Category: CSA

Hi Everyone,

The CBCSA Windflower Farm Weekend is later THIS MONTH! August 27-28, to be exact. Let us tell you from personal experience you do not want to miss it! More details to come regarding this year’s activities, but in the past this family friendly event has included tours of the property, a potluck dinner featuring goodies from other local farms, breweries and the like, bonfires and music, camping and a big, scrumptious breakfast the next morning.

We recognize that getting out of the city might be an issue, so we’ve set up a carpool ride app to enable the fortunate and willing few to share spare seats they have in their cars. Those in need of a ride can also register their interest in obtaining a seat by joining the "wait list." Click here to share your seats or express a need for one: https://www.groupcarpool.com/t/xmh2dv

Interested in sharing a rental car? Email the CBCSA family at cbcsa to see if anyone’s willing to share the ride (and cost) to Windflower Farm.

Hope to see you all there!

CBCSA Core Group

Hi Everyone,
News below from Windflower Farm. Don’t forget to SAVE THE DATE for a weekend at the Farm, August 27-28. More details to come later.

Be well!

CBCSA Core Group

News from Windflower Farm

6th Distribution, Week of July 11, 2016

Hello from a cool and wet Windflower Farm! Although the week promises to heat up, a welcome rain over the weekend has cooled things down, wetted the earth, and given our crops a break from an otherwise dry season.

This week’s share:

Leaf Lettuce

Cucumbers and squashes

Collards

Garlic Scapes and onions

Your choice between Swiss Chard and Lacinato Kale

Hakurei Turnips and the underappreciated purple kohlrabi

The last of the potted herbs on Tuesday and bunched parsley on Thursday

This week marks the end of the first quarter of the distribution season. It’s the time when cool, early-season vegetables give way to the vegetables of summer. Our tomatoes are beginning. Don’t expect to see many (or any) this week, but they’ll begin to yield in quantity very soon. Our sweet corn is just around the corner, and peppers, red cabbages, garlic and basil, too, will be coming in. This is the beginning of an especially wonderful time of year in the Northeast to be a plant eater!

Blueberries will be in your fruit shares this week. I suspect that this will be the last week of fruit prior to our midseason break. Pete, our fruit grower, told me that crows have found his blueberry patch – counting more than 80 in one flock – and that they were doing considerable damage. Exasperated, he pulled out his double-barrel shotgun. When he pulled the trigger, the butt of the gun somehow slipped slightly on his shoulder, resting wrongly on a soft part of muscle, and causing him quite a bit of grief. He has been icing it all morning. All told, he killed just one crow. The other 79 circled their dead relative and buzzed him, causing Pete to retreat to his truck. He told me that it was the first time in his long farming career that he ever shot at a bird and doubts whether he’ll ever do it again. Jan made a delicious pie last weekend with her blueberries and was not surprised at all to learn of the crow’s fondness for them.

Flower shares will be bunches of snapdragons and calendula and miscellaneous other flowers.

We love collard wraps. Nate has picked out a recipe that appears to use virtually everything in this week’s share all wrapped up in collard leaves – see below. He and I will be using our “steerable cultivator” later today on some new lettuce and broccoli plantings. I’ll post a photo on our Instagram page later today. Please visit our Facebook and Instagram (@windflowerfarm) pages to learn more about the farm.

Have a great week! Ted

Central Brooklyn CSA

Twitter: @centralbklyncsa

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CBCSA

Web: https://centralbrooklyncsa.wordpress.com/

Hi Everyone,

A few announcements about this week’s pick up:

• No News From Windflower Farm: No news this week from Windflower Farm, which likely means Farmer Ted and his crew are very hard at work. We’ll keep you informed as soon as we hear something.

• Fruit Refunds: checks will be distributed this week to all members who originally signed up for fruit shares. Make sure to ask for yours if we neglect to give it to you when you sign in.
• CBCSA Waitlist: know someone who missed out on signing up for this year’s CBCSA? They might be in luck! A very limited number of shares are up for the taking at a prorated rate for the rest of the season. Have interested individuals email centralbrooklyncsa with their name, email and phone number if they’re interested in hearing more.

See you tomorrow!

Best,

CBCSA Core Group

Hi Everyone,

We hope you all are well and enjoying the spoils of your CBCSA shares! A few announcements and notes:

• No News Yet: we haven’t heard yet from the farm about the contents of this week’s share, but we are imagining it will be similar to last week. Enjoy!

• Fruit Refunds: checks will be distributed this week and next to all members who originally signed up for fruit shares. Make sure to ask for yours if we neglect to give it to you when you sign in.

• Volunteer Commitment: every CBCSA share is required to volunteer for 2 distribution shifts or another approved activity (ask us if you have an idea or desire to help with events, outreach, etc) during the season. CBCSA cannot run without the commitment of its members, so please sign up soon if you haven’t done so already. It’s the embodiment of the “community” aspect of community shared agriculture (csa) and a great way to meet fellow members. Consider signing up for 2 shifts in a row on the same day if you want to fulfill your requirement all at once. Here’s how you sign up:
  1. Click this link to go to our invitation page on VolunteerSpot: http://vols.pt/qEuFJX
  2. Enter your email address: (You will NOT need to register an account on VolunteerSpot)
  3. Sign up! Choose your spots – VolunteerSpot will send you an automated confirmation and reminders. Easy!

• Egg/Fruit Cartons: please return cartons at your next pick up. Windflower Farm recycles them for future distributions

• Unable to pick up your share? Email cbcsa to swap with or have another CBCSA member pick it up for you. Friends and family are also welcome to pick up your share. Unclaimed shares are donated to the church’s food pantry at the end of each distribution.

Lastly, stay tuned for a separate email from Lewis Waite Farm CSA about ordering specialty products (meats, cheeses, breads, jams and the like). Lewis Waite delivers on B weeks and allows you to place orders up to a few days in advance, which is perfect for those last minute summer picnics and barbecues!

See you soon!

Best,

CBCSA Core Group

Hi Everyone,

News from Ted at Windflower Farm below.

SAVE THE DATE for this year’s farm weekend, August 27-28 in beautiful Upstate New York. All CBCSA members are invited to Windflower Farm for tours, camping and joviality with friends from the CSA. More details to come later this summer.

Lastly, a friendly reminder to half share members with full share eggs and/or flowers to stop by every week for their additional products.

See you tomorrow!

Best,

CBCSA Core Group

News from Windflower Farm

3rd Distribution, Week of June 20, 2016

What a difference a week makes! Hello from a hot and dry Windflower Farm!

This week’s share:

Red Leaf Lettuce

Green Romaine or Oakleaf Lettuce

Garlic Scapes

Your choice of two between Swiss Chard, Arugula and Choy

Scallions

Radishes

Bok Choy

Spinach

Potted Herbs

Strawberries and rhubarb will be in your fruit shares. We will begin sending fruit share refunds this week. Please be patient; because of the number of refunds and the ongoing work of farming, the process will take a couple of weeks.

Flower shares will be starting soon. Jan says that they are running behind because of the challenging spring weather.

We’ve been irrigating nonstop this past week. It hasn’t rained for two weeks and no rain is in sight, so we irrigate around the clock. We’ve invested quite a bit in irrigation equipment over the years, making it a lot easier to get water to our crops. We have two ponds and a deep, high volume well to draw from. And that is good news because rainfall this spring has been 8” below normal. We use drip irrigation on much of the farm, an Israeli technology that makes very efficient use of water, but we also use a good deal of overhead irrigation. We have invested in two irrigation reels over the years. These are sprinklers that travel the length of beds by themselves, irrigating whole swaths of crops a half-acre at a time. Nate and I share the workload: he irrigates the back fields from the ponds and I irrigate the front fields and greenhouses from the well. Yesterday he ran drip irrigation on a field of onions and garlic and then on another of cucumbers, melons and squashes. This morning he set up the reel on a field of beets, spinach and carrots. Now he’s irrigating a field of sweet corn. For my part, yesterday, I ran an irrigation reel through a field of mixed crops, including herbs, greens and popcorn, then ran drip on our pepper, cucumber and tomato greenhouses this morning, and I’m now running a reel through a field of lettuce and broccoli. It’s a tight schedule – it takes nearly a week to get through the whole farm. There is a slim chance of rain tonight, so we’ll continue to irrigate. Tomorrow it’s on to a flower field and then the cabbage…

Have a great week!

Ted