CSA News from Windflower Farm
Delivery #14, Week of September 3rd, 2018
This week’s share. The last of our Genovese basil (use it quickly, it’s already showing symptoms of downy mildew), tomatoes, peppers, yellow onions, miscellaneous potatoes, various red lettuces, Mei Qing choy, sweet corn (you might want to cut tips off prior to husking to remove any caterpillars), green beans and zucchinis or pattypans or cucumbers. Your fruit will be Yonder’s peaches. Next week, you should see many of the same items plus radishes, arugula, garlic and Swiss chard or a salad mix. Kale should be coming the week after that. During September, summer vegetables will give way to the leeks, winter squashes, sweet potatoes, root crops and the greens of fall.
Notes from the farm. On this weekend during which some of us are celebrating or bemoaning or simply looking for work, we feel gratitude for having work that we love in a place we love. It is not always easy, and it’s often frustrating, but what work isn’t. Today, Labor Day, we are at the farm preparing for Tuesday’s deliveries, but in good spirits, in part because we spent the weekend away, not thinking about farming, in pursuit of leisure and recreation.
A few years ago, I bought a 40-year old sailboat in Amityville, on Long Island, and sailed it through New York Harbor, up the Hudson River and Champlain Canal, and on to Lake Champlain, where it is now tethered to a mooring. I’ve been restoring it with my oldest friend, Frank. It is an old boat, purchased cheap, that still needs a fair amount of work, but it’s now fully rigged and has functional berths, a galley and a head. It’s a floating tiny house with a sail. It’s a retreat to a wild, watery world from the domesticated landscape of the farm.
Nate, TB, Jan and I drove to Lake Champlain for the weekend, our first visit since late June. On the drive north we passed maples with a few leaves already turning orange. The winds were a steady 20 mph from the south, producing large swells and fast sailing. I’ve promised to take the rest of the farm staff for a sail this coming Saturday. It is wonderful to have good work, but it’s also great to get away from it once in a while. I hope your Labor Day celebration was a good one!
This week’s farm work: harvesting and packing the week #14 share, weeding the fall broccoli, planting the next succession of greens (arugula, mustard mix, kale mix, Koji, lettuces and choy), harvesting the winter squashes and preparing the land for (and planting, if possible) next year’s strawberries.
Best wishes, Ted
Central Brooklyn CSA 