Our farm feels bountiful right now. Well, the places where we store our chiles and beans feel nicely full. There’s still chiles to harvest which feels like both a blessing and a curse as we’re midway through November. I feel a bit at ease when I see the sea of green cover crop already blanketing the fields that were previously planted with beans.
I’m trying to remind myself to enjoy the few harvest days that remain, the time I get to spend with our incredible harvest team (we’re about 15 people this year!) and the amount of time I get to work on and speak Spanish, and the satisfaction of processing thousands of pounds of chiles. I love harvesting chiles and I really do love this time of year. I’m just quite tired.
The harvest season is exhausting and grueling. Our harvest season started August 22 with Tiger’s Eye beans, making this the 13th week of harvesting beans or chiles. We’re feeling ready to be done, but there’s still more out there waiting for us. We’ll have time to relax mid-December, something we are deeply looking forward to.
Oh! We also harvested olives last week. Last Monday and Tuesday, we picked 7.5 macro bins of olives! It wasn’t our biggest harvest, but also not our smallest. The grove produced 6,207 pounds of olives which were milled into 73 gallons of oil. This means that each macro bin of olives (about 800ish pounds) produced just 83 half liter bottles of olive oil. It’s always shocking how many olives are needed to produce a substantial amount of olive oil. The oil now sits for a few months and will get bottled in February.
Keep reading for some Thanksgiving ideas for the table, learn about what chiles are now available from this fall’s harvest, and check out our last new bean of the year!
Rosso Di Lucca Beans from Tookey Farms
Rosso di Lucca Beans are a Tuscan red bean from Italy. They are traditionally eaten in Zuppa alla Frantoiana, a slow cooked bean and vegetable soup, as well as Zuppa di Farro e Fagioli, a Tuscan bean and farro soup. They are rich and creamy in flavor, and are a perfect soup bean. Use them in any recipe that calls for Tuscan beans and in most Italian recipes that call for white beans (most recipes out there are boring and just want you to use canned cannellini beans - try something new!).
These beans are our first foray into honoring the "collective" in Boonville Barn Collective. They were grown by our friend Sammy Tookey of Tookey Farms in Healdsburg, CA, a 50 mile drive from our farm. Our team harvested the beans and brought them back to Boonville to thresh, clean, and get them bagged up. Your purchase of these beans helps support small family farmers in 2 California counties working together to use scale appropriate agricultural equipment to produce shelf stable crops.
For the Thanksgiving Table
Good food on Thanksgiving doesn't have to take all day. Here's a few ideas if you're still trying to figure out what to make. I've been tasked with spatchcocking and roasting the turkey (heavily seasoned with fresh herbs and Piment d'Ville) this year. I also like to make a shaved Brussels sprout salad with roasted almonds, aged goat cheese, pomegranate, dried cranberries, and a honey mustard dressing.
There has yet to be a Thanksgiving dinner I’ve been at in the past decade without a pot of Piment d’Ville Chile Cream Sauce to ladle on the roast turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing. In my opinion, it’s the star of the meal! It's easy to make and since I still have no idea how to make gravy, it's a flavorful alternative. I'll bring this over to my parent's house as well.
If you’ve been tasked with making a side dish, consider the Fall Tepary Bean Salad or Brown Butter Cornbread Muffins. I like the Tepary bean salad because there's hearty parts to it (squash and beans) but also lightness and flavors that contrast the rest of the meal with radicchio and pomegranate.
Planning a small dinner for 2-4 people and don’t want to go to the effort of roasting a whole turkey? Check out the Spatchcocked Chicken with Charred Lemons and Potatoes for your main dish.
