The News from Windflower Farm
Hello from Windflower Farm (where winter CSA shares are still available!)
This week’s share
- Savoy cabbage
- Swiss chard
- Kale
- Garlic
- Ginger
- “Rainbow’ carrots
- Red potatoes
- Leeks
- Butternut squash
Next week’s share will include shallots, red cabbage and more sweet potatoes along with more of the usual suspects.
If you are an odd week CSA member, this week’s share is your last of the season. On behalf of everyone here at Windflower Farm, many thanks for being with us. We hope you have enjoyed your share of our farm’s 2020 harvest. It is because you decided to be with us that we were able to pursue the work that we love for another year. If you haven’t had enough of our produce, and want to help keep my staff and me from running wild on the back roads of Washington County, consider joining us for our four month, four delivery winter share. It will begin on the Saturday before Thanksgiving Day and run through early February and include hardy greens from our unheated greenhouses, a wide variety of our stored root vegetables, apples and pears from neighboring farms and something sweet (cider or jam or honey) with each delivery. For more winter share information, please click here: https://windflowerfarm.wufoo.com/forms/m1xr27rk05nzoa8/
What’s new on the farm?
Jan, Nate and I have just come in from washing carrots and ginger and it got me thinking about soups. The cookbook, Soup’s On, has one of our favorite recipes featuring these two crops: Coconut Carrot Soup with Ginger and Dill. The only thing better than reaching a beautiful mountain lookout on an October hike is digging into your daypack and finding a thermos full of hot carrot ginger soup with which to admire the view. Nate will post the recipe on our Instagram page.
Many of the ingredients of a potato leek soup can be found in the week’s share, too. Our favorite comes from Moosewood, where carrots are also an important part. This week’s variety of carrot is called ‘Rainbow’ and they are from the last bed on our farm. Then there is butternut squash, which makes one of the very best “feel good’ soups I know. With a pot of soup on the stove, no winter day is too cold, no sky too bleak.
Jan is now napping, Nate is again baking pumpkin muffins for the farm crew – a triple batch for a cold day! – and the Medinas are wrapping up the harvest of some leeks and cabbages. The local staff are off today. They’ll be here tomorrow morning to offload whatever returnables are on the truck, wash tubs and the greens that will be in shares this week, and then fill bags, the heavy vegetables in one, and the light and leafy vegetables in another.
Our season began in March, which feels like a very long time ago. We welcome the change in seasons and what that portends for those of us whose lives move closely with them. Our last CSA harvest will take place on Wednesday of next week, and although the to-do list is still long, we see an end to the work, or at least a change in the nature of the work. In the next ten days, we’ll plant the final three acres of rye cover crops, transplant the last 20,000 or so of our fall onion sets, cover our strawberries, garlic, onions and winter greens, and tuck away our pumps, unneeded row covers, sand bags and irrigation lines. We expect a low of 17 degrees by week’s end.
The Medinas will head off to Mexico next Saturday and what appears to be a calendar full of fiestas in celebration of weddings, births and faith. I don’t think they care one way or another about the election here. They expect corruption and division in politics, having had little experience of anything else. Family and community are at the center of their lives. After work today, young Martin came to ask if we would employ his spouse next year. They are hoping to work on a house of their own before starting a family. I told him it was something we would try to make work.
I believe our election matters. I bet you do, too. I can’t believe that nearly half of us don’t vote. Please tell everyone you know to get out to the polls next week!
Take care, Ted
Central Brooklyn CSA 