Category: Farm

Week of October 31, Distribution #22

The News from Windflower Farm

What’s in your share?

  • Spinach
  • Lettuce
  • Arugula
  • Kale
  • Beets
  • Potatoes
  • Sweet potatoes
  • Yellow onions
  • Ginger
  • Garlic
  • Rosemary
  • Cabbage

It’s winter share signup time! Read more about it below or follow this link to sign up: Windflower Farm’s 2022-2023 Winter Share (wufoo.com).

The black locusts were in full bloom when we sent our first shares this year and now, just as we are to send our final shares, they are among the last trees in our hedgerow to lose their leaves, going from green to gold to brown in quick order this past week. It is Sunday and the farm team appears especially happy today. There are smiles all around. It’s 65 degrees and sunny, and the end of a long season is near. We have harvested in snow in previous Octobers; this fall we have enjoyed one lovely day after another. Wednesday, after harvesting and packing your final boxes, we’ll gather for tacos and tamales and then scatter, some of us for just a couple of weeks, and some of us until the spring.

This week’s share is your last of the season. The farm team and I would like to express our gratitude to you for being a part of our CSA this year. We hope that you’ve enjoyed the experience. We would like to especially thank the volunteers in your neighborhood whose organizational efforts make the CSA happen and enable our farm livelihoods. Consider joining the core group at your site.

I still hope to get around to producing a survey that asks for your feedback about this year’s CSA shares and your overall CSA experience. If I don’t, please send me an email with the thoughts or suggestions that you think will help us improve in the future. Thank you.

Consider signing up for a winter share if you’d like to continue getting Windflower Farm vegetables for the next few months. If you choose not to, we hope to see you in the spring!

Wishing you a healthy winter season, Ted and the Windflower Farm team

Winter share news

It’s winter share signup season! A few years back, my friends at the Stanton Street CSA in the Lower East Side introduced me to the idea of “vegetable fatigue,” which they say can occur any time beginning around week 18 or 20 in the CSA season. Vegetable fatigue is a lack of enthusiasm for dealing with fresh vegetables. I completely understand. Going out to eat is the only remedy. A week or two to clear out the refrigerator helps.

Nevertheless, at the risk of wearing out our welcome, we offer a winter share. We finished planting our winter greenhouses on Friday morning. These are the greens that fill out the winter share. In total, we’ve planted four caterpillar tunnels and three high tunnels to a mix of choy, various kales and spinach – that’s twenty-three 140’ beds of greens. Every month, shares include a large bag of greens.

The winter share consists of three monthly deliveries that will include approximately 2 lb. of our organically grown greens (including spinach, a variety of kales and bok choy) and 8-10 lb. of our storage vegetables (including carrots, red and yellow onions, winter squash, a variety of potatoes, beets, leeks, sweet potatoes, shallots, and more), along with 4-6 lb. of fruits, and either apple cider, Deb’s homemade jelly made from her organic berries or local honey – all packed to fit in a returnable box – for $174.00

This year, we will only be offering three monthly deliveries instead of four. We have fewer crops going into storage and our farm team would like some time off.

We are minimizing our use of PLASTIC BAGS! We’ll pack loose where we can and use paper bags where we need packaging. Our GOAL will be to use zero plastic bags, but, because we want your salad greens to arrive fresh and we don’t have an alternative to plastic, we may use one plastic bag per month.

OPTIONAL shares include the EGG SHARE and MAPLE SHARE from Davis Family Farm and a GRAIN SHARE from Hickory Wind Farm (please see the details below).

Our deliveries are timed to coincide with the deliveries made to your CSA pickup site by Lewis-Waite Farm.

Take care, Ted

Week of October 24, Distribution #21

The News from Windflower Farm

What’s in your share?

  • Butterhead lettuce
  • ‘Premo’ kale
  • Fingerling potatoes
  • Rosa di Milano onions
  • Rosemary or parsley
  • Garlic
  • Leeks
  • Butternut squash
  • Sweet potatoes
  • Chiles
  • Ginger
  • Carrots (our own babies if they have tops)

Looking back at the list of items we’d delivered over the season, Andrea noticed that I miscounted the number of weeks that we sent fruit. We did not start in week #1 as per usual. And for those of you at our Thursday sites, you’ll get a double share to make up for a recent missed week. So, it is this week that we deliver our final fruit shares. The share, which comes from Borden’s Farm, is comprised of Honey Crisp and Ginger Gold apples, two of my favorites.

This is the last CSA delivery for those of you who purchased half shares and pickup on odd weeks. I want to thank you very much for being with us and hope you have enjoyed this year’s offerings. For everyone else, next week’s will be your last delivery of the season. Information about our winter share and a sign-up link can be found below.  

We dug half of the ginger over the weekend, and Nate, who takes the lead with ginger, is washing it as I write. We’ll send it this week and next. If you need an idea for how to use it, you can add it to your favorite Thai recipe, candy it or make sugar snap cookies. Or you might make a turmeric-ginger tea to help lessen the severity of a cold and to reduce inflammation. This is fresh ginger; it is not as strongly flavored as the “mother” plants you’d get from the Tropics, nor does it keep very long. If you don’t intend to use it soon, freeze it, after which you can grate it into soups or other dishes.

The fall crops are now all in. Over the course of this week and next, we’ll cover those crops with a winter cold barrier, and finish cleaning up the farm. We have a few small greenhouses to take down and hundreds of yards of irrigation line to organize and tuck away for next year. Next Friday, four of our team head to Mexico for the winter. Soon Daren will head off to Poland to help in a Ukrainian refugee relief program. Andrea and her new husband will visit family in Germany. And the rest of us will take a bit of time off before diving into winter projects. Mine will be to restore a bunch of disused farm equipment for resale in the very active regional farmer-to-farmer marketplace.

The ginger crop reminds me of how far afield your money goes when you buy a CSA share at Windflower Farm. Our ginger seed pieces come from Biker Dude on the Big Island of Hawaii. And when his crop fails, he sources starts for us in Peru. We get sweet potato slips from North Carolina and Irish potato seed pieces from Moose Tubers in Maine. I am pleased that most of our suppliers can be found within a 200-mile radius of our farm. Our primary seed producers – Johnny’s, High Mowing and Fedco – are all in New England, but the seeds they sell, although increasingly local, can be from almost anywhere. The soil mix we use in our greenhouse is a blend we make using Vermont Compost in Montpellier and Fafard Organic Potting Mix from northern Quebec. Our cover crop seeds come from the Mid-Hudson, and our compost, which constitutes the lion’s share of our soil fertility program, comes from Western New York. When we buy produce, it always comes from nearby – your fruit comes from Yonder Farm in Columbia County and the Borden’s, who are 5 miles away, your beans, when they are not our own, come from Markristo Farm in the lower Teconics, and your carrots this year have come from up the road at Denison Farm.

There are two categories of expense on our P&L statement that are not local. One is fuel and the other is machinery. But even these expenses have elements that are local, including sales, delivery and repair. Economists have said that your local food dollars are spent 3 ½ times or more in the community before their economic benefit is exhausted. Our payroll and associated taxes and benefits represent by far our biggest expenses. If the supplies noted above and payroll together represent half a million dollars of CSA spending, which is about the case at our farm, the impact on our rural community might come in at close to two million dollars. I recall a co-founder of the NYC Greenmarkets telling me years ago that the city had always supported the countryside. I believe that to be true, but I also appreciate that this is a reciprocal arrangement.

I hope to get around to producing a survey that asks for your feedback about this year’s CSA shares and your overall CSA experience. If I don’t, please send me an email with the thoughts or suggestions that you think will help us improve in the future. Thank you.

Winter share news

It’s winter share signup season! A few years back, my friends at the Stanton Street CSA in the Lower East Side introduced me to the idea of “vegetable fatigue,” which they say can occur any time beginning around week 18 or 20 in the CSA season. Vegetable fatigue is a lack of enthusiasm for dealing with fresh vegetables. I completely understand. Going out to eat is the only remedy. A week or two to clear out the refrigerator helps.

Nevertheless, at the risk of wearing out our welcome, we offer a winter share. We finished planting our winter greenhouses on Friday morning. These are the greens that fill out the winter share. In total, we’ve planted four caterpillar tunnels and three high tunnels to a mix of choy, various kales and spinach – that’s twenty-three 140’ beds of greens. Every month, shares include a large bag of greens.

The winter share consists of three monthly deliveries that will include approximately 2 lb. of our organically grown greens (including spinach, a variety of kales and bok choy) and 8-10 lb. of our storage vegetables (including carrots, red and yellow onions, winter squash, a variety of potatoes, beets, leeks, sweet potatoes, shallots, and more), along with 4-6 lb. of fruits, and either apple cider, Deb’s homemade jelly made from her organic berries or local honey – all packed to fit in a returnable box – for $174.00

This year, we will only be offering three monthly deliveries instead of four. We have fewer crops going into storage and our farm team would like some time off.

We are minimizing our use of PLASTIC BAGS! We’ll pack loose where we can and use paper bags where we need packaging. Our GOAL will be to use zero plastic bags, but, because we want your salad greens to arrive fresh and we don’t have an alternative to plastic, we may use one plastic bag per month.

OPTIONAL shares include the EGG SHARE and MAPLE SHARE from Davis Family Farm and a GRAIN SHARE from Hickory Wind Farm (please see the details below).

Our deliveries are timed to coincide with the deliveries made to your CSA pickup site by Lewis-Waite Farm.

If you would like to register for a winter share, please sign up here:  Windflower Farm’s 2022-2023 Winter Share (wufoo.com). If you have already registered, thank you for joining us!

Have a great week, Ted

Week of October 17, Distribution #20

The News from Windflower Farm

What’s in your share?

  • Arugula
  • Green leaf lettuce
  • Salad mix (mustard greens)
  • Broccoli
  • Sweet potatoes
  • Leeks
  • Red onions
  • Fennel
  • Garlic
  • Butternut squash
  • French Breakfast radishes

Your fruit share will be Empire apples and Bosc pears from Yonder Farm. This is the last fruit delivery for our half fruit share members who pick up on even weeks. Half fruit share members who pick up on odd weeks and full fruit share members will have one more week of fruit shares. Pete, at Yonder Farm, our primary fruit supplier, and I miscommunicated a few weeks ago (week 17). As a result, he did not have a fruit share ready for our truck when we stopped at his farm on our way to the city that Thursday. My apologies. Your last fruit share will take place on Thursday of week 21. 

We roasted our first sweet potatoes this weekend. We put a couple of pounds in the oven at 400 degrees and it took about an hour for the caramelized juices to start oozing out, indicating that they were ready to serve. Unlike winter squashes, which often require sweetening despite our best intentions in the field, a fully cured and completely baked potato is always sweet eating, at least in my experience. We were not disappointed. More will come your way in this week’s share. The Delicatas and acorn squashes are now mostly gone from our root cellar. Butternuts, the buff colored, creamy textured, slightly hourglass shaped squashes, are up next. Both butternuts and sweet potatoes make excellent and creamy soups. We did not have enough time to harvest and process ginger this week, so it will not be a part of shares until next week and the week after. Potatoes, garlic and leeks (sounds like another soup!) will also make up part of the last two shares.

Our primary greenhouse is empty once again. We finished planting the overwintering onions on Thursday and the winter greens on Friday. Over the weekend, we began to plant onion sets and garlic. It’s not a fast process – the sets are placed in the ground by hand one plant at a time, each set producing just one onion or garlic bulb – but the work will soon be done. Until today, the weather had been perfect for these tasks. A light, cold rain is falling this morning, and no one wants to work outside. The packing shed is crowded with people doing the produce sorting and counting for our Tuesday delivery. The sugar maples across the road are losing their leaves, and signs of November are beginning to peek through.

Winter share news

It’s winter share signup season! A few years back, my friends at the Stanton Street CSA in the Lower East Side introduced me to the idea of “vegetable fatigue,” which they say can occur any time beginning around week 18 or 20 in the CSA season. Vegetable fatigue is a lack of enthusiasm for dealing with fresh vegetables. I completely understand. Going out to eat is the only remedy. A week or two to clear out the refrigerator helps.

Nevertheless, at the risk of wearing out our welcome, we offer a winter share. We finished planting our winter greenhouses on Friday morning. These are the greens that fill out the winter share. In total, we’ve planted four caterpillar tunnels and three high tunnels to a mix of choy, various kales and spinach – that’s twenty-three 140’ beds of greens. Every month, shares include a large bag of greens.

The winter share consists of three monthly deliveries that will include approximately 2 lb. of our organically grown greens (including spinach, a variety of kales and bok choy) and 8-10 lb. of our storage vegetables (including carrots, red and yellow onions, winter squash, a variety of potatoes, beets, leeks, sweet potatoes, shallots, popcorn and more), along with 4-6 lb. of fruits, and either apple cider, Deb’s homemade jelly made from her organic berries or local honey – all packed to fit in a returnable box – for $174.00

This year, we will only be offering three monthly deliveries instead of four. We have fewer crops going into storage and our farm team would like some time off.

We are minimizing our use of PLASTIC BAGS! We’ll pack loose where we can and use paper bags where we need packaging. Our GOAL will be to use zero plastic bags, but, because we want your salad greens to arrive fresh and we don’t have an alternative to plastic, we may use one plastic bag per month.

OPTIONAL shares include the EGG SHARE and MAPLE SHARE from Davis Family Farm and a GRAIN SHARE from Hickory Wind Farm (please see the details below).

Our deliveries are timed to coincide with the deliveries made to your CSA pickup site by Lewis-Waite Farm.

If you would like to sign up for the winter share, please register here: Windflower Farm’s 2022-2023 Winter Share (wufoo.com)

Have a great week, Ted

Week of October 10, Distribution #19

The News from Windflower Farm

What’s in your share?

  • Arugula
  • Green leaf lettuce
  • Sweet potatoes
  • Yellow onions
  • Broccoli
  • Carrots
  • Rosemary
  • Garlic
  • Winter squash
  • French Breakfast radishes

Your fruit share will be Empire apples and Bosc pears from Yonder Farm.

We wrapped up the sweet potato harvest last week and the crop is now curing in our heated greenhouse. Starches are converted to sugars during the curing process, making it the critical step in ensuring that the roots become sweet and delicious. We’ve had a bumper crop, and we’ll be sending them to you every week for the remainder of the season. They keep well at room temperature, so you won’t need to eat them all right away. In fact, they’ll only get better with time. But it is time to find a good recipe or two: sweet potato soup, sweet potato lasagna, sweet potato and cardamom omelets, baked sweet potato fries with or without a chili powder, and so on. This week, we’ll harvest our ginger and leeks; they will be in shares during weeks 20 and 21. Butternut squashes will be in shares during weeks 21 and 22.

The garlic is getting soft, so please use it up quickly. More is coming.

What’s new on the farm?

In the spring, I purchased a bin dumper. Its function is to lift a 20-bushel bin of vegetables overhead, invert it, and send its contents falling gently into a tank of water without causing bruising or skinning. This week’s job is to set up a produce wash line that begins with the bin dumper and includes a water tank that the bin’s contents will be dumped into, a water bubbler, an outfeed conveyor that will carry the crop out of the tank, a curving gravity conveyor that will deliver the crop to a washing apparatus and the washing apparatus itself, which consists of rolling brushes and water jets and another outfeed conveyor, which sends the crop to its final location on the line, a rotating sorting table. It’s like setting up an office: the desk goes here, the file cabinet there, and the printer against the wall. Nate and I are determined to make it work because there are too many 20-bushel bins of sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, squashes, beets and carrots to unload by hand. It makes my back ache just to think about it. Besides, we enjoy a good challenge. Running electric lines near so much splashing water is my chief concern. If we manage to build it, I’ll send you a picture.  

It is now Sunday evening and it’s cold outside. The sky is clear and there is a full moon. It seems fitting that coyotes are yipping in the woods across the road. We have just returned from a bonfire at the home that Victoria, our distribution coordinator, shares with her husband Jeremy and their three boys. She is an incredible cook, gardener and homesteader, and we were well fed. Much of the Windflower Farm staff was in attendance. Growlers of home brew were passed around. Mulled wine was steaming nearby. The wooden goblets that Victoria’s dad hand turned a few years back were filled and emptied and filled again. We soaked in the beauty of the fall foliage surrounding us. And as the moon rose over the horizon, in an event carefully orchestrated by our hosts, three archers with flaming arrows lifted their bows. In a scene fitting King Arthur, seven-year-old Cyrus made the key shot, hitting a stack of neatly piled wood squarely in its center, and causing the pile to erupt in flames. Jan and I jumped. Someone let out a small scream. But the ball of fire was only temporarily blinding. Jeremy had poured the better part of a can of diesel fuel over the wood, ensuring that an inferno would be produced upon ignition, making an awesome spectacle. Jan and I regained our composure. Soon a cheer broke out. Chairs were brought near, Kristoffer pulled out his guitar and started to sing, the kids climbed onto their granddad’s lap. And in this way, we said goodbye to the long hot days of summer and to the memorable 2022 growing season.

I hope you have a great week, Ted

Week of October 3, Distribution #18

The News from Windflower Farm

What’s in your share?

  • Lettuce
  • Eggplant
  • Yellow onions
  • Rosemary
  • Our last tomatoes
  • Chiles
  • Acorn squash
  • Carrots
  • Broccoli

Your fruit share will be Empire apples and Bosc pears from Yonder Farm.

What’s new on the farm?

The first hard frost of the season is expected here in the wee hours on Monday morning, and the entire farm team spent a couple of hours setting floating row covers over the top of frost-sensitive crops. We covered arugula, lettuce, kale, spinach and radishes. And we harvested the last of the tomatoes, eggplants and summer squashes against the likelihood that they wouldn’t survive the cold. All that remains in the field is the hardy stock: potatoes, still in their hills, sweet potatoes, snug under their vines, broccoli, leeks, turnips and kohlrabi. The consensus among the produce growers in my circle is that global warming is most apparent in the fall, when the season remains relatively mild for perhaps two weeks longer than when we first started farming, but that it is still important to watch out for those stray early frosts.

Windflower Farm is 150 miles due north of Fort Tryon Park in Washington Heights. I know this because I had to explain to a State Trooper why I was exempt from the kind of recordkeeping he was asking for on my way home last week. What regularly surprises me each Tuesday when I drive the delivery truck is how much warmer it is in NYC than here. The water surrounding the city has a moderating effect that explains much of the difference. All the concrete and a few degrees of latitude must also help. I imagine how much longer my season would be if I could relocate my farm to the open fields of Van Cortland Park in the Bronx. We may be just 3 ½ hours by car from you, but we are three or four weeks north by the gardening calendar.

Feed the soil, we’ve been told, and your healthy soil will produce good vegetable crops. Stick to these basics: keep the soil covered, alternate cash crops and green manures, rotate crop families and minimize tillage. We used the last of our rye-hairy vetch seed mixture today. Cold hardy winter rye will be sown alone from this point forward. But not to worry – it’s tough enough to germinate in the snow. Nate and I picked up mulch and drip tape from a newly harvested sweet potato field so that we could disc and sow the cover crop mix today.

It was dirty work, and there was a chill in the wind. We pulled out our cold weather work clothes for the occasion. While we worked, we reminisced about a two-day getaway: To get her annual ocean (and seafood chowder) fix late last week, Jan dragged us off to a spot near the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge on the southern coast of Maine. The woods were lovely. Many of our old friends from the Boreal Forest were present – red maples, white pines, hobblebushes, wild sarsaparilla, hay scented ferns – but it was the upper story of mature white oaks combined with an understory of cinnamon ferns along with the backdrop of tidal marsh that stood out for us. We wished for kayaks. Fall colors were already at their peak along the road over Bennington Mountain. Back at the farm, golds and oranges are popping out.

Best wishes, Ted