Buying seeds and the perfect gift of olive oil

It is the middle of December and we have already planned all the spring and summer crops for 2025.

This is the time we plan and buy the seeds as we will be seeding the first seeds of 2025 on New Year’s Day including some tomatoes.

Throughout the season we take notes on all the veggies and what changes we want to make whether they are small or large ones. Then when we sit down to plan for the coming year we look at those notes and make the best plan we can.

The plan never goes according to plan as we have no idea what the weather will be but we can give it our best and choose the varieties that should do the best.

We aren’t planning to grow any new veggies, just some new varieties and more of certain crops like melons.

At night we have been getting the crop plan sorted out and on the days when it hasn’t been raining or we have to harvest for market we have spent the last two weeks harvesting lots of olives.

The olives are ripening pretty quickly and we don’t want them to get overripe which will cause them to have a bad taste.

As we wrap up the olive harvest we have got lots of delicious olive oil all bottles up and we will have lots of it at market to get for yourself or as a gift for others.

If you would like to preorder olive oil to be picked up at the Davis Farmers market on Saturday send us an email and we will reserve however many bottles you want.

We have had some people who live in Benicia where we did the farmers market our first year want to get some olive oil but are unable to come up to Davis so if you are there you can preorder olive oil by emailing us and then pick it up in Benicia Saturday.

This last week has been a rainy one with almost every other day there being a decent amount of rain.

Wednesday night into Thursday morning we got 1.7 inches of rain and then on Saturday we got another two inches.

On Monday we got almost an inch of rain so the soil is nice and saturated with all the water. Fortunately we didn’t experience any of the crazy winds people on the coast got, just a few gusts on Saturday, and the rain was consistent instead of pouring down for a short amount of time.

Right after a rain there is not much we can do in the field with the veggies so we got lots of olives picked and once it dries out a little more we have a decent amount of weeding to get done.

The cold weather has been helping the citrus ripen up after a slightly delayed start to the season. The flavor on the inside has been good on the ones we tested but some of them are still mostly green or just starting to turn yellow.

For the two types of oranges we have they have changed color although the flavor is lacking so we are waiting a little bit longer to start picking them.

There are only a few trees of certain varieties so we may only have it for a few weeks before it is done for the season.

We are selling almost all the Yuzu wholesale but we will have it this weekend only at the farmers market. Saturday is Winter Solstice and in Japanese culture it is customary to have a bath with Yuzu on that day,

The zest and juice of Yuzu is very fragrant and can be used in place of lemons for many dishes and added to a vinaigrette or used in a cocktail.