What’s in the share?
- Radicchio
- Parsley
- Lettuce
- Spinach
- Fennel
- Ginger
- Sweet potatoes
- Red onions
- Shallots
- Kale
- Carrots
This week’s delivery is the last of the season and wraps up our 20th year at Windflower Farm. We hope you have enjoyed your share of our farm’s production. Please drop us a line with your thoughts about the CSA season and what we might do differently in the years ahead (tedblomgren@gmail.com). Thank you for being with us. If you’ve enjoyed being a part of the CSA, please consider a winter share (more information can be found below).
What’s new on the farm?
As if on cue, our first snowfall and the first prolonged cold temperature of the fall are expected on Thursday, the day after our final field harvest. The Medina brothers, who have never been in snow, are excited for this first experience. For the rest of us, we are happy about the timing. It will be something of a race, but we believe we can get the fields cleaned up, most of the rest of the fall onions planted, and the fall-planted crops covered before the snow comes.
Old timers around here will tell you that your fields will be safe from erosion if you sow your cover crops before Thanksgiving. We are happy to report that we have managed to get all of our fields cover cropped, sowing two tons of rye seeds in the process. The earliest plantings are now thick with young rye plants, and the last have germinated and are filling in.
Winterizing the farm is underway. Jan’s to-do list is two pages long. Irrigation reels, pumps and pipes are being tucked into warm places. Doors and windows are being battened. Supplies we won’t need until the spring are being organized and placed in various barns. And storage vegetables are being washed, sorted, bagged or crated and tucked into coolers for the winter CSA season.
Jan, Nate and I are excited to be turning our attention to two winter projects: completing construction of a tiny house and building the next electric tractor. The tiny house is intended to be a home for short term visitors – the (mostly young) people who come to work on our farm for a month or two each summer. Let us know if you might like to work with us for some or all of the next farming season – we’d love to have you!. The electric tractor project is aimed at improving the design of a couple tractors that we have used here for the past several years. Our goal is to build a zero emissions machine that can be used to plant and weed vegetables.
On behalf of all of us at Windflower Farm, I’d like to thank you for being with us. Your purchase of our organic vegetable share is an investment that trickles throughout the Hudson Valley and beyond. It provides many of us with a decent living, it keeps our little place on earth productive and healthy, and it scatters your dollars through several local businesses that play important supporting roles in the broader sustainable agricultural community here. Special thanks go to the core group organizers at each of our CSA sites. They are a remarkable group of people for whose dedication to organic farming and community building we are forever grateful.
What’s a winter share?
Winter share signups are underway! The share will start on Saturday, November 23rd, giving you enough time to empty your refrigerators of any summer share leftovers. The season lasts a total of four months, and shares come just once a month, on the following four Saturdays – November 23, December 14, January 11, February 8. Each month, the winter share, which comes pre-packaged in a returnable box, will include a big bag of greens (about 2 lb of spinach, kale or mustard greens from our unheated greenhouses), all kinds of storage vegetables (8 lb or so of carrots, beets, red and yellow onions, celeriac, potatoes, winter squashes and more), about 4 lb of apples and pears, and a locally made sweet treat (honey or jelly or apple cider). I hope you’ll decide to join us and keep our farm team gainfully employed during the winter! Follow this link to learn more and to sign up.
https://windflowerfarm.wufoo.com/forms/m1xr27rk05nzoa8/
Wishing you a happy and healthy holiday season,
Ted, Jan and the Windflower Farm team
Central Brooklyn CSA 