The News from Windflower Farm
Happy Labor Day from all of us at Windflower Farm. Summer isn’t over yet, but we can sense it winding down here at the farm. It’s a time of transition in our fields and among our school-age staff. This week, you’ll be getting tomatoes, peppers, onions, chiles, cilantro and edamame – all warm weather vegetables. But fall crops are coming. Next week, you’ll get the potatoes and Rosemary we had hoped to send this week, along with Delicata squash and garlic. Greens have responded well to the cooler and wetter weather of recent weeks. This week, the greens category will be filled out with lettuce, choy and cabbage. Next week, you’ll get a different lettuce, plus kale and spinach. And you’ll still be getting tomatoes, peppers, and the occasional summer squashes and eggplants as long as the weather holds.
What’s in your share this week?
- Tomatoes
- Peppers
- Onions
- Chiles
- Cilantro
- Edamame
- Lettuce
- Mei Qing Choi
- Cabbage
- Beets
If you are new to edamame, follow these simple steps: Steam for three to four minutes, sprinkle with salt and then eat, with a cold beer or without. To eat, place the pod in your mouth without letting go, then bite down gently, pulling the pod through your teeth, leaving the tasty little beans behind. Your fruit share will consist of Yonder Farm’s peaches. If they are a little hard, just let them sit for a couple of days.
What’s new on the farm?
We have a number of things to do during the next four or five weeks, giving some real focus to our early fall. Tomorrow, we’ll begin preparing the ground so that we can plant next year’s strawberries by the end of the week. We’ll also plant the last field greens of the season – spinach, arugula, a new red colored kale, Tatsoi, and a purple choy. And we’ll work on getting potatoes out of the ground. Next week, in the greenhouse, we’ll sow a variety of greens for the winter share and, in the field, we’ll plant red and yellow onion plants for harvest next spring. We’ll also sow cover crop seeds where we can and finish harvesting acorn and Delicata squashes and cabbages.
During the following week, we’ll prepare greenhouses for winter greens by removing the non-performing tomato vines and old cut flowers, adding compost and tilling the soil. We’ll also be harvesting butternut squashes, leeks, sweet potatoes, and the remaining potatoes and carrots in anticipation of our first frost.
The week after that, we’ll plant all of the winter greens in the greenhouses and prepare field beds for garlic and onion sets. This will entail more compost applications and bed forming and a session of garlic bulb busting (it’s the individual cloves that we plant and will become next year’s bulbs). And the last several weeks of the season will be spent planting garlic, which we’d like wrapped up by October 15th, and onion sets, which should be completed by election day. I’m sure it will unfold just like clockwork.
Have a great week, Ted
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Ted Blomgren
Windflower Farm
Central Brooklyn CSA 