Distribution #2 – Week of June 15, 2020

The News from Windflower Farm

Greetings from Windflower Farm. Although we had showers last week, we continue to irrigate. Rainfall totals in Albany are 3.5” below normal, and I think that we’ve been drier here. But dragging irrigating pipe around is not all we’ll do this week. We’ll wrap up winter squash transplanting, we’ll sow successions of corn, beans, cucumbers and greens, and we’ll weed onions, potatoes and cabbages.

What’s in your share?

This week, you’ll be getting more salad crops.

• Magenta, a red leaf lettuce
• Green Forest, a green Romaine lettuce
• Ruby Red Swiss chard
• Toscano (a.k.a. Dinosaur) kale
• Garlic Scapes
• Red radishes
• Scallions
• Potted purple, green or Thai basil

Your fruit share will be our own organically grown Chandler strawberries. When ours run their course, you’ll get strawberries from Pete at Yonder Farm, and then back to us for blueberries. Flower shares will be starting at many but not all sites this week. Egg shares from the Davis Family farmstead started last week. Next week’s vegetable shares will, as advertised, include more salad crops, including kohlrabi, a CSA favorite, or sweet, white Hakurei turnips. Squashes are getting close.

Keeping your share longer than just a day or two takes a few simple steps. First, remove your share from the bag it came in. Please try to reuse the bag if you can. It will make for a good trash bag liner if nothing else. Second, rinse everything, particularly the greens, in cold water. Third, spin or gently shake the greens to remove excess water. Finally, place the contents of your share in a perforated bag in the refrigerator. The crisper drawer is made for this, but the bottom shelf will do.  

What’s new on the farm?

I picked up Angelica, Elisa and Martin Medina at LaGuardia on Friday. For fifteen years or so, members of the extended Medina family have come from Laguna Prieta in Guanajuato, Mexico to help us out at the farm. The shutdown caused by the Coronavirus made them two months late in getting here, and I am very pleased that they have finally arrived. There is still a good deal to plant and the farm is getting weedy – we are all happy to have the reinforcements.

Angelica and Elisa are Martin’s aunties, and they will live with their sister Candelaria in Cambridge, who has been counting the days until their arrival. Today was their first day together on the farm, and they talked and laughed all day long as they weeded the shallots and red onions, catching one another up on what’s been going on in the lives of their families. Martin will be living with us in an apartment on the farm. Daniel, Candelaria’s 20 year-old son, has decided to live here with Martin. There are too many aunties, he says, for his small house. Salvador, Candelaria’s husband, jokes about moving here, too, but he won’t, because the three women he’ll share his home with this summer are fantastic cooks, and he knows that he’s in for one great traditional Mexican meal after another, fully aware of his good fortune. 

I hope you have a great week, Ted