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This Week’s Fruit

Pink Lady Apples & Fuji Apples
Cayuma Orchards, New Cayuma, CA
A cross between the Golden Delicious and Lady Williams, the Pink Lady is a crisp and juicy apple with a tart finish. A creamy white colored flesh that resists browning makes this an excellent apple for salads and slicing. Also a modern day favorite for eating out of hand. A cross between the Golden Delicious and Lady Williams, the Pink Lady is a crisp and juicy apple with a tart finish. A creamy white colored flesh that resists browning makes this an excellent apple for salads and slicing. Also a modern day favorite for eating out of hand. Fujis are a cross between Red Delicious and Ralls Janet, an heirloom apple dating back to Thomas Jeffrson. Fujis are loved by many for their crisp, sweet, and juicy character.

Hayward Kiwi
Chiechi Farms, Live Oak, CA
Originally known as the Chinese gooseberry due to its Chinese orgins. Hawyward Wright, a New Zealand nurseryman propagated his plants by grafting and they eventually became the preferred cultivar of growers due to their sweet flavor and thin skin.

Meyer Lemons
Native to China, Meyers are a cross between a lemon and either a mandarin or a true orange. Their round shape and smooth rind encases an often orange hued flesh that is sweeter and more subtle than your common lemon. Meyer lemons are wonderful for cooking, baking, and an assortment of beverages.

Taccoro Blood Oranges
A beautiful orange to deep red flesh is revealed when you slice open a Tarocco. The flesh of the blood orange is firmer and more dense than an orange and its flavor is a little more tart. These beauties sweeten and darken in color as the season progresses.

A Note from Farmer Al

Dear CSA Members,

Wednesday was the day we used our new Sittler compost turner for the first time and the unbelievable happened; it literally came apart after just 20 minutes of turning!

Everything was going great; the tractor was pulling the turner through a long 120’ pile which looked a little rough and uneven before turning. The turner moved easily through the pile, tossing, mixing and turning wood chips, horse manure, basil, fruit and coffee grounds topsy turvy, then depositing everything into a beautiful even windrow 10” wide at the base and 5” high at the peak. It was perfect.

We finished that first windrow in 10 minutes and made the u-turn to do the next row. Halfway down this second row the nightmare began. It started with a low rhythmic rumble coming from within the turning pile; maybe a piece of wood was caught in the blades of the turner and was knocking against the housing of the turner. But as the machine continued turning the noise got louder, and sharper! Oh no! I thought. Unbelievably I realized it was metal-to-metal, and getting louder and louder. I signaled the tractor driver to stop, and Christophe and the men and I all gathered round to have a look. The shaft which the turner drum spins on had come loose and was projecting one inch out of the bearing on the sidewall of the turner housing. This had allowed the drum on which the blades that turn the material are mounted, to move closer to the sidewall. One of the blades was hammering the sidewall. So the much anticipated launch of our amazing new machine had turned into a disaster! We all thought right away that it was our fault; that we were using it wrong or had mounted it to the tractor incorrectly, or that the pile was too wide.

The next morning I called the manufacturer, Sitter in Toronto, Canada. The sales person was very concerned and promised a call back from an expert.

Two hours later, Edwin Sittler himself called me back. After giving him a detailed description of what had happened, he determined it was an assembly error on the part of his team, and he then gave me step by step instructions on how to put everything back together.

Together with Doug Kirk, our amazing blacksmith, we got it done, and are thrilled to see the machine back in action by Friday afternoon, none the worse, and making perfect compost piles! This is just another chapter in our compost making journey; to be continued…