Category: CSA

The News from Windflower Farm

What you’ll get this week

• Carrots
• Beets
• Leeks
• Red onions
• Red cabbage
• Cauliflower
• Sweet potatoes
• Green leaf lettuce
• Salad mix (mixed mustard bunch)
• Kale
• Garlic (more “seconds” from Brian)

*** Your vegetable share is packed in individual boxes this final week. Please take your box home and recycle it. Thank you!

Our vegetable car wash, the AZS Brusher-Washer we picked up in Lancaster County, PA a few years back, was busy all weekend. We sorted and washed perhaps 2000 pounds of sweet potatoes, 1000 bunches of leeks, 500 heads each of lettuce and escarole, 500 bunches each of kale and braising greens, perhaps 1500 pounds of carrots and over 1000 cauliflower heads (our first cauliflower crop ever!). And there’s more to do tomorrow. I’m not sure where we’d be without this fantastic machine!

You’ll find a link to an online Windflower Farm CSA survey here: 2023 CSA SURVEY (wufoo.com). If you haven’t already done so, please help us to be the best CSA we can be by taking five or ten minutes to fill it out. And you’ll find a link to our winter share information page and signup form here: Windflower Farm’s 2023-2024 Winter Share (wufoo.com). The deadline for signing up is fast approaching!

News from the farm

Thank you to all who have filled out our CSA survey. I’ve read every one. More cucumbers and Delicata squash – I know, I know! It’s easier said than done, but we will try our hardest next year to increase your quantities of these veggies. We’ll have to bring back some version of free choice or the swap box to deal with the fact that equal numbers of you seem to like/dislike Swiss chard, fennel, and eggplant. Thank you for your excellent comments and kind words. We value your input; it will truly inform our 2024 crop planning.

Sweet potato soup, sweet potato lasagna and sweet potato omelets with cardamon are excellent ways to enjoy sweet potatoes. New to us this fall is something called sweet potato toast, but we’ve now had it with hummus and pumpkin seeds, onion jam, and sweet chili chutney. These bring to mind the meals Cher would prepare for Winona Ryder in Mermaids. Tomorrow, as part of our end-of-season potluck, Nate is making sweet potato toast topped with black beans and a dash of salsa and cilantro. Simply slice the sweet potato into slices (toasts) ¼ inch thick, place the pieces on parchment paper or oil on a cookie sheet, and bake at 400 degrees for about ten minutes on each side, or until fork soft. It’s better to underbake to avoid mushiness. Then top with your favorite concoction – perhaps a medley of diced roasted vegetables or finely chopped braised greens. In “Eating Bird Food,” Brittany Mullins lists several ways to enjoy sweet potato toast (www.eatingbirdfood.com).  

As you know, this is the last week of CSA deliveries for the summer season. Thank you for choosing to be a member of our CSA this year. I hope you’ve enjoyed the experience enough to want to come back next year. If you’d like more, sign up for a winter share. An extra big thanks goes to the folks in your neighborhood who help organize your CSA site – the CSA model depends on these community volunteers. Without them, we’d be a very different kind of farm. And you wouldn’t have this chance to make so many new friends among the vegetable lovers in your neighborhood.

Thank you, and best wishes from all of us at Windflower Farm, Ted

The News from Windflower Farm

What you’ll get this week

• Yellow wax beans
• Assorted potatoes
• Rosemary
• Garlic (the Denison’s “seconds”)
• ‘Bolero’ Carrots
• ‘Boro’ Beets
• Green cabbage
• Salad mix (mixed mustard greens)
• Winterbor kale
• ‘Magenta’ lettuce

Your fruit share, the last of the season, will be Yonder Farm’s ‘Empire’ apples.

When I mentioned to my friend and fellow farmer Brian Denison that we had a garlic crop failure, he offered to give us some of his “seconds” garlic at a good price. I couldn’t pass it up. It will be in this week’s share and in next week’s. I couldn’t imagine a CSA season without garlic.

You’ll find an online Windflower Farm CSA survey attached to this newsletter. Please help us to be the best CSA we can be by taking five or ten minutes to fill it out. 2023 CSA SURVEY (wufoo.com)

News from the farm

It’s been a busy week here at the farm. Although the weather has been pleasant for October, with no hard freeze in sight, the place still has a mad dash feel. The winter greens have all been planted, hooped, and covered. So too for the overwintering onion plants. But numerous beds of leeks, beets, carrots, sweet potatoes, cabbages, beans, and greens remain to be harvested. We still have a half-acre or so of onion sets and garlic cloves to plant and to mulch. We have perhaps five more acres to sow to cover crops. And we have over a dozen small greenhouses to clean up and ready for winter.

It is inevitable that cold weather will come, hence much of the urgency. But there is also the fact that our staff will be heading out of town soon. I will be purchasing airplane tickets for four members of the Medina household this afternoon. Candelaria, Daniel, Martin, and Miriam all plan to spend the winter in Guanajuato, Mexico. One day I’ll surprise them by purchasing a fifth ticket and tagging along, but not this time. Nate and I are excited about some projects we have planned for our workshop. And we bought ski passes at Bromley, the local mountain where farmers from throughout southern New England go to ski and to trade tips about new vegetable varieties, pest controls or staffing. It’s tempting to write the pass off as a business expense.

Next week’s vegetable delivery will be your last of the regular season. This one is the last for odd-week members. I’m not entirely sure what we’ll send next week, but it will likely include herbs, leeks, fennel, sweet potatoes, beets, and red onions, along with some escarole, braising greens, and kale. Oh, and more of Brian’s “seconds” garlic. Thanks very much for being with us.

I was at a memorial service at the rural cemetery down the hill from our house. Everyone from the community was there. I talked with a neighboring vegetable farmer about the farm season. “It’s been a rough year,” he said, and then showed me the scar he received from a run in with a piece of farm machinery. He then proceeded to tell me that he was going to quit farming. It wasn’t any one thing, he said, mentioning the labor challenge, the rains, the low pay, his back. His heart just wasn’t in it anymore. What will you do, I asked. He wasn’t sure, but he knew he was going to have a very large garden. And I reminded him that he had 2000 onion bulbs up at my place ready to plant.

Winter share news

We hope you’ll join us for the winter share. More information and a signup page can be found by following this link: Windflower Farm’s 2023-2024 Winter Share (wufoo.com). In short, our winter share consists of three deliveries of organic greens, vegetables, and fruits made between late November and early January. We finished transplanting the greens that will go into the winter share last week, including 12 beds in six ‘caterpillar’ tunnels and 15 beds in three high tunnels, to three types of lettuce, plus tatsoi, bok choy, two kale varieties and spinach. The storage vegetables in the winter share will come from our farm (potatoes, beets, sweet potatoes, cabbages, red and yellow onions, shallots, and leeks) and our friends at Denison farm (butternut squash, carrots, and celeriac). The fruits (apples primarily, and pears if I can find any) will come from Yonder Farm and the Bordens. Each month, we’ll include a sweet treat of some kind, including fresh, sweet apple cider, local honey, and local jam. Optional shares of eggs, maple products and grains are available, too. Consider joining us.

Take care, Ted

The News from Windflower Farm

What you’ll get this week

• Sweet potatoes
• Summer squash
• Potatoes
• Leeks
• Parsley
• Yellow onions
• Fennel
• Swiss chard
• Arugula
• Your fruit share will be Yonder Farm’s ‘Cortland’ apples.

This week, we’ll harvest the last of our sweet peppers, chiles, eggplants and summer squashes and we’ll send them to you next week, along with lettuce and arugula. We’ll send carrots, sweet potatoes, and onions for each of the final four weeks. And we’ll send more apples – ‘Ambrosia’ next week and ‘Empire’ the week after that.

*Winter share sign-ups are beginning! You can find out more information and register for a winter share using this link:  Windflower Farm’s 2023-2024 Winter Share (wufoo.com). The deadline for signing up is November 1^st or until we reach our limit.  

News from the farm

I’ve been asked about my trips to New York. Last week, I took my 18^th truck load of the season to CSA members in New York. The big Isuzu was loaded with vegetables, hand trucks were on board, and packing lists sat on my dashboard. I checked engine fluids and tires and loaded the truck with essentials: lunch, cash, and a good book on tape. At eight o’clock it was time to head out. None of those 4:00 am farm-to-market departures for me.

I test my brakes heading down Meeting House Road toward Cooke Hollow, turning south at the intersection where the Alleged Farm and MaryJane’s farm sit. I come out of Cooke Hollow, turning right, then left at one of four neighborhood wineries, continuing south. The road I travel runs along a ridge paralleling the Hudson River, one of dozens of farm-to-market roads. Adirondack foothills are to my right, and the distant Berkshires are to my left. I pass the Pratt’s sheep farm, Howard Gifford’s tractor parts shop, and the Schaghticoke Fairgrounds as I make my way toward Troy, 20 miles south of our farm. I plug my phone into the dashboard and start my book: A Gentleman in Moscow.  

I zig and zag down Route 40 as it makes its way through Troy, then cross the Hudson River for the first of what will be six times, catching I-787 southbound to Albany, and then I-90 eastbound, over the Hudson again, toward the Massachusetts border. I exit onto Route 9, heading into Columbia County, and the heart of fruit production in the Hudson Valley. I stop at Yonder Farm, where Pete, who I’ve known for more than 20 years, and I chat briefly about the difficult farm season. I head south in earnest once I leave Pete, passing friends at Roxbury Farm and Hearty Roots, both CSAs, as I make my way.

I monitor several fields over the course of the season. One is an organic soybean field along the road in Livingston that is part of the huge Rockefeller property. Although it has become weedy compared to surrounding conventional soybean fields, it looks like it will yield well. I find my way to the Rhinecliff-Kingston Bridge, crossing to the west side of the Hudson, taking in the incredible scenery: the river below and the Catskills beyond. From here, it’s two hours to midtown Manhattan, taking I-87 southbound to New Jersey, and commercial Route 17 south, where I catch my first glimpse of the Manhattan skyline. I then take Route 3 across the Meadowlands, finally crossing the Hudson for the 4^th time via the Lincoln Tunnel. I run early and pull over at 9^th and 29^th, where I’ve become friendly with a woman named PJ who waters the plants on an island at the intersection, where she and I talk gardening and I eat my lunch.

I offload CSA shares at the Google offices at 1:00, then travel to the First Presbyterian Church on Broadway, across from Columbia University, hoping to be there by 2:15. After that, it’s a 4:00 stop at the Cornerstone Center in Washington Heights and a 4:30 near Fort Tryon Park. I depart Manhattan via the George Washington Bridge, my fifth crossing, pleased if I’ve made it through the city without mishap. It takes some time during rush hour to make my way through New Jersey, but then I’m off on I-87 northbound, and the final leg of my journey. It is here that I’d like my audio book to keep me awake for the trip home. Three hours later, I find myself back on Route 40, and on the east side of the river after crossing it for the sixth and final time. I am north of Troy, nearing home, where for most of the summer I am welcomed home by a larger-than-life Dolly Parton on a billboard, reminding me to spread kindness and good cheer. I pull into the farmyard at 8:30, happy to be home.

Have a great week, Ted

The News from Windflower Farm

What you’ll get this week

• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Rosemary
• Peppers
• Summer squashes
• Tomatoes
• Oakleaf lettuce
• Pumpkins
• Mixed mustard greens

Your fruit share will be Yonder Farm’s ‘Gala’ apples.

These are likely the last of our tomatoes. Next week, you’ll get Swiss chard, arugula, carrots, potatoes, leeks, sweet peppers and the first sweet potatoes of the season.

News from the farm

As the days become shorter and the mornings colder, there is renewed urgency in our work. We expect overnight temperatures in the low 40s this week. I was surprised this morning to see so much orange and yellow in the sugar maples across the front lawn. Reds are popping out on the hillsides. The farm season will soon be over, and there is still much to do: there are fall crops to harvest, a winter share to prepare for, and a farm to clean up.

This is how we’ll occupy ourselves over the next five weeks. We should wrap up strawberry planting this week. Sweet potato and “Irish” potato harvests are nearing their mid-points and we should complete them by mid-October. Tomatoes are winding down and we’ve begun to remove plants that have run their course. We hope to remove all the tomato vines and peppers from our caterpillar tunnels and greenhouses and winterize them by the end of October. We’ve seeded winter greens (kales, Swiss chard, tatsoi and spinach) and should plant them into the beds vacated by summer vegetables in the next couple of weeks. The over-wintering onions have also been seeded, and we’ll plant them, along with Bob’s garlic, into newly composted beds once the winter greens are in. We will continue to plant cover crops as fields become emptied of their vegetable crops, a project we’ll wrap up by late October. Field clean-up is well underway: irrigation supply lines are being bundled and labelled, drip tape is being spooled for reuse next year, row covers are being balled up and marked for their next best uses, and mulch is being picked up. Our goal is to have the farm ready for the winter by the time we make our last deliveries at the end of October.

Winter share information will come in the next News from the Farm.

Have a great week, Ted

The News from Windflower Farm

What you’ll get this week

• Green beans
• Lettuce
• Spinach
• Summer squash
• Tomatoes
• Sweet peppers
• Butternut squash
• Chiles

Your fruit share will be a mix of Yonder Farms’ ‘Zeststar’ and ‘Golden Supreme’ apples.

News from the farm

We harvested just four 20-bushel totes of winter squash. There are perhaps two more in the field. If we include pie pumpkins, this harvest might provide shares for two weeks. Disappointing. Last year, we harvested 320 bushels from a similar sized planting. The side-by-side fields we chose had low spots at their centers, and the rainy summer resulted in standing water that never subsided. We’ll send them all right away. And then, in this upside-down season, we’ll resume sending summer squash. Janthinks the winter squash might best be used as additions to things: added to chili or to tacos, for example, or included in a medley of root vegetables. She says to use them right away – they won’t keep. I think you may also need to be liberal with brown sugar.   

In better news, we began harvesting sweet potatoes on Thursday and they look good. They’re pretty, good-sized, and richly colored. We’ll begin the curing process rightaway – eighty degrees and 100 percent humidity for ten days – which helps their starches turn into sugars. The Ag & Markets food safety team came to inspect our farm last Thursday, and we spent most of our time talking about how to grow good sweet potatoes in the Northeast. We passed the inspection with an ‘A’, by the way. Kristoffer made the observation that if they had witnessed shortcomings related to our food handling protocols, we wouldn’t have talked much about sweet potatoes.

You would not guess how my new delivery truck got its first dent. There are so many ways a truck might get a dent in the city, but this one was unexpected. Don and Daniel were driving along Bergen Street in Brooklyn, moving slowly because of someone on a bicycle ahead of them. This made the driver of the car behind them furious. He honkedhis horn, he waved his hands, gesticulating exactly how you might imagine. And then, at the light at the end of the block, he charged out of his car and pounded his fist on the door of the truck. He was a big man and it scared the hell out of Don and Daniel. And it left a fist-sized dent in the middle of the driver’s side door. Oh, brother!

It seems to have happened quickly – we are in the season’s final quarter. Summer vegetables are winding down. Soon, our eggplants, peppers and tomatoes will give out. We have already begun to rip out some of the underperformers. At the first sign of cold, our summer squash will also be done. The same for beans and corn. But greens and the roots, bulbs and tubers of fall are still ahead. Next week, we’ll send lettuce, kale, potatoes, Rosemary, carrots, onions, and squashes of some sort.

Have a great week! 

Ted