No Chianti jokes, please

Continuing the fava bean coverage, yesterday, I led a Village Harvest group that collected 430 lbs. This is definitely a new direction for Village Harvest. I joined the intrepid Mountain View crew, led by wonderful Karen, that meets every other Sunday at the Mountain View Community Services Agency, and brings the harvest back there. I was supposed to have a bunch of Stanford students, but only three showed up. The regular MV crew, however, was out in force, and seven of them decided to take a break from citrus to help out.

The favas were grown by a longtime Los Altos Hills resident

He’s planted 1/3 acre of fava beans for the last 10 of his now 86 years, and donated them to the food bank. Last year, he and his wife spent 5 days harvesting them; health issues led him to call on Village Harvest this year.

then spent some time in the garage stripping the pods from the stalks.

It takes a lot of plants to fill up a crate’s worth of pods.

In the end, we got about 3/4 of the plants harvested, which came to 430 lbs. The rest won’t wait; another team is going on on Mother’s Day to finish the job. I hope he calls back next year!