The News from Windflower Farm
What’s in your share?
- Assorted tomatoes
- Peppers
- Ed’s Red shallots
- Kale mix
- Parsley
- Delicata squash
- Radishes
- Green leaf or Butterhead lettuce
- Eggplant
Your fruit share will be pears from Yonder Farm.
Next week, you’ll get yellow onions, more winter squashes and peppers, the last of our tomatoes, plus a variety of other fall vegetables and Brian’s carrots.
What’s new on the farm?
A cold, steady rain is falling as I write. The harvest team has relocated to the tomato and pepper greenhouses. Everyone is bundled up. Nate and I have retreated from the field where we had been preparing beds for fall onions and garlic. Planting Alliums and winter greens, harvesting sweet potatoes, leeks and miscellaneous roots and cleaning up the farm are our final projects of the season, and they will take all of the next four to five weeks. Nate and Jan have decided to visit a former worker (and new mom), leaving me to my own devices. And I am thinking about the farm tasks – and the five-week calendar – that will take us to the finish line.
It appears that summer has left us for good. Frost warnings have already been issued for our region. The forecast is for three rainy days, daytime highs in the 50s and overnight lows in the upper 30s. The warmth and daylight hours that make summer vegetables sweet and full of flavor are going fast. Last week’s corn was the last of the season. Next week’s tomatoes will likely be the last of our tomatoes. The Zephyr squashes and basil are looking peaked and are ready to retire for the season. Soon, we’ll be setting out the row covers and sandbags that will keep things from freezing during these final weeks. The farm crew knows that we are in the home stretch.
You might well ask what we have left to include in your weekly shares. To me, some of the best things to come from the vegetable garden are ahead of us, but perhaps that is because it is finally cool enough to consider firing up the oven: Leeks. Ginger. Small fennel bulbs, if they make it. Broccoli, if it makes it. Acorn and butternut squashes. Sweet potatoes, but not for another week or two, after they’ve been cured and become sweet in our heated greenhouse. Red and yellow onions and shallots. Assorted greens. And watermelon radishes and beets and Brian’s carrots.
Best wishes, Ted
Central Brooklyn CSA 