The News from Windflower Farm
A few announcements from the Windflower team: Our open house will take place at the end of the month (June 29th and 30th). Details can be found at Windflower Farm’s Open House Registration (wufoo.com). A reservation is required for our planning purposes, and the deadline is June 16th.
Also, Nate has designed two different Windflower Farm hats. Orders must be in by June 9th. They can be ordered at Windflower Farm’s Hat Order Form (wufoo.com). Finally, something you may not be aware of: Nate has put together a 20-minute film about the farm, and it can be found at Windflower Farm CSA (youtube.com).
What’s in the share?
- Two lettuces – a green Romaine and a frilly leafed red cutting lettuce.
- Bok choy
- Kale – Red Russian
- Salad turnips, the tops of which can also be eaten
- Green bunching onions
- Potted Genovese basil
The fruit share will be strawberries from Yonder Farm
What’s new on the farm?
We’ve been trellising cucumbers this weekend. It has been many years since we last grew greenhouse cucumbers and were happy to learn whenbrushing up on best cultural practices that many new varieties and techniques have been developed in the meantime. The system we’ve decided to use is new to us. It involves overhead wires, a gizmo that resembles a croquet wicket, although one with a few additional bends, a ball of string, compostable clips, scissors, and a step ladder.
The process has three steps. First, we wrap about 15’ of trellising string around the wicket and then climb the ladder to attach it to the overhead wire, some 10’ above the ground, letting a tail of string reach down to a plant. One wicket for each plant, one heavy overhead wire for each of the six 130-foot rows of cucumbers in the greenhouse. In the next step, we attach the cucumber plant to the string with one or two clips, and in this waythe cucumber begins to climb the trellis. We’ll add clips every week as the vines grow. In the final step, we prune the plant to a single vine or leader,removing suckers and any baby cucumbers until the plant has grown large enough to support fruit. Once the cucumber vine has grown tall enough to reach the overhead wire, we will unspool several feet of string from the wicket, effectively lowering the fruiting portion of the cucumber vine to a workable, harvesting height. We expect to do this three times over the life of the plant. You should see these cucumbers in your CSA shares in a couple of weeks.
The tunnel contains more than 700 plants, so we’ll be at it for a while. I am alone this morning. To make the time pass, I’m listening to The Hunter, the second of Tana French’s novels set in Ireland. In one scene, a group of sheep farmers are talking about selling out to an Englishman who wantsthe gold they have been told lies under their farms. “What would you do with all that money?” they are asked. One would buy a prize ram. All would fix up their farmhouses, mend fences, repair barns, perhaps take a little more time for themselves. But none would sell their flocks or leave. Which sounds about right. If it were me, I wouldn’t sell either, although, on this very hot morning in the greenhouse, and only for a moment, I could be tempted. Images of a small yacht tucked in a scenic harbor on the cool and breezy coast of Maine come to mind.
Have a great week, Ted
Central Brooklyn CSA 