The News from Windflower Farm
Greetings from all of us at Windflower Farm! Thank you for joining our CSA for the 2023 season. If you have received this email, then you are signed up to get a share. We’ll be making our first deliveries this week. We hope that you enjoy our weekly offerings.
What you’ll get this week
- Green Romaine or red oak leaf lettuce
- Red radishes, bunched
- Baby onions, bunched
- Mixed salad greens, bunched
- Assorted kales, bunched
- Purple basil, potted
There will be no fruit this week because of the cold weather. The 20-week fruit share will likely start in the third week.
The season has started cold, windy and dry. “Don’t plant it if you can’t irrigate it.” That had not been the mantra of many a farmer in the Northeast ten years ago, or even five, but it is now. There is no rain in the ten-day forecast. Like most springs that we have experienced in our 24 years here – the weather has been highly variable. We had freezing temperatures just last week, and today it is in the middle 80s. The changeability of the weather can be maddening to the market gardener. Row covers on, row covers off, row covers on again. Warm season veggies will be slower to come this year than they were last year, but they’ll come. Patience may be needed. In the meantime, your shares will be comprised of the salad crops that do well in the spring – lettuces, kales, radishes. Soon, kohlrabi, beets and turnips will fill out your shares. Then cucumbers, zucchinis, broccoli and cabbages will come. And, later, tomatoes, corn and peppers.
News from the farm
It is midday Saturday and Nate and I are on the front porch, ostensibly to talk about our afternoon work, which will mostly involve irrigation. But our attention is drawn to the bird calls in the trees and on the telephone wires across the road from us. Three Bluebirds take turns dive bombing little bugs in the grass from their overhead perch. We’ve been pulled into the orbit of Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology, and their app called Merlin has, in just the past two days, helped us to identify some 31 species of birds by the calls they make. Instead of a cacophony of birdsong, we have begun to be able to identify the sounds of individual species. Like learning to tease out the sound of the oboe and the piccolo from the larger orchestra, we can now hear the Warbling Vireo, the Song Sparrow, the Grey Catbird.
Briefly, the birding app believes it has picked up a Common Loon, but it has placed a question mark beside the notation. A wise hedge, I think. It turns out to have been the poolside shouts of our neighbor Charlie, or perhaps his little brother Brady, both of whom will work here during school break. Later, while I investigate the readiness of our strawberries for harvest, the app registers the dreaded Cedar Waxwing, lover of red ripe strawberries. I hope that it is mistaken, kidding even, but I know better. It is time to cover the strawberries. Look for them in fruit shares before long.
Have a great week, Ted
Central Brooklyn CSA 