The News from Windflower Farm
What’s in the share?
- Swiss chard
- Arugula
- Spinach
- Sweet peppers
- Assorted tomatoes
- Basil (likely our last)
- Onions
- Yellow potatoes
- Acorn squash
- Summer squash
Your fruit share will be prunes (plums) from Yonder Farm
Crop readiness is not always predictable a week out. Plums can fail to ripen in time if nights are too cold; lettuce can bolt in a matter of days with enough heat. Bugs and pathogens take their toll. So, we often find ourselves having to modify our harvest plans. The tentative list for next week: cabbage, carrots, beets, and red onions (Borscht? A salad?), along with spinach, kale, pumpkins, tomatoes, and peppers.
What’s new on the farm?
We’ve been bringing in our storage crops – 40 bushes here, 80 bushels there. The potato and winter squash crops are 80 to 90-percent harvested. We are now focused on sweet potatoes, which appear to be running a little small this year. Thankfully, we’ve never seen a connection between size and flavor in sweet potatoes. Leeks, carrots and beets will be next. These beautiful late summer days have been wonderful to work in.
Although it has been one 80-degree day after another this week, it’s fall planting season. We’ll plant the last of this season’s greens this week. Soon, we’ll plant the Alliums for our 2025 harvest. And we’ll be sowing the greens (spinach, kale, chard, tatsoi) for the coming winter harvest in the week ahead. We are in the final winter CSA planning stages.
The cold season to-do list: Put up wood for the winter stove, set the concrete piers for a barn bump-out to be built in early winter, plant the garlic, take the tunnels down, etc. Red maples are showing some color. Peak colors are only ten or so days away in the North Country, but probably three weeks off here.
Have a great week, Ted
Central Brooklyn CSA 