This week, we warmly welcome the final, long-awaited member of the remarkable Brassicaceae family growing in Chubeza: the amazing cabbage! It proudly joins three cousins – broccoli, kohlrabi and cauliflower – which began arriving in your boxes two weeks ago. Together, they showcase a variety of plant preferences and evolutionary pathways - leaves, flower buds, and thickened stems. These vegetables thrive in rich, fertile soil, and in return provide us with heaping portions of health, nourishment, flavor – and beauty! Just picture it: a glamourous cauliflower with its bright, intricately fashioned white crown, a green or purple cabbage dotted with raindrops, or Brussels sprouts that look like climbers   racing up the stem to reach the summit.   This stunning, diverse pluralistic family warms the heart – a family in which each member is valued for its unique qualities, growth patterns, colors, and distinct taste.

Between last Saturday night and early Sunday morning, our clocks “fell back” one hour, ending Daylight Saving Time and giving us an extra hour of sleep. Now we get to leave for work in daylight (just days ago, it was pitch dark at 6 AM), but on the other hand – evening falls an hour earlier, and it’s already getting dark around five… These are days of choices and change: a shift, maybe tiny, maybe big, toward something different. I want to join Chen Elia’s hope – and know that there’s a chance for positive change, for renewed balance, for a wholesome synchronization between the different parts of our reality – gently, gradually, patiently, and with confidence that all will be well.

At this point in time, after the holidays have passed, autumn is here in all its glory. The gradual sunrises are painted by a bold, rosy brush, and the sunsets a glorious orange. Chubeza’s tomatoes and cucumbers are beginning to recover from their initial shock of cooler weather and longer nights, as we hope to soon return to regular yields and   quantities of veggies that our boxes usually hold. This week, we welcome daikon and kohlrabi to the autumn lineup, as well as the first broccoli and cauliflower pioneers. (Still in small quantities, but more is out there on the horizon…). This week’s Chubeza Newsletter stars new products and renewals in the vegetable box and beyond:

Chubeza’s field has already completely transformed to its winter mode. A walk between the winter beds gives us a final chance to bid farewell to the last lingering summer beds, soon to make way for new rows of baby sprouts, young seedlings, and green, robust mature winter crops taking command in the field. Yet—right in the middle of our field, you’ll see a jungle-like patch of tall, tangled plants. Their vibrant green has faded, their yellow blossoms have wilted, and most of their leaves have lengthened and turned to brown. BUT, beneath the surface, life is vigorously teeming, thickening, filling up, maturing... Welcome to the sunroot, aka Cassava (cane) potato, or better yet, the confusing moniker Jerusalem Artichoke.

On the Monday of Chol Hamoed Sukkot, we joyfully celebrated Chubeza’s traditional Open Day. After three years of war, hostages, grief, pain and fear, we all greatly need breathing space. The Open Day offered the perfect way to celebrate together with you – in the open air, alongside Chubeza’s field and vegetables that steadily accompany us all with diligent growth, determination, and total indifference to human chaos.