The News from Windflower Farm
Hello from the Windflower Farm! Rain showers here this week have been light but very helpful. The massive storm that soaked New York City and the lower Hudson Valley did a clockwise run around the farm. This week, we’ll be harvesting garlic, planting fall broccoli and continuing the long process of getting ahead of the weeds.
What’s in your share?
- Yellow ‘Forum’ onions
- Leaf lettuce
- Red bunched ‘Boro’ beets
- Swiss chard
- Mixed kales
- Summer squashes/zucchinis
- Slicing cucumbers
- Tomatoes
- Potted parsley or Thai basil
Your fruit share will be blueberries from Yonder Farm. Our own will be coming soon.
Tomatoes are just starting, but the crop looks good. Fennel will be coming next week, sweet peppers, corn and beans are around the corner – the vegetables of summer are nearly here.
What’s new on the farm?
We will continue to prepackage your shares all season, and perhaps well into next year, depending on the availability of an effective vaccine. The safest distribution system continues to be the one that requires the fewest hands. But we’d like to get away from the boxes we’ve been using when and where we can. They are very expensive and produce quite a bit of waste. It might surprise those of you who are new to us, but, with the exception of a site that lacks storage facilities, we have not had to use boxes or bags ever before – instead we have used a returnable, washable tote.
We’ll begin to move away from boxes at some sites as early as this week (this will not apply to local shares or the park site in Washington Hts.). We’ll do it in a way that won’t require any more hands than in our first few weeks. We’ll pre-bag at the farm just as we have been doing, and instead of putting the bags in boxes for you to take home, we’ll put those bags into tubs – perhaps four per tub – that will be left at the site. This one simple change will reduce from the waste stream as many as a thousand boxes per week. When we bring the tubs back from the city to the farm, we will wash them under high pressure using a bleach solution, and then we’ll let them sit in clean storage for several days prior to reuse. Tomatoes and occasional other items will be packaged separately, much as is your fruit, so they are not damaged in transit. These will be handed out by a CSA volunteer – the only non-farm individual to handle your food package. Please tell me what you think. And thank you for bearing with us as we work through these logistics.
Have a great week, Ted
Central Brooklyn CSA 