Central Brooklyn CSA

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

The News from Windflower Farm

What you’ll get this week

• Eggplants
• Tomatoes
• Sweet peppers
• Green Romaine lettuce
• Spinach
• Radicchio
• Sweet corn 
• Various summer squashes
• Your fruit share will be Yonder Farm’s ‘Zest Star’apples

Next week’s share will include carrots, green beans and spinach.

News from the farm

According to the Johnny’s Selected Seeds catalog, “the mildly bitter flavor of radicchio adds a nice touch to mixed salads.” The variety that we are sending this week is called ‘Virtus,’ which is a Sugarloaf type. Our Fedco Seeds catalog says that it “looks like Romaine crossed with Napa cabbage.” On her Lopez Island Kitchen Gardens blog, Debby Hatch says, “to cook it, I’ve braised the outer leaves in olive oil and garlic and served them as a side dish or as part of a pasta sauce. She has “also sliced the heads in half, brushed them generously with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and ground black pepper and grilled them.” Radicchio goes well with pears, nuts and Gorgonzola cheese, and with sherry or red wine vinaigrette.

It’s not much fun when things don’t work as they are supposed to. We awoke on Monday morning to find our cooler on the fritz. The thermometer read 55 degrees, too warm to keep vegetables for very long. I suspect that the problem originated with last week’s one-two punch: a heat wave followed by a power outage. Ready to tackle the problem, I put on my amateur plumber’s cap and coveralls. My spare parts box contained the previous year’s broken part – a motor contactor – but not a spare replacement (as it would have if I were a professional), so I headed off to my HVAC distributor in Bennington, a 90-minute round trip (where this time I bought two). But it turns out that the contactor wasn’t the broken part after all! And so, I called Gene, who, along with his dad before him, has taken care of our cooler ever since we bought the thing. But I was only able to leave a message, and I am sitting near the phone as I write. He’ll call; he’s very dependable. In the meantime: a precaution you might take at home is to bathe your greens in very cold tap water before putting them into the crisper drawer of your refrigerator. 

Have a great week, Ted 

P.S. It turns out that Gene did call. He spent all of 10 minutes here and the cooler is now working fine.