It’s a Week B Pick-Up ThisThursday, October 5th!
This week’s share:
-Spinach
-Butter head lettuce
-Your choice of cooking greens (including dinosaur kale, tatsoi, collards and Swiss chard)
-Yellow onions
-Delicata squashes
-Potatoes
-Dill or cilantro
-Chiles
-Tomatoes
-Green beans
-Summer squashes, and another item. Salsa vegetables – tomatoes, peppers, onions, chiles, cilantro – will be with us for just another week or two, but, as they give way, fall crops like Delicata squashes and sweet potatoes will take their place.
Your fruit share will include Golden Supreme apples and Bosc pears from Yonder Farm. Next week, you’ll get Yonder’s Jonagold apples and the Borden’s cider.
CSA News from Windflower Farm
Delivery #18, October 3 and 5, 2017
This week’s share: Spinach, butterhead lettuce, your choice of cooking greens (including dinosaur kale, tatsoi, collards and Swiss chard), yellow onions, Delicata squashes, potatoes, dill or cilantro, chiles, tomatoes, green beans or summer squashes, and another item. Salsa vegetables – tomatoes, peppers, onions, chiles, cilantro – will be with us for just another week or two, but, as they give way, fall crops like Delicata squashes and sweet potatoes will take their place. Today’s Delicatas (my favorite of the winter squashes) can be prepared by cutting them in half lengthwise, removing their seeds, and roasting them for 30-40 minutes in the oven until fork soft. Some people add a little butter and brown sugar or maple syrup, but I don’t think it’s necessary. Their skins, if washed before baking, are also edible. Acorn squashes or more Delicatas will arrive next week, and still more winter squashes will arrive the week after that, so there is no need to hold onto these. Your fruit share will include Golden Supreme apples and Bosc pears from Yonder Farm. Next week, you’ll get Yonder’s Jonagold apples and the Borden’s cider.
We have been removing spent tomato plants from our “caterpillar” greenhouses this week. We take out the old vines in order to make room for the winter greens we’ll plant next week. The volume of plant matter we’ve removed so far is huge, nearly doubling the size of our compost piles. We have organized those piles into windrows. We start the tomato vines composting in a way that reminds me of how we use a sourdough starter to make bread. We place the fresh green material on the ground, forming a new windrow, then cover it lightly with a layer of compost from the windrow next door. That compost is full of the microorganisms that get the process underway. In a few weeks, we’ll turn the compost for the first time, adding other organic materials, including old straw, hay, weeds and culled vegetables. The process is a slow one, taking an entire season from start to finish. The pile we are starting now is for next year’s fall crops. By the time we have tuned the compost six or eight times, the pile has taken on a uniform dark brown color, and it no longer looks or smells anything like the waste vegetables and plant matter that it is composed of. Once it’s spread, the compost will transform these tired greenhouse soils, restoring them to the healthy condition farmers call good tilth, and giving our winter greens a good start.
Have a great week, Ted
Central Brooklyn CSA 