Halloween flew by like a tropical bat, Diwali brought us its hopeful message of good defeating evil, and the elongated election season is nearly over; it is time to turn our thoughts back to family, gratitude, the simple things.

We are thankful for the many dedicated customers who are eager for ARTfarm to reopen! And for eleven inches of rain that fell over the first two weeks of November, decisively ending our water shortage – but also destroying the first lettuce crop of the season and creating some other setbacks. (We’re seeing major damage to melon vines and papaya trees and possible crop failures on ginger and some of our tomatoes.) But staying grateful that some of our gardens are recovering from all of the drenching!

We will be open for a special holiday farmstand on Wednesday, November 21st, 3pm – 5:30pm with a bumper crop of beautiful cucumbers and smaller quantities of a few other things including a limited supply of salad greens. Here’s the full list:

Grandma’s Fabulous Cucumber Salad that Luca loves (as told to Christina)

There is no recipe for this.

First of all don’t measure anything.

Mandolin a cucumber into thin slices and thinner than anything you’ve ever experienced in your life. Paper thin. Then cover them in water and add an unspecified amount of too much salt. Then go away and do other stuff. Come back in a couple of hours.

Rinse the heck out of them when you come back from your other activities and make sure they’re not too salty.

Rinse them again and again and squeeze them to get the salty water out.

Let them drain in a colander for even longer. Do other things.

Chop up a couple of scallions.

Add a big spoonful of mayo per cuke. Dress with vinegar and basil. Toss.

So just make sure you have:

• Maybe about half a cucumber per person

• A bunch of scallions (green onion tops or garlic chives work too)

• A generous handful of salt

• A few spoonfuls of mayo

• A little basil (could be dried if you don’t have fresh)

• A little vinegar
• Fun people to share it with!