The News from Windflower Farm
What’s in the vegetable share?
- Lettuce
- Arugula
- Bok Choy
- Tomatoes
- Sweet Peppers
- Bunched beets
- Yellow Onions
- Yellow Potatoes
- Delicata Squash
Spinach, carrots, cilantro, red onions and radicchio will be coming next week. Next week’s tomatoes may be the last of the season.
The fruit share will be Yonder Farm’s Bosc pears. We expect to send apples next week.
News from the farm
A couple of Eastern Wood Pewees are chatting away outside my window on this first day of fall. I imagine that they are discussing the drought, which is surely impacting their lives as much as it is ours. It must make finding drinking water more difficult. Is finding food more difficult, too? I’ve noticed that there are far fewer insects.
We are fortunate in having a deep and plentiful well. It was drilled for us by Clarence Gould and his son, Clarence Jr. In return for our $6,500, they promised us 12 gallons of water per minute and ended up giving what they estimated to be a hundred. Jan spent the day with them while they drilled, which may have encouraged them to prolong their drilling. We ended up with a well that is 470’ deep and a resource that has been our salvation on more than one occasion. While our two ponds and newest well have gone dry, this one deep well keeps our greenhouses, field crops and produce packing station going. It is no exaggeration to say that without irrigation, we’d have been unable to produce a single crop this year. It’s been that dry. Yesterday, Nate irrigated Swiss chard, spinach, bok choy, kale, lettuce and arugula. Today, he irrigated two blocks of broccoli and cabbage.
It’s been a tough growing season for more than those of us who grow vegetables. Nearby dairy farmers are under stress, too – some have had to bring outside water to their herds and, because they expect declines in forage and grain production, will have to purchase additional feed. The drought is widespread. NASA has reported that the rate of drying of the Earth’s soil has accelerated worldwide. Dry places are getting dryer, while wet places are not getting wetter. Locally, the level of Lake Champlain is five feet below where it was in July. This fall, many trees are bypassing their colorful foliage stage, going directly from green to brown.
We had a first-hand peek at ground water levels here at the farm when we did some work on our well last week. Normally, ground water lies 12’ below the surface here, but now it is 16’ below ground level. We have invested nearly $3000 in cover crops seeds this year, but we’re not sure if they will germinate and so they sit in our barn unplanted. The 10-day weather forecast promises hit-or-miss showers, and we remain hopeful.
Have a great week, Ted
Central Brooklyn CSA 