Happy New Year and Welcome to the 2026 Terra Firma CSA season — our 31st. I hope you all had an enjoyable and .restful holiday period.
If you spent those holidays here in Northern California, you may be feeling a little S.A.D. — as in Seasonal Affective Disorder — due to near-continuous rain and lack of sunshine over the last two weeks. I returned from sunny (and cold) New York on December 26th, and basically did not see the sun again until today. During the two weeks the farm has been closed, we’ve received over a third of our annual rainfall — about 7 inches. This is nearly fulfills one of my fantasies as a farmer to get all of our annual rainfall during Thanksgiving week and the year-end holidays.
The chilly, wet weather occurring during the shortest days of the year puts most of our crops into stasis: nothing really grows or matures. That fits very well into our vacation schedule. We did take advantage of a few somewhat dry days just before New Years to get some Navel Oranges harvested along with a few other items. But otherwise, this was a real vacation — enforced by Mother Nature.
But like humans, plants need sunshine to grow and thrive, including the vegetables we grow. If the grey and gloom go on for too long this time of year, it starts to affect our crops. For example, carrots will lose their orange color — although they still taste fine when this happens. And yesterday while I was out walking the fields, I noticed our next succession of Broccoli is starting to form tiny heads — but they are almost white like cauliflower. Other crops just simply stop growing entirely.
Happily then for everyone — both plants and humans — we’re now looking at sunny, dry conditions for at least the next two weeks. Farmers around here refer to this as the January Thaw or the January Dry Spell, because it happens most years. Without a that decent spell of dry weather, we would be unable to finish many critical tasks that need to be done during the winter. Foremost among these is pruning our fruit trees, which can’t be done during the rain and must be done before they begin to bloom in March and April.
Another critical mid-winter task for us is digging Carrots. As you are likely aware, carrots are an important component of our CSA boxes. But it’s impossible to dig them in the rain, for various reasons, and can be difficult even a week or two after heavy rain if we haven’t had sunshine and a little wind to dry things out. Luckily, carrots store well in our coolers for many weeks — the ones in your boxes were picked in December. So if and when we get the appropriate conditions, we focus on harvesting as many as we can before the next storm arrives. We have several beautiful fields of them, one of which is ready to harvest.
Looking forward to a bountiful 2026. Thanks for coming along for the ride!
Pablito