. But I thought it was a great opportunity to talk about pest insects on the farm.

First off, we pride ourselves on not using any pesticides, fungicides, algicides, insecticides or herbicides on our farm… not even organically approved ones. Even organic approved sprays have all sorts of warnings: do not harvest for certain amounts of time, do not spray where pollinators are active (which is everywhere!), wear protective gear and wash thoroughly after application, and more. In addition, whether organic or conventional, sprays kill both good and bad insects, ie: both pests and beneficials!

Photo: Lady Beetle Pupa

This Spring has just been flying on the farm! Early Spring is marked by lots of planting and light greens. We’re moving into Late Spring and it’s exciting to see things grow at lighting speed as the days get longer.

What does this mean? We now have 95% of our Tomatoes, Peppers, Eggplant plus our first 3 successions of Cucumbers, 1st succession of Basil, 2 successions of Summer Squash and 1st succession of sweet corn all in the ground. Summer Squash are already being harvested (read more below), Basil is close behind and Cucumbers behind them!!

Photo: Elle planting succession #3 of Cucumbers. #2 is in the right bed with Eggplant between.

We initially went no-till because we wanted to grow later into the winter and earlier in the spring, and we needed to to pay the bills. The thing is, we couldn’t grow when we relied on a tractor for tilling and prepping beds because it would get stuck in the mud during the winter rains. So our initial steps into no-till, which have since made us famous world wide, were really trying to have produce for our community earlier in spring. It was only later that we learned of science behind the climate farming and that helped us refine our farming model later yet the nutrient density. All of those are now important aspects of who we are and what we teach.

Photo: Red Sky Lettuce for this week’s CSA boxes.

We’re thrilled to be starting our main season CSA and we have 30 new members joining us this week and next plus more coming in our next round May 1st and the last June 1st.  As such, a couple notes on logistics:

Farmhand vs the Farm: Farmhand will be helping us with the software, billing and also is there to help with basic logistics. Don’t hesitate to reach out to this team of real, friendly folks based here in Sonoma County. Reply to any CSA email (hello@gofarmhand.com) or reach out by text 707-595-9859 for any subscription level questions.

We are still here at the farm, but the less time we spend doing logistics, the more time we can spend growing you food and flowers. If you have any question specifically for us (Farmhand won’t be able to answer your question about the Chicory Mix) or if you have an urgent question “I’m at my pick-up site and can’t find my box” please email or call/text Farmer Elizabeth charlie@singingfrogsfarm.com or 707-536-7170. 

Photo: Corno di Toro Pepper with Lady Beetle Friends

Today we are migrating all of your information from our old CSA billing system… CSAware to Farmhand. You’ll still be receiving the same great CSA boxes and bouquets plus add-ons… it’ll hopefully just be easier on for both us and you on the logistical side.

You will receive the activation email in the next couple of days with this information plus more and links to log in and add your credit card information. All information including your order and your box credits will be moved over except we cannot move your credit card information (it’s not actually even stored on either system but in the credit card processors - which we’re also changing).

Photo: Monday we planted our first tomatoes in the fields!!

Tomorrow is Spring Equinox, midway between Winter & Summer Solstices and the technical First Day of Spring! Wow does it feel it! We are just running on the farm.

We have our two new full time crew members Amaia and Sam on the farm now three weeks and they are rocking it, learning tons and farming like there’s no tomorrow. Sarah’s back from a two month trip to Central America and planning and getting things rolling like crazy. Sean’s been holding things together and is going to keep amazing harvests rolling. Leo has been holding us together with his building, selling at market and supporting the work in the field.

Farmers Elizabeth and Paul founded Singing Frogs Farm after years working with small scale farmers and agroforesters in West Africa and Costa Rica. We are blessed to have learned from their knowledge. The biggest take away was that food can be grown intensively, by hand and for local economies on a small scale.

Fast forward several years into our farming and an international organization (the ETC Group) came out with a study comparing industrial agriculture and small-scale farming (plus small scale fishing and herding). They found that 70% of the world’s food is grown by smallholders and another study found 80%. For farmers that means 5 hectares (~10 acres) or less.

We are excited again this year to have Farming Workshops in our mix of farm offerings (in addition to nutrient dense veggies, flowers and also farm tours).

We have a new workshop series for Home Farmers in addition to our ever popular one-day intensive. This spring we have many tiers of learning!

That was quite the downpour we had yesterday after a stormy few days. Not surprisingly, our bottom lands flooded to their high water mark. Farming on the slopes into the Atascadero valley bottom, a flood plain, this is no surprise, this is Mother Nature’s way of slowing and sinking it. Sadly it doesn’t work as well because instead of a meandering mashy area, the Army Corps of engineers dug a channel which we now know as the Atascadero Creek which made most of this land passable and farmable. Atascadero is a  Spanish word for wet muddy place and it used to be like a smaller Laguna de Santa Rosa. But with the valley as it is,  we’re ready for the flood every year and we flood a little most years, but it’s not been to the high water mark in 2 years.

Photo shows the same shot yesterday flooded and today in sun.

Outside of national news, in more local news, you may have heard that deals have been reached to shut down most ranching and dairy operations at Point Reyes National Seashore between The Nature Conservancy and ranchers. It has us thinking about humans and ecology and how we can work together which is an important topic for us. At Singing Frogs Farm we’ve learned that humans can work and even enhance Mother Nature. Yes, we can farm and create habitat. In fact, humans have been tending and living as a part of nature as long as we’ve been here. Why must it be viewed as food factories vs conservation?

Photo: Chilly morning with Hoar Frost on Toscano Kale (we have a cover crop of clover under these plants that’s doing great!)

We have a lot of people joining our waitlist, as is normal for the New Years’ Resolution season. We love knowing how people know of our farm and recently one was new to us, it said the book The Regenerative Agriculture Solution by Cummins and Leu, founders of Regeneration International and president of International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements. We know both authors but didn’t know they put out a book. Our farm has been featured in a number of books but I ordered this one to see what it was about. It refers to us a few times but I thought I would share their quick write up of us… read more…

Sahya and Leo show off some of our Brussels Sprouts going out in today’s boxes.

This week we are writing more of a meet who was your farmer as we are saying goodbye to Jose this week. Jose has been working and living on the farm since February.

Jose came to us with a deep well of no-till, market farming experience from his home country of Chile where he worked on and helped start more than one no-till farm with friends. A few years back he met, fell in love with and married friend Heidi and they moved to the States together where she had family.

Photo of Jose building our newest Caterpillar tunnel to grow more luscious light greens in winter this November.

On the farm, winter means many things for our farm crew. To begin, transitioning to every-other-week CSA allows for bigger projects to happen on the “off” weeks, since we now have two days that are not longer dedicated to CSA. Although winter can feel long and endless, that is not the case for farmers in California. The slowest seasons of farming are limited to December and January (the days before and after Winter Solstice - the shortest day of the year). We are truly sunlight farmers and hours are sun is where it’s at for growing photosynthesizing plants that make food for us. As such, we are working the fields minimally these two months. We also have fewer products to harvest, hence the switch to every-other-week boxes. Once February comes around, we will be ramping up our planting. Until then, the farm crew is taking a much needed seasonal break.

Photo of Great White Heron hunting for rodents and frogs in cover cropped fields along our now full seasonal ponds. 

This week we want to share with you another cornerstone to our farm crew! Maddie has been working with us since January of this year, coming out of working for a season at a low-till farm in Homer, Alaska. Maddie is a lifelong traveler, and has spent seasons working on several other small farms, from Watsonville to Chicago to Vermont. We are so grateful that she has made the move back to her home state of California.

Maddie harvesting Parsley for your CSA box this morning in a deluge, we put up a canopy because it can take so long to ease the wet burden.

As we look outside, it certainly feels like late autumn and early winter. The days are shorter. There’s a frost in the morning. On the farm we’ve transitioned our work day later, and now it’s sunset as we leave at 4:30 pm, we’re in a north-south valley with high west slope and trees so our sun sets even earlier.

Photo of Hot Compost on a Cold Morning shows Sean startled by the steam as we’re dumping from tractor into wheelbarrows to be applied to mint and daffodil beds, prepping for spring!