The News from Windflower Farm
What’s in the vegetable share?
- Lettuce
- Arugula
- Garlic
- Yellow onions
- Sweet Peppers
- Winter squash (acorn squash)
- Tomatoes
- Parsley
- Potatoes
- Sweet Corn
The fruit share will be the last of Yonder Farm’s peaches. We expect to send Bartlet pears next week. Fall plums and all kinds of apples are on the horizon.
News from the farm
A much-anticipated weather system late last week delivered just one tenth of an inch of rain, and so our drought continued. The lawn is brown, as are the trees out the kitchen window. Some golds and reds are evident as the fall foliage season gets underway. It is Saturday afternoon and once again we await the arrival of a system that is supposed to bring rain. I have withheld a spray of the fungus Spinosad, which would reduce flea beetle populations in our arugula and broccoli, in the understanding that rain would wash off the expensive material. In the meantime, Nate has been wiring a voltage converter that will enable us to bring an old well online. It might rain and it might not, but irrigation goes on. What a year!
Daniel, whose grandfather Ezequiel was our first foreign employee nearly twenty years ago, has worked with his extended family on our farm ever since his high school graduation. There is very little on the farm that he can’t do, and that extends to his role as our delivery truck driver. He became a citizen last year and he married Lizet, a young woman from his hometown of Laguna Prieta in Guanajuato. Lizet joined our field team last year and is working on her tractor driving skills and English language proficiency. Daniel and Lizet have just received promising news from USCIS regarding Lizet’s petition for permanent residency (aka, a green card) – a final determination interview has been scheduled for late October. It is hard to overstate what this petition means for the economic future of this young couple. We are cautiously optimistic.
We attended a Town Hall last night featuring Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin who came to Glens Falls to give a boost to the campaign of Blake Gendebien, who is trying to unseat Elise Stefanik, our representative in Congress. Of obvious interest to me are both that Blake is a dairy farmer who recognizes the challenges associated with my kind of business and that he appreciates and values the role of our guest workers and the vital importance of treating them with dignity and respect.
Tired of waiting for this latest weather system to develop, I’m about to prepare beds for the last field seedings of the season. Nate has made a blend of the seeds of several mild mustard greens, kales, and choy and will sow them shortly afterwards. I’ll also prepare for the last of our transplants, including kale, choy and lettuce. After a difficult summer greens season, made especially hard by the combination of hail and heat and drought, the late summer is shaping up to be better for greens. Radicchio, spinach, arugula, lettuce, escarole, bok choy, Swiss chard, mustard mix, and Red Russian kale are all coming during the next few weeks. Just as I was heading out, it started to rain, delivering just a quarter inch in total, but enough to make plants happy and to keep us out of the field for the rest of the day.
Have a great week, Ted
Central Brooklyn CSA 