The News from Windflower Farm
It’s grain and maple share week! If you’ve ordered either, be sure to get them.
Rain has come, and sunshine and heat are coming. Finally, the arrival of summer. Cucumbers, zucchini and yellow squashes are starting, and at least one of them will make it to you this week.
What you’ll get this week
- Green butterhead lettuce, a variety called ‘Nancy’
- Bok Choy
- Kohlrabi
- Hakurei turnips, a sweet Japanese variety
- Mixed kales
- Garlic scapes (5)
- Cucumbers or summer squash
The fruit share will be our own organically grown strawberries along with Yonder Farm’s rhubarb.
News from the farm
Young Charlie walked in the door just before 8:00 this morning. You could hear him coming all the way from his house in his well-used Ford pickup. It was music to my ears. School is out for the summer, and it’s his first day at work. Charlie’s presence makes it possible for both Nate and me to be out on the farm today, Nate to cultivate and me to prepare beds for the next plantings of sweet corn, lettuce, cabbage, and other odds and ends.
Nate is juggling three tractors today. He’s using the John Deere 5425 and a Checchi-Magli hilling set in sweet corn, potatoes and leeks. He’s got the Duos (small discs) on the G tractor. They are for the direct seeded crops that have just emerged along with a flush of new weeds. And he’s got the Steketees (a collection of five sweeps) set up on the electric blue tractor. It’s for onions, beets, greens, and herbs. His goal is to get through the whole farm every week or two.
Charlie is a high schooler from next door and in his second season with us. His sister worked for us for a couple of summers, and now, unbelievably, she has graduated from college and is already a nurse on her way to becoming a physician’s assistant. His little brother Brady will join us beginning next week. And I hope that Ezden and Kaitlin, kids from two other nearby families, will also be joining us shortly. If the moms or dads in the neighborhood want to know where their kids are, they might start here.
It’s safe now to remove the covers from our collards, cabbages, broccoli and even our bok choy. The flea beetles that the covers are intended to protect these crops from prefer younger, more tender plants like arugula. When we first put the covers on the beds, the plants are small, and the cover lies nearly flat on the ground. Over time, the developing crop pushes the cover up, sometimes, quite high. It was our hope today that what was pushing the covers up was all crop, but we were met with a surprise: a mix of pigweed, lambsquarters, lady’s purse, Galinsoga, and a few other invaders. And so there will be some hands-and-knees weeding, which is not our favorite way to deal with weeds, but it’s OK. The rain has made it easy to pull weeds, the weather is comfortable, and we have a full crew, the many hands that will make light work of the project.
Have a great week, Ted
Central Brooklyn CSA 