Winter News from Windflower Farm
Happy New Year from all of us at Windflower Farm! Your third and final box of the winter season will arrive this Saturday.
What you’ll get this month
- Purple and ‘Toscano’ kale and spinach from our winter greenhouses
- Sweet potatoes, Russet potatoes and a purple potato variety
- A butternut squash (from friends at Denison Farm)
- A bagful of yellow onions and ‘Rosa di Milano’ onions
- Carrots, beets and celeriac in another bag
- A jar of jelly made by our friend Deb using her own organically grown berries
- And a bag of (mostly) ‘Ruby Frost’ apples from the Borden Farm
Special note: Please take home the winter share’s cardboard box and recycle it. Thank you!
News from the farm
We took the final harvest of the season today from our unheated high tunnel #3, and without much sunshine, it was cold. We were a team of five, so the workload was not heavy, but we were all happy when we were finished and we could head to the warmth of the barn. The greens were not only inside a greenhouse, but they were hooped and covered by two layers of a row cover made from spun polypropylene that looks like a painter’s ground cloth. Uncovering the greens on this frigid day, it was gratifying to see the healthy beds of dark green and purple kale and bright green spinach. There are few pests in winter greens. Still, the kale suffered a little from the cold; although it is good now, you should probably use it up within the week. The spinach will keep longer.
On this final harvest day of the season, we received our first box of seeds for next season. These came from High Mowing Seeds, a small New England purveyor of organically produced seeds for Northern growers. As a certified organic grower, Windflower Farm is required (and would choose anyway) to buy organically grown seeds. One of the many benefits of this requirement is that there is now a cottage industry in small scale seed production. Nate took a course in seed saving last winter, and we have been saving seeds of a few favorites. Now there are opportunities for small scale farms to generate additional sales by growing seed crops to sell to organic seed purveyors – a little seed side hustle. High Mowing was featured in the excellent book, The Town That Food Saved, by Ben Hewitt. The town, Hardwick, Vermont, was by coincidence where I first learned to farm many years ago.
And that’s a wrap. Thanks very much for being with us during these first several weeks of winter. Take good care. You’ll hear from us soon regarding the 2025 season.
Best wishes, Ted and the team
Central Brooklyn CSA 