Harvest Your Own 2025

Flower and Herb Shares & Market Cards

Benefits of Harvest Your Own

• Enjoy a diverse, unique, flavorful, fresh, colorful assortment of seasonal produce. Receive updates, recipes and tips from our weekly newsletters.

• Establish an intimate connection with your local farm.

• Attend Community Days on on the 2nd Saturdays of each month.

• Be part of a thriving community and meet new people who also support local farmers and the local economy.

• Complimentary Compost Drop Off

• Enjoy the benefits of being outdoors, moving your body while you harvest your own!

Prefer to pay by check? Please mail it to: Orkestai Farm, PO Box 653, Oyster Bay NY, 11771

Important: please include your email address or phone number so we can confirm receipt.

Harvest Your Own Supplies

• The farm will provide many supplies and tools such as pitch forks, rubber-bands, bags, cartons, and crates. We ask members to bring the following. The links are just suggestions.

  • Harvest knife or this one—serrated edge is more useful

  • Snips

  • Shears

  • Totes, Basket, Bags—To carry your produce home.

  • Yogurt Container, Jars—To carry your flowers

  • Reusable Produce Bags. For home we suggest Refrigerator Produce Bags

  • Appropriate Clothing and Footwear

    • Long Sleeve Shirt — sun protection

    • Rain Gear

    • Shoes for uneven natural surface

    • Hat for sun protection

Read here an account of one member’s relationship with the farm…..

Peace and Fava Beans in Oyster Bay.

By Laura Savini

This morning while the house was quiet, with the sun bathing the kitchen in a magnificent joyful glow,

and only birds as background music, I shelled fava beans. These were extraordinary fava beans that I

had just simmered and then plunged into ice water. They were extraordinary because on Friday, I had

proudly cut from the stem of the plant myself. I was in sync with the effort it took the farmer and the

plant to share this tiny bounty with me. I experienced the protective, structural design of this plant: first

you open the pod and take out the beans. After you cook and shock them and peel the next layer, the

shell, you can coax out each Kermit-the-Frog-green kernel. Next, I sliced a fennel bulb I had also hand

cut from the earth, remembering with a smile its enormous plume of fuzzy, wild greens bursting from

the top when I found it. My tea waited by my side, as did my one-eyed spectacular Himalayan cat who

was lounging in a spot of sunshine next to me. The absolute peace of that moment was overwhelming

and emotional. The gratitude I felt for this life, this home, this summer day, this one moment in time,

filled me with love.

My Friday visits to Orkestai Farm, where I found these favas, are a favorite part of my week, something I

share with my mother. We drive over to the farm, giggling and wondering if we can find it without the

GPS, even after many, many these visits. This joke never gets old because we have taken so many

wrong turns on the way there. We drive on Planting Fields Arboretum’s winding pathways so slowly, as

not to disturb anyone or anything. We feel naughty and privileged at the same time because these

paths are for walking, not driving, yet we have permission to be there, as members of this endeavor. We

reach the far end of the property and drive down the dusty path to this hidden gem, our secret farm.

We gather our tools and bags out of the trunk and put on our hats. We are greeted by volunteers who

hand us a list of what is full grown, to be harvested, and how many of each we can gather. Radicchio!

Butter lettuce! The cabbage is ready! What?? Fava beans?? We head over to row N15 to see for

ourselves.

My mother has a keen eye for selecting the choicest pickings. She directs me to the chosen ones, and I

bend, cut, pluck, dig. Another woman, on her way out, shouts out techniques from the other side of the

fence on how to use a pitchfork to loosen and pull without breaking, the world’s most delicious carrots.

As my mom and I admire how cute the radishes look bobbing up and out of the soil, Josh comes by to

say hello and see if we are ok and advises us that if we just go down a bit further, the radishes are even

bigger. We heed his advice, knowing we will later delight in their peppery crunch. When we get to the

zucchini, Alethea, the other half of the couple who operate this fully organic, only hand-tilled learning

farm, shows me how to find and cut the squash that are deep under the vines, and tips me off how to

identify the precious, male blossoms that I may also take home and fill with ricotta cheese and gently fry

for a decadent treat.

Our bags are getting heavy with our bounty, and we pause often to deeply inhale the sunshine, the

smiles of the others around us, and the scent of soil and growing, and basil basking in the heat, waiting

for us. That is our last part of the morning, choosing the herbs and flowers to cut. Definitely some dill

for my egg salad. Mom would like sage for her favorite pasta dish. That she gathers herself, as they are

higher and easier to cut. I remember that Queen Anne’s Lace were her favorite flower as a child, she

would pick them along the shoreline of College Point. I put together a simple yet elegant bouquet of

just them, even though there are bright and varied flowers flirtingly swaying in the breeze around me.

It’s getting hot and our blouses are beginning to stick but we stop for one more moment to just listen –

to the birds on the posts, to the soil underfoot, to mothers asking their kids to slow down and be careful

not to step on the turnips. . .

We have shaken the dirt off the carrots as best we can. We have rinsed out radishes in the outdoor

sinks, although there is some romance in seeing the still earthen-covered vegetables spread across our

kitchen counters. We are ready to leave when one of the volunteers, a handsome, older gentleman

says, “wait a minute, I will be right back”. He hurries away carrying a pair of scissors and returns with a

container of ever-so-gently perfumed Nasturtium flowers, all orange and yellow and pointy. He says, “I

heard you say you were going to make a big salad for dinner, add these to it.” I give him a hesitant look,

but he encourages me. And he was right, these exotic blooms were a magical and almost hedonistic

topping to an already abundant bowl of greens - that I had harvested myself! Who knew vegetables

could bring so much happiness!

In the words of another cherished piece of Oyster Bay, Billy Joel, “these are the days to hold on to”.

There is so much more to this inclusive learning farm than the personal Zen and produce I gather from

it. Orkestai Farm grows community through creative participation in this sanctuary so we may

understand the interconnectedness of humans, plants and earth, and allow us to each enjoy a sense of

well-being to renew the spirit.

Laura Savini is public television content creator and marketer, and is married to yet another Oyster Bay

gem, the prolific songwriter and performer Jimmy Webb. They love their days enjoying Long Island’s

gardens and North Shore and ocean beaches.