News from Terra Firma Farm

Boxes are charged on Monday for the week's deliveries at:

$14 Small
$24 Medium
$32 Large

For a payment of $300, get a 3% bonus. Your account balance will be $309.

For a payment of$850, get a 5% bonus. Your account will be posted as $892.00

For a payment of $1,400, get a 7% bonus. Your payment will be posted as $1,498.

Vacations are charged weekly when notice is given as a fee, no charges occur during the vacation week.

$4 Small
$8 Medium
$11 Large

Pledge of Authenticity

Terra Firma is a real farm. We grow 99% of the produce that goes into our boxes on our 220 acres of certified organic land in Winters. If we do buy produce from other farms, it's almost always from a neighboring farm and we give them full credit in the box list.
The owners of Terra Firma are involved in every aspect of making your boxes a reality: walking the fields, planting the crops, selecting and checking what goes in the boxes and finally delivering them to you. We eat the crops from our fields every day, just like you do. Thanks for supporting our efforts and enjoying the food we grow.
Paul, Pablito, & Hector

Payments, Billing, and Changes

Schedule vacations, change box sizes, make payments or sign up for autopay by logging in to your subscriber account at terrafirmafarm.com

News From Terra Firma Farm

Community Supported Agriculture

Greetings!

Important: We are not changing our delivery schedule this year for the 4th of July holiday. Please see the note below for more info.

Peaches are the quintessential summer fruit and, in our opinion, a critical component of any good CSA box in Northern California during that season. Since 2005, it has been one of our goals to include them in our boxes every week between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

Luckily for us, peach trees grow quickly. Planted in the spring one year, they produce a small but respectable crop just 24 months or so later. By the time they are four years old, peaches and nectarines in California are in full production.

We have two small orchards of peaches that were planted in 2001. We planted a larger orchard in 2005 and have added onto it every two years or so. At this time we have about 1200 trees, or roughly one peach tree for every subscriber.

But it's not as simple as planting one tree for each of you and then harvesting what we need each week. Peaches are an extremely punctual fruit. Like commuters heading home at rush hour, every fruit on a given tree is ready at the same time, more or less. Unlike oranges, say, which can hang on a tree for a month or six weeks, when peaches are ripe they need to come off the tree immediately. Also unlike oranges (and apples), which keep nicely in cold storage for several weeks, peaches are highly perishable and need to be eaten within ten days or so of harvest.

This is why plant breeders have developed numerous varieties of peaches that ripen at very specific times through the growing season: from early May all the way into September, as shown in the calendar for yellow peaches grown by the nursery that supplies our trees. We have over 30 different varieties of peaches and nectarines planted in our orchards.

Having a favorite peach variety is not like having a favorite variety of tomato, but rather, like having a favorite holiday: no matter how much you enjoy it, it will be over in a week or so. This might be why most of the names are so forgettable: June Pride, Earlirich, etc. I generally don't bother to include the names of the varieties we are sending you on the list of items, although if there is enough interest I certainly could.

We have chosen to focus mostly on yellow peaches and nectarines that have a traditional balance of sweetness and acidity, as opposed to the newer, sugary "low-acid" varieties favored by supermarkets because they can be eaten when rock hard. This is a subject for another newsletter.

It's exciting for us to see the, uh, fruit of many years of labor finally realized in our peach orchard and we fully expect this year's season to last a full 14 weeks and possibly longer. We hope you are enjoying it as well.

Thanks,

Pablito

Fourth of July

Independence Day is next Thursday! Unfortunately, our harvest and delivery schedule this time year will not allow us to shift delivery days as we do at Thanksgiving. In other words, we will be making deliveries as usual on July 4th.

Many subscribers have already let us know they will taking vacation next week. We ask that if you are planning to do so, please go to your account and make the change as soon as possible so we can accurately judge how much we need to harvest.

For those who are not leaving town, your box next week will be chock full of all the goodies that make for good barbeques, picnics and other celebrations: Sweet corn, tomatoes, watermelons and all the rest. If you would like to order additional quantities of any of these items, please let us know via email even if what you want is not listed on the Web Store availabilities.

In Your Boxes

We're harvesting a lot of Peaches right now at Terra Firma -- the July varieties have caught up to the June ones, and they all have bumper crops. So we're upping the amount in your boxes this week. We currently have six different varieties, several different types including some white peaches.

White peaches are the most problematic to grow because the flesh is so delicate and the skin so soft: they ripen unevenly and one side can be soft while the other is still firm. The simple act of picking them can leave bruises. But we are also currently picking a yellow peach that has similar issues. Saturn is the "yellowest" peach we grow, as opposed to the others which are actually closer to orange in color with dark red skin and red-streaked flesh.

Both these and the white peaches we are harvesting right now must be picked while still partially green, or they don't make it to your homes intact. As always, you should leave the peaches at room temperature for a day or two and then eat them when they have softened.

The first of our Melons are in the Medium and Large boxes today (as opposed to watermelons). Sometimes called Galias, sometimes Passport, these are green-fleshed melons with a netted rind like cantelope. Originally from Israel, Galias ripen a week or two sooner than the other melons we grow.

Recipe: Peach-Corn Upside Down Skillet Cake
This is a not-too-sweet dessert, but if you want even less sugar, you could just make the cake and top it with fresh peaches.

Heat the oven to 350. Peel and slice 4 peaches. Shuck 2 ears of sweet corn and cut the kernels off the cobs.

In a 10 inch cast iron skillet, melt 3 T. butter and 1/2 C. of brown sugar. Stir over low heat until it begins to dissolve into a smooth caramel, then spread the caramel over the pan evenly. Arrange the peach slices in a single layer. Set the pan aside.

To make the cake, cream 1/2 C. each butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add 2 beaten eggs, 3/4 C. buttermilk or plain yogurt, 2 T. vanilla extract, and the sweet corn.

In a bowl, combine 1 C. cornmeal and 1 1/4 C. flour with 1 1/4 T. baking powder and 1/4 t. each baking soda and salt (if using unsalted butter).

Mix the liquid and dry ingredients together using as few motions as possible.

Spoon the batter over the peaches and smooth out. Bake for 25-30 minutes. The top of the cake should be golden brown. Let the cake cool for at least 20 minutes before turning the flipping the pan onto a plate and removing the cake.