Just in time for the rain! Here is a recipe for a winter squash soup using autumnal butternut squash and the last of the pepper harvest, which makes for a surprisingingly delicious partnership of flavors. 

Being the journeyman farmer at Hidden Villa, managing the CSA, and running the farmers market stand has been an incredibly valuable experience for me. I have learned far more about small farm management and nonprofit management in the past nine months than I could have imagined. I honestly feel that I now have the skills and knowledge to successfully manage a small farm.

We are very excited that the orchard we invested in planting 4 years ago are now literally bearing fruit in substantial quantities, allowing us to provide fruit to our CSA members in their weekly baskets. From cherries to peaches to persimmons and more, providing fruit to our CSA members allows them to have seasonal, delicious fruit in varietities suited for our local climate and environment. Enjoy this recipe using our Fuyu persimmons, which are squat and firm with a sweet and delicate cinnamon taste. 

This morning I participated in our weekly intern class, this being the second installment of Swine (pig) Management. To start the class we opened with a narrative by Wendell Barry. In this passage the author speaks of the joy that he finds in farming, and the satisfaction and fulfillment a farming job can provide. The passage concludes with Wendell and his 5 year-old granddaughter sitting atop a wagon. Though it was at the end of a hard day’s work, she looks to him and says, “Isn’t this fun Wendell?”.

Kabocha is a Japanese variety of winter squash. Ours have finally cured in the field and are ready for harvest. When the kabochas arrive, it feels like fall is officially here. Prepare and enjoy kabochas as you would other winter squash, including in desserts like this recipe!

As members of our farm share at Hidden Villa, you are actively choosing to support a small farm and have a direct connection to where your food is coming from. And we thank you for that! That decision, whether it is for the freshness and quality of your produce, the opportunity to foster understanding within your family of where food comes from, or the practice of eating with the changing of the seasons, fosters a personal connection to, and understanding of, sustainable food practices. The framework for the CSA program that we offer here at Hidden Villa has become popular not only in California, but throughout the United States as more people are beginning to value the importance of sustainable agricultural production and find the most transparent ways to support food production they believe in. Yet not all of our food choices can be so easily traced to its source. As consumers, we have become tasked with educating ourselves on where food found at the supermarket is coming from, and how it was grown.

With the final harvest of our eggplants and peppers that had ripened in the summer heat, and the budding heads of cabbage as cooler weather comes in, this stir fry marks a particular time in the changing seasons. Enjoy!

We primarily grow two varieties of beets at Hidden Villa. Chioggia beets, which do better in cooler weather, are a beautiful deep pink color with a white and pink bulls eye pattern inside. It is always a wonder to slice one open and see the intricate stripes under the skin! Red Ace is the other variety, which looks like your standard red beet. We consider it our "workhorse" beet, as it's a reliable variety that is tolerant to warm weather. In this recipe, enjoy beets in a salad dressed up with feta and balsamic. The sweetness of the beets will shine through!

We finished harvesting and boxing up the last of our potatoes on Friday. At Hidden Villa we using a digging bar on the back of a tractor to turn up the potatoes and then we easily dig through the already loosened soil by hand and pick up potatoes. It is still a lot of work to harvest 800 row feet of potatoes, especially since it was a dishearteningly light yield of around 500 pounds.

Enjoy this zesty autumn salsa, sweet with apples and spiced with peppers. Perfect for a fall picnic! 

"I cannot endure to waste anything

so precious as autumnal

sunshine by staying in the house."

- Nathaniel Hawthorne

Every Monday night us three Hidden Villa interns who live in the quaint Creek House on site make dinner together, primarily using ingrediently from the farm. From New York Times Cooking section recipes for pork wontons to chicken pot pie made with Hidden Villa  veggies, chicken and Cleo milk, we've gotten very ambitious lately, putting meals we want to cook on a white board two weeks ahead of time.This lasagna was one of those amazing meals. It was fun to make together as a group effort, and the results were to die for!

It is October already! I can hardly believe it, especially because it has been so hot these last couple of days. It was hot enough yesterday that we braved the now algae encrusted swimming pool for a quick dip and cool down. The atypical heat and newly erected pumpkin patch in the education garden are telling signs that summer has passed and fall has truly arrived. The season is winding down which means that we are looking into the winter, making plans for work projects and talking about how to get the fields ready for a much needed break. As a year-long intern, I am also starting to think about final skills I would like to acquire, and I am developing plans for my post-Hidden Villa career.

Any tomatoes will make a delcious soup, but the Farm Crew especially loves using Striped Germans or other large heirloom varieties. We eat this soup for lunch on colder days in our outdoor kitchen, making it all the more satisfying. The smell is intoxicating as the tomatoes come out of the oven. It is hard to believe that such a delicious soup is made from only four simple ingredients.

This Saturday marked the Autumnal equinox and the first day of fall, and also marked the beginning of my fourth week as a CSA intern at Hidden Villa. This first month has been an exhilarating introduction to the farms’ systems, and these weeks have gone by fast. I arrived in early September, when the summer heat was still brilliant, and the sun would not set until after eight o’clock. My large collection of wool hats, blankets, and socks were out of place in the warm evening air. While the seasonal transition from summer to fall can be easily overlooked in California, with Indian summers fluidly stretching into October, the first day of fall is cause for celebration. The fall harvest celebrates a change in pace, and a time to commemorate the bounty of the harvest and prepare for the onset of winter.

Delicious farm fresh tomatoes, parsley and cucumbers make this traditional grain salad a refreshing treat.

On Monday evening we had our fourth annual heirloom tomato tasting with great success. Every year our tomato tasting has been bigger and fancier. This year we had two hundred people RSVP, though maybe only half of those showed up, and we had live music starting around five o’clock. Out of the ten heirloom varieties that we had available for the tasting the top three chosen in order of popularity were: Japanese Black Trifele, Striped German, and Vorlon. For the farm crew these results are a good reinforcement to continue and expand production of these varieties next year because these three varieties continually rank well during the tomato tasting.

Sometimes you can't beat the classics. The simple and complex aroma of basil made into pesto and served over warm pasta is enough to have us drooling before we even eat our lunch!

This Labor Day weekend marked the end, and the beginning, of a new chapter for us on the Farm Crew. Last Wednesday we planted into the last few rows in the field, meaning that the vast majority of our planting is finished for the year. This, I think, is a cause for celebration. I can vividly recall my first few walks through the fields, looking out at waves of poppies and mustard flowers, not really believing that it would all one day be turned into neat rows of crops. We have steadily worked to till those cover crops under, create beautiful rows, and fill them with a huge variety of beautiful and delicious foods. In addition to this seasonal milestone, last week held further causes for celebration: birthdays, first corn in the share box,  the rediscovery of my favorite pair of pants, and a celebratory Farm Crew (and friends) trip to Nevada City.

When our fennel in the field goes to seed it grows incredibly aromatic yellow flower clusters that have a rich anise flavor. We provided a bundle of these flowers for our CSA members this week so they can experience this interesting stage of the fennel plant and try it as an herb in their cooking.