Central Brooklyn CSA

The News from Windflower Farm

Somehow, we find ourselves in the second half of the CSA season. Soon, school will resume, ponds will be too cold for swimming, County Fairs will be a distant memory. Days are getting shorter by 2 ½ minutes per day. It’s dark now when I get home from my NYC deliveries. Soon, your shares will take on the look of fall: potatoes, carrots, beets, Butternut and Delicata squashes, leeks, sweet potatoes. Although we have fresh garden salads every day of the week, it’s these fall crops that I most look forward to.

What’s in the share?

• Small tomatoes
• Basil
• Lettuce
• Mixed mustard greens
• Spinach
• Sweet peppers
• Yellow onions
• Garlic
• Radicchio

Your fruit share will consist of peaches from Yonder Farm. Lizet, who is a new member of the staff, made agua de melonis (an agua fresca) for us last night. If ever your cantaloupes or watermelons (or peaches or strawberries) are mealy or otherwise not desirable for eating plain, puree the fruit, add water and a sweetener if needed, stir,chill and serve. It makes a wonderfully refreshing drink. It’s enhanced by adding a few small cubes of the fruit.

What’s new on the farm?

A pair of foxes have been wandering through the farm, evidence of which has been found in our greenhouses. Jan was once a scatologist for Halloween and offered a variety of chocolate treats intended to mimic the look of, well, scat, so I believe I know what I’ve been looking at. I appreciate the reminder that we coexist with grey and red foxes, along with coyotes, Fisher cats, stoats (adorable short-tailed weasels) and occasionally even black bears and moose. (This past weekend we enjoyed watching the flights of Great Blue Herons and the antics of loons while paddling through the Adirondack’s St. Regis Wilderness.)

We started digging potatoes last week, and if the machinery – a small Italian digger and an old, clanky brusher-washer – continues to work properly, you should see them next week. Yields appear to be so-so, but flavor is very good. We’ll be sure to send rosemary at some point soon, too.

Pumpkins are already mostly orange and we’ve also begun to harvest them. If past seasons are a guide, they don’t seem to keep very long, so we’ll send them to you soon (I am aware that this is two months early). We’ve grown a variety that can be turned into pie or painted or even carved, although they are a bit small for that. Delicatas, too, are showing good color. Warm summers and ample rainfall produce early winter squash crops. I am hoping that their foliage remains healthy long enough to produce a sweet crop. Butternuts, acorn squashes and Kabochas will round out this year’s squash harvest.

This makes me think that I should peek under some sweet potato vines.

Next week, we’ll send potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, lettuces, onions, garlic, carrots from Denison Farm, and some other odds and ends.

Have a great week, Ted

The News from Windflower Farm

What’s in the share?

• Assorted tomatoes
• Sweet corn
• Arugula
• Mixed mustard greens
• Radicchio
• Small green cabbages
• Garlic (use soon, will not keep long)
• Sweet peppers
• Red onions

Your fruit share will consist of our organically grown watermelons.

What’s new on the farm?

My nearly new Isuzu truck is still in the garage. The mechanics believe that they have diagnosed the problem and now await the parts. Supply chain problems have prolonged the wait, so we’ll arrive this week in a rental truck. The Uber driver who gave me a ride from the truck repair garage to the truck rental shop turned out to have been a former Yonder Farm employee. I was happy that he spoke well of Pete and his farm team. As an older man he sought the Uber job to get out of the field and into less physically demanding work. Although that part has worked out, it’s been a financial disaster for him. Gig work, he tells me, has not paid well.

In a round-about way my Uber driver introduced me to what might be the first fungicide I’m excited to trial in our Cucurbits. I mentioned my coincidental meeting of his past employee to the Yonder Farm manager when I picked up fruit the next day, which gave us a chance to talk about other topics, one of which was the diseases in our winter squashes. He described a trial he has underway to control diseases in his young apple tree crop. He has been spraying Howler, a beneficial bacterium that has been approved for organic production, and he’s seen results comparable to his conventional fungicides. Downy and Powdery mildews and Alternaria leaf spot, the scourges of organic Cucurbit production, are supposed to be effectively controlled by the product. I don’t like to spray, and have found few materials in the organic tool box worth spraying, but I’d like to improve our Cucurbit production, and I’ll try this one.

Next week’s share will look like this week’s except that Romaine will replace the cabbage, and we’ll add basil to the share. Radicchio will figure in shares soon, too. The fruit share will again be watermelons at some sites and peaches at others.

Have a great week! Ted

The News from Windflower Farm

On Thursday, our (still new) truck experienced difficulties with its electronics and stopped running. We were able to rent a truck in relatively short order and transfer the load, but it made us very late getting to several sites. I am sorry for your inconvenience and thank you for your patience. The truck remains in the shop as of this writing – I’m hoping for good news tomorrow morning. Kage suggests we keep our eyes out for a good truck from the ‘80s – something from the electronics before-times.

What’s in the share?

• Assorted tomatoes
• Beets 
• Sweet peppers
• Sweet corn
• Mixed mustard greens
• Kale
• Swiss chard
• Garlic (Please put on your countertop and eat soon. Our garlic won’t keep long this year)

Your fruit share will consist of 1 quart of plums from Yonder Farm AND 1 cantaloupe from us. Please refrigerate your melon and eat it soon because it won’t keep long. 

What’s new on the farm?

It was another big week here at Windflower Farm, this time for very different reasons.

The tail end of Hurricane Debbie struck on Friday afternoon with straight line winds in the 80-100 mph range. As often happens following heavy rains and wind, the power went out. Jan and Nate hopped on their bikes to investigate a power outage the map indicated was about a mile down the road and came back very upset because our next–door neighbors experienced the brunt force of the wind. At one house, three or four holes were punched through the roof by falling tree branches, a porch was blown off and a barn’s steel roofing was blown off. Dozens of trees were knocked down, taking power lines with it.

At another house, an ancient locust was blown against the roof, crushing a large section and punching a hole. Additionally, three barns lost their roofs, leaving stored hay, equipment, and workshop tools exposed to the elements. The clean-up got underway immediately. Dozens of people showed up, several with heavy equipment. A neighbor used a cherry picker to de-limb the tree, and a relative with a giant excavator removed the trunk. Chain saws and payloaders were put to work by the dozens ofpeople who showed up to help. The rest of us hauled tree limbs out of the way. And by evening’s end, the road and driveways were cleared, and the roofs weretemporarily patched.  

The houses will be repaired in short order. The barn roofs are still under assessment and will take longer to repair. But no one was hurt. Meanwhile, a day later, sitting on my front porch listening to the singing of nearby songbirds and the ongoing work of neighbors using power tools in the distance, I’m feeling grateful for this wonderful rural community that we have become a part of, where neighbors really help neighbors.

Next week, among other things, we’ll send tomatoes, peppers, sweet corn, cabbage, Romaine lettuce, and arugula or a mustard mix.

Have a good week, Ted

The News from Windflower Farm

What’s in the share?

• Assorted tomatoes
• Carrots
• Sweet peppers
• Onions
• Sweet corn
• Arugula or Mustard Mix (choice)
• Kale
• Lettuce

Your fruit share will consist of our own cantaloupes. Our watermelons will be coming along soon.

What’s new on the farm?

It was a big week here at Windflower Farm. On Wednesday, two gentlemen from the Department of Labor were here for one of their regular check-ins, on Thursday it was a Homeland Security investigator, on Friday our organic inspector came to walk through our fields and review all our records. We received a complement for being well organized! And today it was a photographer from FarmAid. Willie Nelson, Dave Mathews and Neil Young will be playing in Saratoga Springs and they wanted photos from a few nearby farms. Wouldn’t they be fun to go see?

We are planting the last of our cucumbers this week, with fingers crossed that downy mildew doesn’t wipe them out before we have something to show for our effort. We are also making our final plantings of broccoli and root crops this week. Field sowings of spinach, arugula, Swiss chard and various mustard greens will continue for another month. The onion harvest is winding down, with relatively good yields. We’ll start harvesting potatoes next week. Roasted with a little salt, a little rosemary and a little olive oil… I can’t wait. 

Next week’s share will likely include garlic, peppers, tomatoes, beets, sweet corn, and a mix of greens.

Have a great week, Ted

The News from Windflower Farm

What’s in the share?

• Assorted tomatoes
• Eggplant
• Onions
• Sweet corn
• Kale
• Lettuce
• Carrots
• Arugula

Insects in corn are usually confined to the tips of the ears. So, here’s my recommendation, which also helps make for a tidy way of dealing with the messy silk and the flag ears: lay the ear out on the cutting board, position all of the flag ears and silk above the ear tip and then chop the ear two or three inches below the tip, placing all of it (plus any worms) in your compost bucket.

We’ve disced under what remains of our turnips and kohlrabi. Thank goodness. And there is a gap in our cucumber and squash successions, so what’s coming? More tomatoes, sweet corn, and lettuce, along with onions and kale. New additions, peppers and garlic, should be in shares next week. Basil will come along soon. Beets and fennel will be back in a couple of weeks, and cucumbers and summer squashes will appear again in about three weeks.  

The fruit share will be blueberries from Yonder Farm.

What’s new on the farm?

Yesterday, while on a bike ride, we took note of the roadside wildflowers in bloom. A partial census: red and white clover, Birdsfoot trefoil, wild blue chicory, Queen Anne’s lace, daisy fleabane, Joe Pye weed, Boneset, cattails, and the invasive purple loosestrife.

I worked in three fields with rye cover crops today, discing in a huge amount of organic matter. The mature seed heads shattered as I drove my equipment across the field, effectively reseeding the crop. Next year, when we plant these fields to vegetables, they should have improved tilth and far fewer weeds.  

Our sweet corn is ready for harvest in the next field over. And on cue, racoons have shown up. To keep them out of the corn, we have installed a pair of fences around the field: an inner fence made of woven wire and an outer fence comprised of four horizontal wires. Both stand just 30 inches tall and both are electrified. This is the only way we have found to keep the little corn-stealing bandits out of the corn, at least all but the Olympic caliber athletes among them.

Have a great week, Ted