After several warm weeks and not-really-so-cold ones, we eagerly await rainy and stormy days. It's not that we don't love wonderful winter sun, but the field desperately needs rain and low winter temperatures before we farmers can enjoy basking in the sun. One vegetable that particularly loves cold and rain is spinach. Throughout the year, Chubeza grows several spinach varieties in our field, but only one is real spinach, botanically speaking. The other two -- New Zealand spinach and Indian Malabar spinach -- are actually plants disguised as spinach!

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, many bent from last month’s heavy winds and rains. 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.

The green is very green today, And the gray is very gray today  A bit of black, And no whiteness in town. The storm is very stormy today, And the past is in the past today, Some future lies ahead, But no present is in the air. And it’s not easy to breathe yet, Nor is it easy to think Against the gusts of wind And waiting is so very hard  Eyelashes touched by storm, Each moment shatter to pieces  Yet the green is very green today. Leah Goldberg. Translated from the Hebrew by Aliza Raz. | It’s not easy to breathe, and not at all simple to wait. But this week, the rain came with vigor to wash away the dust and awaken the pungent scent of wet earth. A walk in the fields is a stroll through a thousand shades of green, which have filled your Chubeza boxes in recent weeks. To help you identify each green Chubeza visitor, it’s time once again to send you the Guide to the Perplexed for Chubeza Winter Greens:

This morning, it rained once again. It didn’t claim the First Rain title, which was already clinched several weeks ago. But we’ve now had a more serious rain, bent on continuing intermittently for several days. Hopefully this is a real rain, the kind that just keeps on coming and leaves lots of mud behind. To do our part to bring on the rain, this week’s Chubeza Newsletter is dedicated to both rain and the “after- the-rain” smell.

One of the highlights of our Sukkot Open Day was the field tour, highlighted by the magical moment when vibrant carrots were unearthed and lifted high in delight. Even after over 20 years of harvesting carrots at Chubeza, the very sight of this fiery orange root with its wild green crown peeking out of the soil remains a thrilling surprise.