It’s a week B pick up this Thursday, July 13th!

This week’s share:

• Green Onions
• Squashes and/or Cucumbers
• Scallions
• Garlic Scapes
• Lettuce
• A choice of two from Swiss chard, kale, choy, and collards
• And a choice of two from Hakurei turnip, kohlrabi, and radishes.

Your fruit will be Yonder Farm’s sweet cherries.
Tomatoes are beginning to show some color and sweet corn is in tassel – both will be coming before long!

The Lewis Waite Deliveries were last week and a few members received some really great looking stuff. I finally ordered an item I’ve been looking forward to all year: the pork kielbasa. The Lewis Waite Farm pork kielbasa is just soooo good. I love it with cheese and crackers, on sandwiches, in scrambled eggs, everything. This kielbasa tends to have lots of fat that makes it really fun to cook with. Lewis Waite also has a leaner and less expensive beef option that is delicious, but pork always wins me over.

The next Lewis Waite Delivery is August 3rd. Did you know that you can place an order and edit it up to a few days before delivery? Helpful advice for those who sometimes forget to order until it’s too late (I know I have).

CSA News from Windflower Farm

Delivery #6, July 11/13, 2017

This week’s share: green onions, squashes and/or cucumbers, scallions, garlic scapes, lettuce, a choice of two from Swiss chard, kale, choy and collards, and a choice of two from Hakurei turnip, kohlrabi and radishes. Your fruit will be Yonder Farm’s sweet cherries. Tomatoes are beginning to show some color and sweet corn is in tassel – both will be coming before long!

Nate’s ducks have given birth to four ducklings – sweet little buff and black puffballs (you can see them on our Instagram page). Ducklings can imprint on a variety of potential caregivers, including chicken hens. There are four newborn ducklings here, none of them planned, and all healthy, but there seems to be some confusion about who mom is. Two ducks and a chicken all sat together on the clutch of eggs from which these four were born. One duckling is following the ducks around the yard, and the other three have imprinted on the broody hen. In the hunt for mom, the duckling following the ducks is technically right, of course, but the hen has turned out to be a ferocious protector of her little brood. At any sign of danger, they burrow under her wings, while she pecks and snarls at whatever threatens. Although she may have to tap into the expertise of the duck aunties when it comes time for swimming lessons, she is doing just fine with the basics. When Nate offered up some blueberries to the ducklings, they ignored them, but when the hen pecked and tenderized the berries and placed them in front of her ducklings, they devoured them. Theirs might be an unconventional little family, but it seems to work!

It is a lovely Sunday evening. Jan has covered the kitchen table in flowers and is working on ideas for this week’s flower shares. Tonight’s question: When can pink and orange be combined? Nate is heading out to lift his ducklings into their coop before closing it up for the night. Their moms have yet to instruct them in the use of the ramp. And I’ll be heading out soon to put domes on our sweet corn and sunflower trays to protect them against the small country creatures that appear to love nothing more than to dine on my seeds.

Have a great week, Ted

It’s a week A pick up this Thursday, July 6th!

Thanks to everyone who placed Lewis Waite orders this week! Please come tomorrow between 5:00 and 7:30 to pick up your order. The next delivery date will be August 3rd.

Your shares this week will include:

• Magenta Lettuce
• Happy Rich
• Garlic Scapes
• Dinosaur Kale
• Cucumbers
• Summer squashes or Zucchinis
• Koji (a dark green Asian Green similar to Yukina Savoy)
• Scallions
• Onions
• Kohlrabi

Quick Notes:
Please bring your own bags, or bring your excess plastic bags to donate to other share members. We’re almost out of the ones at the pick up site.
Please also return all egg and fruit cartons so that we can give them back to the farm.

Volunteer Requirement

Don’t forget to sign up for your volunteer shift here, we’ve added two more shifts to each pick up so there are more opportunities we need filled!

It’s a week B pick up this Thursday, June 29th!

The Week B Central Brooklyn CSA Stoop Party is this week! Come by to enjoy some snacks and meet your fellow CBCSA Members!

June 29 at Callie and Randy’s house:
1251 Dean St., directly across the street from our CSA pickup:
5:00PM to 8:00PM

We’ll have drinks and snacks, and you are welcome to bring more to share or just stop by on your way in or out of pickup!

Last Week Was Our First Lewis Waite Delivery

and quite a few members grabbed some really delicious looking goodies. Two of my personal favorites are pictured below and go beautifully together.

Their jalapeno cheddar bread is mind blowing, (especially when toasted or used as buns for a burger), and I look forward to their mixed herb chevre every season. The mixed herb chevre on top of toasted jalapeno cheddar bread with strawberries has been my favorite snack this weekend.

The next Lewis Waite delivery is July 6th, make sure to get your order in before next Tuesday!

Quick Note:
Please bring your own bags, or bring your excess plastic bags to donate to other share members. We’re almost out of the ones at the pick up site. Please also return all egg and fruit cartons so that we can give them back to the farm.

CSA News from Windflower Farm

Delivery #4, June 27/29, 2017

This week’s share:
Lettuce, scallions, the season’s first cucumbers, sweet Hakurei turnips (simply slice and saute in olive oil, or eat fresh in a salad) and garlic scapes. And these items, which will likely come in the form of choices: Swiss chard or spinach, kale or Koji, yellow squash or zucchini, and broccoli or Happy Rich. Your fruit share will consist of strawberries and rhubarb from Yonder Farm. I hope you enjoy your share. The cucumbers show a little damage, but they taste good.

I’ve just come in from cultivating sweet corn and green snap beans with my old International 140. The soil was dry and the sun was hot, ideal conditions for killing weeds. Candelaria has dropped off tamales, and Monica has brought over sweet corn with mayonnaise and chiles. Perfect timing. They perform these acts of neighborly kindness regularly, and I am grateful for our good fortune. I snap open a tall “Sip of Sunshine” and enjoy a few moments before heading back out.

Instead of using herbicides, organic farmers pull weeds by hand, they suppress weeds by applying organic or plastic mulches, they kill weeds with fire, and its modern variant – the propane-fueled flame weeder. Some organic farmers spray vinegar, which is a herbicide of sorts, and others spray steaming hot water to kill their weeds. And organic farmers use a variety of hoes: the colinear hoe, the stirrup hoe, the Dutch onion hoe, the push-pull hoe. But, most of all, they cultivate.

To me, cultivating means using a tractor onto which I have mounted one of a number of gadgets designed to bury, uproot or mangle weeds. We use torsion weeders, flex-tine weeders, finger weeders, basket weeders, Dutch hoes on parallelograms, Danish tines, hillers big and small, spiders, beet knives and sweeps of every stripe. Some of these gadgets are mounted behind my tractor, others are mounted on its underbelly where I can see them. Cultivating is something I can do alone, as I did today, when the farm is otherwise empty, listening to Bela Fleck on Pandora. Corn row after corn row, bean row after bean row. Weed after weed buried or mangled. It’s gratifying work.

This morning, Nate and Jan used the steerable cultivator to weed zinnias and sunflowers. Everyone calls it the X-wing. It’s got Dutch hoes on parallelograms. A neighbor made the X-wing for us, and we imported the hoes. We’ll post an image on Instagram soon. The cultivator requires two people – one to drive the tractor that pulls the X-wing and another to steer the X-wing itself. My wife and son are a good team, as are Martin and his son, Jesus. It’s the kind of work that tests communication skills: slower, higher, faster, stop! For husbands and wives, it’s like couples therapy without the therapist.

Have a great week! Ted

Hello Central Brooklyn CSA Members!

It’s a week A pick up this Thursday, June 22nd!

The Central Brooklyn CSA Stoop Parties are this week and next week.  Come by to enjoy some snacks and meet your fellow Week A and Full Time members, next week’s will be Week B’s!

June 22 at Julie’s house:
1265 Dean St., directly across the street from our CSA pickup:
5:00PM to 8:00PM

June 29 at Callie and Randy’s house:
1251 Dean St., directly across the street from our CSA pickup:
5:00PM to 8:00PM

We’ll have drinks and snacks, and you are welcome to bring more to share or just stop by on your way in or out of pickup!

It’s our first Lewis Waite delivery this week!  If you missed the order deadline don’t sweat, they’ll be back July 6th!

Please bring your own bags, or bring your excess plastic bags to donate to other share members.  We’re almost out of the ones at the pick up site.

This week’s share: your choice of kale varieties, a bunch of broccoli, two heads of lettuce, squashes, scallions, Swiss chard, sweet Hakurei turnips and more potted herbs.

Please read this note from Ted to find out more about this week’s share!

CSA News from Windflower Farm

Delivery #3, June 20/22, 2017

Our farm season starts at the end of February, when we dust the snow off our greenhouses, test fire heaters and fans and water supplies, and sow our first onion and tomato seeds. We spend the first 60 days of the season in the greenhouse producing the tens of thousands of seedlings that will fill out our fields once the outdoor growing season gets underway in late April. It might be winter outside, but in the greenhouse it feels as though we’ve taken a trip to the deep south.

The next sixty days of the season – the last two months of spring – are always something of a marathon here at Windflower Farm. This is the part of the season when this vegetable farmer’s life is at its most hectic and stressful. Our target first planting day is April 21^st, when any remaining snow is usually confined to north-facing hedgerows, and by June 21^st, the start of summer, and longest day of the year, we hope to have the farm fully planted to all but the later successional crops and to have made several deliveries to the city.

Here is a short list of our accomplishments to-date: we have planted about two acres each of “Irish” potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions and other alliums, winter squashes, various greens, sweet corn and cut flowers. We have planted an acre or so each of green beans; root crops like beets, carrots and radishes; Brassicas (cabbages and broccoli); and Cucurbits (cukes, zukes and melons). And we’ve made several smaller plantings of arugula, celery, mustard mixes and herbs. We’ve planted two large greenhouses to tomatoes and a third to cut flowers. And we’ve planted 24 small greenhouses (150’ long structures we call “caterpillar tunnels”) to a combination of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, basil and cut flowers. In addition, we put in a new quarter acre of elderberries and a half acre of table grapes. It’s been a busy 60 days!

Those first 60 days in the field tell us much about how the season will go. And so I thought I’d share some slightly scattered observations and give you a sense of what to expect. Mother Nature, a full partner in the farm, gave us some challenges. It was an unusually cold and wet spring, as you know, which threw off our planting schedule and will delay some (but certainly not all) harvests. So, where are we?

I expect tomatoes, peppers, chiles and eggplants, in particular, to be a little later than usual, but our use of tunnels has been helpful and you should see these items showing up in early August shares. I’m grateful for the recent arrival of warm sunny weather. It is bringing on squashes and cucumbers a little earlier than expected. Squash starts this week, cucumbers should start the week after.

Greens, strawberries, alliums, cabbages and potatoes all like cool, wet springs, and they are happy, if slightly delayed. We are trying to avoid giving you too many greens, but we continue to send them because we want to fill out your shares. Green onions will be showing up fairly soon and will become a regular weekly feature. Sweet corn does not like cool temperatures, nor do beans, and they will be later. My fear is that my four corn plantings all comes in at once! Garlic scapes are coming next week, and garlic bulbs a month after that, right on schedule. Kohlrabi continues to mature, turnips start this week, beets are coming soon, and carrots will start in early August. Eating seasonally is always full of surprises.

This week’s share: your choice of kale varieties, a bunch of broccoli, two heads of lettuce, squashes, scallions, Swiss chard, sweet Hakurei turnips and more potted herbs.

Best wishes, Ted and Jan

It’s a great time of year because Lewis Waite deliveries are here!

What is Lewis Waite? Lewis Waite is a Farm Extras Program that works with Windflower Farm to provide all of our CSA members access to local, ethical, and organic farm extras such as butter, cheeses, ethical meats, and more.

We know that the sign up process can be a little confusing, so please follow the links below and use the hyperlinked PDF for help in signing up for this awesome program!

The deadline to order for this week’s delivery is TONIGHT June 19th. Limited items still available to order on Tuesday, June 20th. Pick up is this Thursday, June 22nd during regular CSA hours.

More info about Lewis Waite: Lewis Waite Farm CSA Extras program strives to connect small farms and producers to consumers within our region. We offer a single platform for you to gain access to a wide variety of farm fresh, all natural, artisanal, and organic products. Between our Extras service and your CSA share, you can eliminate (at least greatly reduce!) the weekly trip to the grocery store.

We partner with small, family run operations. If you have questions, we can ask the person who grew or made your food. Our producers take great pride in their products, and we take pride in offering them to you. Orders are placed via our online platform. You pay as you go, and order only what you want. Free delivery to your CSA!

Lewis Waite Farm CSA Extras can offer you pasture raised meat and poultry (10 kinds of meat), fresh eggs and bread, grass fed butter, yogurt and ice cream, artisan cheese from sheep, goat or cows’ milk, including aged raw milk cheeses. We offer many pantry staples, too, all local and naturally made: granola, fresh stone-ground organic flour, dried organic beans and grains, natural jams and chutneys, natural sweeteners, locally roasted organic coffee, apple cider vinegar, and more. You can see a complete list on our website, http://www.csalewiswaitefarm.com.

Interested? Order or Sign Up Below!

www.csalewiswaitefarm.com
Registered Users, Order NOW
First time ordering?
Follow http://www.csalewiswaitefarm.com/register?csa=8d1583da67a9c206198012d2ab5ce9f9 to register.

Having trouble ordering or need a refresher on how to order?
Check out this PDF explainer.

The Lewis Waite Delivery Dates
for this Season Will Be:
6/22/17
7/6/17
8/3/17
8/31/17
9/28/17
10/26/17