Category: CSA

The News from Windflower Farm

What you’ll get this week

• Tomatoes
• Basil
• Eggplant
• Sweet corn
• Kale
• Green Romaine lettuce or Green Oakleaf lettuce
• Bunched beets
• Squash

Your fruit share will be Yonder Farm’s blueberries

To stay ahead of downy mildew, we are growing basil in pots this year. We grow ‘Prospera’, a mildew resistant variety of basil, but that seems to give the plant little more than an additional week or two in the field. If you have a sunny window and a green thumb, you can keep the plant going for a while, plucking the leaves a little at a time. If not, you can use the whole plant in one shot now and toss out the soil cube. We’ll send more.

News from the farm

Flea beetles and woodchucks vie for the title of most damaging pest of Windflower Farm vegetables. They both love cabbage, broccoli, and kale, and it’s a wonder that we have any of these at all. Woodchucks also love lettuce, sweet potato vines, and squashes, and flea beetles are nuts over arugula. Like Mr. McGregor, we spend much of our time standing sentry and erecting barriers. But another four-legged creature, a little bandit, is occasionally in the running for biggest pest, and it’s about time for it to make an appearance.

If you’ve been with us for the past couple of years, you’ll know that the racoons in our neighborhood have a fondness for our sweet corn. They seem to know when it’s ready for harvest and sweep through the night before and take half of our crop. This year, we have taken extraordinary steps to keep them away, the most important of which is double electric fencing. The entire farm is enclosed within an 8-foot-tall box wire fence primarily meant to keep deer out. But racoons are excellent climbers and surely consider this nothing more than a small inconvenience.

Inside of this fence, our corn is surrounded by an 18- to 36-inch-tall woven electric fence of the kind meant to keep woodchucks and rabbits out of a garden. To touch this fence is to get an electrical shock designed to make you think twice before touching it again. And outside of this barrier is another electric fence – this one a two-strand electric fence of the sort used to keep livestock as large as sheep or cattle in a paddock. We’ve used everything short of razor wire to create what we think is an impenetrable barrier. But racoons are crafty. They are no doubt in a strategy meeting as I write. I expect a sleepless night – we plan to harvest tomorrow morning and I should find my spotlight and be standing vigil tonight.  

Have a great week, Ted

The News from Windflower Farm

What you’ll get this week

• Zucchini or summer squash
• Kale or Choy (choice)
• Yellow wax beans
• Yellow onions
• Fennel
• Lettuce
• Tomatoes
• Cabbage or Radicchio or Sweet Peppers (choice)

Your fruit share will be blueberries from Yonder Farm

Beans, peppers and eggplants are beginning to come in, tomatoes and squashes are yielding well, and sweet corn is just around the corner… it must be summer in the Upper Hudson Valley.

News from the farm

Another inch and three quarters of rain fell since I last wrote, but most of that was early in the week, and a drying out has already begun. Sunshine is expected for the next few days. We took advantage of our first opportunity to get tractors in the fields to fling compost and shape beds on Thursday, and by Friday we had transplanted lettuce, kale, choy and chard and direct-seeded spinach, cilantro, and green beans. My outlook is a little brighter today.

A soil health tour came through here mid-week. My role was to describe our cover cropping and composting. Turnout was good, but the lack of complication in our cover cropping might have been a disappointment to some in attendance. In spring, we use oats and peas, and in fall, we use rye and hairy vetch. Both blends add nitrogen and organic matter to the soil, improve soil tilth, reduce erosion, and suppress weeds. That’s all there is to it, off to the next farm. In my experience, simple is best. Perhaps, in some future where we have more land than we need for vegetables, and more time to sort things through, we’ll add complexity. 

It’s steamy hot this morning. Hobbes the cat is playing dead again, legs splayed and undignified (Jan tells me he’s “splooting”). I slow down enough to confirm that he is still breathing and then head to our onion cleaning setup, where Jan, Nate and I will prepare some onions for shipping to our friends at Denison Farm. They represent our side of a trade that will provide carrots for you a little later in the season. In this weather, farmers have had unexpected successes and failures, and swaps make sense.

Have a great week, Ted

The News from Windflower Farm

What you’ll get this week

• Tendersweet cabbage
• Fennel
• Red onions
• Swiss chard
• Beets
• Dill
• Zucchini or summer squash
• Tomatoes

The tomatoes are coming in well now. We should be starting sweet peppers next week, and I think that we’ll be back into lettuce next week, too. But downy mildew has struck, and the cucumber harvest will grind to a standstill soon.

The fruit share will be Yonder Farm’s peaches.

News from the farm

Water, water everywhere. We’ve had 15” of rain since the beginning of June, more than half of it since the beginning of July. Last year, we had about 4” in the same period. Ponds, creeks, and rivers everywhere are swollen and brown with runoff. Lake Champlain has risen an incredible 26” in the last two weeks. Our barnyard is all puddles. Our fields are all mud, with standing water in low places.

We need several days of drying out or we’ll begin to experience losses. So far, we have lost our garlic crop and we will till under plantings of spinach and arugula because we have not been able to cultivate them. I worry about our winter squashes, and our cucumbers are on the way out because the storms have brought spores of the fungus causing downy mildew northward from its overwintering grounds in the Mid-Atlantic. Succession plantings have been delayed. Our greenhouse has a backlog of lettuce, broccoli, squash, and cabbage.

Vegetable growers’ listservs have lit up with questions about disease management in a very wet season. One wonders, for example, if there is a fungicide approved under USDA’s organic farming rules that is actually effective against downy mildew of cucumber or basil? Or against early blight or Septoria of tomato? Answers: No and no. Organic disease management is all about variety selection and pre-planting cultural considerations.      

Small farms are fragile. The limited financial reserves most small-scale farmers have leave them especially vulnerable. I am reminded of how grateful I am for the CSA model and your willingness to share in our risk every time I think of our own exposure. I’ve been hearing that several of the Vermont farms that were hit by last week’s intense rainfall are on the brink of insolvency. Just as they were about to market their crops and begin to repay their operating loans, their crops were lost to flooding.  

Farming is a risky business, and weeds, diseases, and insect infestations are just a beginning. Having little control over the environment in which we work is especially challenging during seasons with extreme weather. Most of us struggle in the high heat and humidity, naturally dislike extended periods of work in the rain, and cannot work in the mud. Prolonged rainfall prevents us from making timely plantings and makes effective weed control nearly impossible.

So, we’re struggling. But I don’t want to close on an entirely gloomy note. We have a fair amount of high ground, and potatoes, summer squashes, peppers, eggplants, sweet corn, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, leeks, beets, and a variety of leafy greens look good. Good things will continue to come along. But the Dutch may have it right: we may have to work toward a future where we grow everything under cover.

Have a good week, Ted

The News from Windflower Farm

What you’ll get this week

• Lettuce (Romaine and/or Green Oakleaf)
• Dill
• Kale
• Kohlrabi
• Fennel
• Cucumbers
• Zucchini and/or summer squash
• Tomatoes

The fruit share will be Yonder Farm’s peaches. Our blueberries are just about to start.

News from the farm

The tomatoes are beginning to ripen here. Nova (orange) and Red Pearl, two varieties of grape tomato, ‘Rebelski, a red beefsteak, and Gin Fizz, a large yellow-orange tomato, are starting us off, along with smaller quantities of Cherokee Purple. All of these were seeded in mid-March, potted on in mid-April, transplanted to high tunnels in the second week of May, and then weeded, trellised, irrigated, and trellised again between mid-May and now. It’s time to realize the fruits of our labor. Just add mozzarella, pesto, and a little slice of toast.

Rain has just begun to fall. On the weather map, the storm appears to extend from North Carolina to just north of Albany. The forecast calls for rain to last into tomorrow afternoon and to deliver 3-5” before it’s over. Nate and I have come inside. Nate was mowing blueberry pathways; I was mowing down old crop debris and weeds. I chose not to do any tillage work today because I was afraid it might result in soil erosion. Nate has dashed outside to put sandbags on the fragile road to our back fields to divert water and prevent a washout.  Salvador and company have opted to stay out in the rain to finish harvesting lettuce. I suggested tomato trellising or seeding in the greenhouse, but Salvador was determined. Their rain gear is the heavy-duty stuff from Helly Hanson, and it should keep them dry. Candelaria looked doubtful.

I’m fond of most things containing zucchini, including muffins, cookies, and sautés. I’m snacking on toasted zucchini bread as I write this. And right now, Jan is spiralizing zucchini in the kitchen. It took her a minute to get the result she wanted, but now she is making long noodles. She might serve it raw and cold on this hot day, but she’s also going to lightly sauté some of it on the stovetop with a little garlic and olive oil. She’ll eventually add spaghetti sauce, veggie meatballs and parmesan. Garlic bread and an arugula salad round out the meal. Jan, who dislikes most pasta, believes she has found her alternative, and it’s a healthy one.

An inch of rain has fallen in the first hour of the storm. A flash flood warning pops up on my phone. Salvador and his boys are bringing the tractor and wagon into the farmyard, crates of lettuce stacked high. Candelaria is walking behind them, smiling, as always, and relieved, I imagine, to be done for the day.

Have a great week, Ted 

The News from Windflower Farm

What you’ll get this week

• ‘Nancy’ green butterhead lettuce
• ‘Rouxai’ red oakleaf lettuce
• Arugula
• ‘French Breakfast’ radishes
• Yellow onions
• Kale
• Cucumbers (lots!)
• Zucchini or summer squash (lots!)

The fruit share will again be Yonder Farm’s strawberries. I had hoped for cherries, but the three inches of rain that fell in the Hudson Valley last week caused them to split. Blueberries will be ripening soon, and Iexpect to send them next week.

News from the farm

We missed a cultivation in the first and second successions of sweet corn because of the rain and mud, so Nate and I hoed it by hand today. Each row is 400’ long, which felt too long in the day’s heat. Placing waterjugs at each end of the planting would have made better sense than what I did, which was to leave one jug back at the beginning of the row. We used stirrup hoes, which are comprised of thin blades that slice through weeds just below the soil surface and look, as you can imagine, just like stirrups. Our soil is stoney, and the openness of the stirrup allows stones to pass through, minimizing our effort. The blades are mounted on a bracket that allows them to oscillate. Back and forth, push then pull. I walk backwards down the row, which uses lower back muscles and biceps primarily, pulling the blade through the weeds, then pushing back through the soil and pulling again, making for three passes and an effective weed kill. When I get tired, I turn around and push the hoe, using triceps and stomach muscles. It’s an excellent core workout. There are 16 rows in these two successions, which is why we try to time our tractor cultivations to avoid this kind of work.  

From the high ground where we were hoeing corn, we could see three young guys windrowing red onions. Two of the guys will be high school seniors in the fall and, when they are here, work almost exclusively in the packing shed. Their daylong stint in the field gave them a very different sense of work on the farm. Hot, sometimes buggy, sometimes back-breaking, often dirty work. Some of us love that stuff, others can’t get out of the field soon enough. The ‘Desert Sunrise’ onion variety that we planted last fall have sized up and their tops have gone down, signaling that it is time to harvest. The first step in the process is to pull them out of the earth, shake the soil out of their roots, and then to lay them in rows to dry. We are pleased with their size and color. We’ll snip tops and roots and bring them into the greenhouse before the next rain. These are not keepers, so they’ll be in shares soon.

We could also see Salvador and Candelaria and their boys in the field below the onions. They were taking covers off the peppers, eggplants, chiles and melons. This is the diminishing handful of crops we grow on black plastic mulch and under low wire hoops and fabric row covers. After a cold, windy and dry start to their lives in the field, we are happy to see how healthy the plants look. Salvador decided to abandon planting corn today. While it is hot and sunny, we have had quite a bit of rain in recent days, and the side hill where they were going to plant is too muddy. From there, they will be off to a planting of storage onions. We’ve never been able to escape at least some hand weeding in bare ground onions, and in this wet stretch, the weeds have outpaced our best effort. This is a tradeoff for us. If our onions were on black plastic mulch, we wouldn’t have this weeding chore, but we’d have plastic to throw away.

That’s all for now. Have a great week, Ted