Week eleven here on the farm and the interns are soaking up all the summer sun. Our meals have slowly been becoming more and more extravagant as we have learned how to cook with seasonal produce. Tonight we fired up our cob pizza oven that has been covered in cobwebs all summer. The dough was prepared at lunch with our homemade sourdough starter, flour, water, and a touch of salt. Then the dough was allowed to rise and rest before being divided and kneaded into thin pizza crusts. The fire had to be started two hours before cooking so the wood - oak logs and a few grape vine stumps - would burn down to coals and the oven would be hot. We fixed the pizzas with all the best of the summer harvest. Caramelized onion, roasted padrones, summer squash, heirloom tomatoes, fresh basil, kale and green peppers were all harvested and prepped for the pizza party. We made a quick trip to the store for a few items we don't have growing on site, parmesan, asiago, goat cheese, and mushrooms in particular. The oven was so hot that the pizzas cooked in a matter of seconds. Rotating them was the hardest part because our pizza peel barely fit in the oven's opening. The only thing better than making the pizzas was devouring them as fast as they came out of the oven!

Stephen W. Intern, Summer '16