CSA News from Windflower Farm
Delivery #21, Week of October 22nd, 2018
Cold weather is expected this week, along with sunshine. Fall colors are fading, and final harvests are underway.
This week’s share. Sweet potatoes, ginger, spinach, butternut squash, escarole (or kale), Koji (a dark green choy), fennel (bulbs and fronds), yellow onions, the last of our sweet peppers. Next week’s share is the very last of the season and will include a variety of greens and root crops.
What’s new at the farm? Today, Jan, Nate and I are washing and sorting ginger for this week’s delivery and planting elderberries. The Medina clan is harvesting the last four caterpillar tunnels of sweet peppers and the last four beds of sweet potatoes. Collectively, we are wearing every manner of outdoor clothing, none of which is likely to be seen on this year’s fashion runways. Martin is wearing a matching tan Carhartt jacket and balaclava, with green rain pants and duck taped black rubber boots. Daniel, whose appearance is the most sophisticated among us, has on a set of bright orange Healy Hanson fishermen’s bibs over a black Hefty trash bag. He might have just come off an Alaskan trawler. I’m wearing EMS’s flannel lined dungarees, in blue, and a black Prava jacket I found at the second hand shop in town, neither of which, it turns out, is any good in the wet.
Nate and Jan have been testing their new foul weather gear, most of which includes polypropylene and gore-tex and various shells, in part to keep them comfortable today, but also because we are heading off on a hiking trip the day after we make our last delivery, and they would like to know how well the stuff works. Our vacationing happens in the off season. Last year, we went to Acadia in coastal Maine in December and had the hiking trials to ourselves. This year, it will be Sierras and southern Utah in November. When we return, it will be just in time to prepare the first of your winter shares, and we’ll know exactly what to wear. This year’s surprise find is waterproof socks by Seal Skin (not real seal skins, of course).
Our winter share sign-up is underway! Help keep the Windflower Farm team off the streets of Valley Falls – please sign up today for our winter share. The link is here: https://windflowerfarm.wufoo.com/forms/m1xr27rk05nzoa8/
The winter share consists of four monthly deliveries that will include approximately 2 lb. of organically grown greens (including spinach, kales, Swiss chard and other greens) and 8-10 lb. of storage vegetables (including carrots, red and yellow onions, winter squash, a variety of potatoes, beets, leeks, sweet potatoes, popcorn, black beans and more), along with 4-6 lb. of fruits, and either apple cider or homemade jam or local honey – all packed to fit in a returnable box. This year, some of the storage vegetables (including carrots and butternut squashes) will come from neighboring organic farms, but almost everything else will come from Windflower Farm.
What’s new? Less plastic packaging! There are too many plastic bags in the world and we fully intend to reduce the number we use in packaging your vegetables. We’ll pack loose where we can, and use paper bags where we need packaging. Our GOAL will be to use zero plastic bags, but, because we are not yet sure that we can, we’ll promise this: to use no more than one plastic bag per month. And we have found a reusable, recyclable, tape-free box to help reduce waste.
An optional EGG share from neighbors raising free-range hens is also available in the winter, as is a MAPLE share. Our four deliveries are timed to coincide with the deliveries made to your CSA pickup site by Lewis-Waite Farm (of CSA Extras) for one-stop shopping.
Delivery dates: November 17th, December 15th, January 12th and February 9th. Follow this link for pricing and site specific details: https://windflowerfarm.wufoo.com/forms/m1xr27rk05nzoa8/
I hope you’ll join us.
Have a great week, Ted
Central Brooklyn CSA 