CSA News from Windflower Farm
Delivery #5, Week of July 2, 2018
Happy July fourth!
Your fifth share of the season will contain peas or bunched pea shoots. This year, we have grown snap peas and snow peas, both of which are eaten as whole pods either fresh or steamed. If you get your peas in bunched form, keep in mind that the tendrils and leaves and blossoms are good in salads and that the stems are woody and should be discarded. You’ll also get bunched yellow onions, purple kohlrabi, potted Genovese basil, garlic scapes and a variety of greens, including two heads of lettuce, Swiss chard, a mustard mix and collards. And you’ll get cucumbers and green zucchinis or yellow ‘Zephyr’ squashes. Your fruit share will consist of Pete’s small but delicious sweet cherries.
We have begun practicing the siesta here at the farm. We were indoors watching the World Cup after lunch yesterday, when temperatures were in the 90s, and then out planting beans in the relatively cooler evening hours. Irrigating happened all day long, but that was largely a matter of my turning valves and operating pumps. It is early Sunday morning as I write this, the Medinas are harvesting collards and Swiss chard and Jan is harvesting some of the longer lived cut flower varieties. They will cool their harvests, dunking them into tubs of cold well water, in the case of the greens, or into buckets of fresh water in the case of the cut flowers, and have them in their respective coolers before the day heats up (we will harvest your salad greens tomorrow). We will then turn our attention to onions, cucumbers, kohlrabi and squashes – vegetables that are less immediately sensitive to the heat. Processing the onions and kohlrabi – removing stems, roots and bad leaves and bunching – is something we will do in the shade, the Medina’s Mariachi music in the background, something cold to drink at hand.
You are invited to our open house at Windflower Farm on the weekend of August 25 – 26. There will be farm tours, a potluck supper, live music, a bonfire, camping (or staying at a nearby B&B or motel), breakfast prepared by the farm crew, a county fair, swimming in the Battenkill River and the camaraderie of your fellow CSA members from throughout New York. More details to come, including information regarding transportation.
I hope you can join us. And I hope you have a happy fourth of July.
Best wishes, Ted
Central Brooklyn CSA 