CSA News from Windflower Farm
Delivery #18, Week of October 1st, 2018
This week’s share. Sweet potatoes, leeks, acorn squashes, tomatoes (perhaps our last), sweet peppers, chiles, garlic, eggplant, lettuce, your choice of arugula or a salad mix and kale or Swiss chard. Your fruit will be Gala apples. Next week, you’ll get more sweet potatoes (so, eat these up!), plus onions, peppers, and assorted greens.
For newcomers to sweet potatoes, try this simple approach: Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Wash the sweet potatoes because their skins are edible and nutritious, poke the roots with a fork in a couple of places, place them on a baking dish to catch their drippings, and bake for about an hour, or until they are oozing with caramelized juices. They should be fork soft when ready.
News from Windflower Farm. After this week, there will be just four more CSA deliveries. But don’t despair – winter shares will be available soon! The winter share is comprised of four monthly deliveries (from November through February) of fresh greens and stored root vegetables from Windflower Farm, fruit (apples and pears) from Borden Farm, a sweet treat of some kind (honey, cider, jam, etc.) each month from a local producer and optional eggs and maple products from the Davis family. Stay tuned!
Nearly every year, for as long as we’ve owned our Kubota L3130, I’ve had to replace the bearings on the front end of the tractor. Sometimes the left, sometimes the right. I guess the original engineering was a little off. When the bearings fail, the wheel wobbles, the gears grind audibly, the four wheel drive knuckle drips gear oil, and, if left unattended, the wheel eventually falls off. This unfolds over the course of a few days or, at most, a couple of weeks. I try to deal with the problem sometime between the grinding stage and the wheel falling off. They always have the parts in stock down at the dealership because they know I’ll be coming. As you can imagine, given that we’ve owned the tractor for nearly 15 years, I’ve become relatively proficient at the job. In the early years, it would take about half a day. More recently, it has taken closer to two hours. Martin told me yesterday that the front end has been grinding again, and he has positioned a bucket underneath the knuckle to catch the oil. While he is slightly amused by the whole thing, my only reaction is surprise at how late it has come this year. The week ahead will be a rainy one, so I’ll tackle the project then. I’ll report back if I’ve achieved a new personal record.
Also this week, in addition to ongoing harvests, the farm team will finish clearing the tomatoes out of the eight or nine small greenhouses that we’ll plant to winter greens. Soon afterward, we’ll add compost, chisel plow and till in preparation for planting. Next week we’ll plant the Swiss chard, spinach, Koji, red choy, arugula and various kales for the winter share.
Have a great week, Ted
Central Brooklyn CSA 