Distribution #1 – Week of June 8, 2020

The News from Windflower Farm

Hello from Windflower Farm. I hope this note finds you healthy and safe. Thank you for joining us – I hope you enjoy your CSA experience! And many thanks to the volunteers in your community – the core group – who make the CSA happen. It was an especially challenging job this year because of the coronavirus, and I want them to know what champions they are to all of us at Windflower Farm. 

What’s in the share?

This week, and for the next several weeks, you’ll be getting salad crops. Our last snow was a scant four weeks ago, and it’s early days on the farm. Warm weather crops lag behind the arrival of warm weather. Shares are typically small during the first four weeks of the season, so please keep your expectations modest. They will fill out, first with turnips and kohlrabi, then with squashes and cucumbers, and then with a diverse array of summer vegetables, including corn, tomatoes and beans. 

This week’s lineup:

• Romaine lettuce
• Arugula
• Red Russian kale
• Joi Choi
• Red radishes
• Green bunching onions

We will be pre-packaging shares after the harvest tomorrow. I don’t think the learning curve will be especially steep – we pre-package in the winter –  but we have not had to do it during the main season and we’re not sure how to budget our time. Nor do we know how to fit everything in the box. We’ve grown potted herbs intended for your first four deliveries (two basils, thyme and parsley), but they don’t fit in the box. Once we answer this question, they’ll be coming your way. 

The box and bag we are sending your share in is yours to keep. The absence of printing and wax make the box recyclable (and inexpensive). The bag is needed so that the box is not instantly ruined by the moisture from your greens. Please reuse where possible. At some point soon, we hope to send a more durable box that can be returned to the farm to be reused.  The chief reasons we are not currently taking boxes back is that we cannot be sure that the coronavirus will not be introduced into the truck contaminating the load and exposing our delivery team.

Egg shares start this week. Strawberries, the first items in fruit shares, will be coming along soon. Flowers will be starting at two locations on Thursday of this week. Please stay tuned.    

What’s happening on the farm?

I should be out cultivating the beets. I irrigated them yesterday, and I can see that the weeds will soon get ahead. But today’s priority is irrigation. Nate has been getting water to the strawberries in the front field, the tomatoes and peppers in the “caterpillar” tunnels, and now the squash and cucumbers in the middle field. These are all on drip irrigation and can be managed by starting small pumps here and there and switching valves. I’m working on the overhead sprinklers in the cabbage field. The first moisture any of these crops experienced was a three-inch snowfall about a month ago, a “sugar snow” so called because it melts so fast. Old timers would call it poor man’s fertilizer. The only other precipitation these crops have received was a half-inch rainfall two weeks ago, hence, the need to irrigate.  

I know that many of you are out protesting the injustices done to black people in America. We are thinking of you and stand with you. 

Be safe, and take care of each other, Ted and Jan