Tag: farm share

The News from Windflower Farm

What’s in the vegetable share?

• Swiss chard
• Lacinato kale
• Yellow onions
• Sweet Peppers
• Chiles
• Eggplant
• Tomatoes
• Basil
• Carrots (Denison Farm)

The fruit share will be Yonder Farm’s peaches.

News from the farm

For those of you paying attention to our cucumber saga, here’s an update. A Cornell plant pathologist has isolated a fungus from our leaf samples identified with a disease called anthracnose. The fungus, called Colletotrichum orbiculare, also infects muskmelons, which has indeed happened here since finding it on cucumbers, and comes in on infected seeds. Let’s hope that putting a name to this problem points us to a remedy, with finding disease-free seeds being an obvious starting point. In other news, our federal labor audit drags on but we managed to dispense quickly with a New York State labor audit and even managed to have fun doing it. Federal DOL please take note!  

The weather remains dry – record setting dry! – and has become cooler. Nate continues to irrigate, but his pace has begun to slow because plants grow more slowly in cool temperatures. Travelling north from our farm and through the Champlain Valley of Vermont, I noticed the effects of the drought in the prematurely brown forest canopy and the severely stunted field corn crops. Sadly, many fields are only waist high. In locations where corn planting could be done early or where there were a couple of odd rain showers, the corn crop looks good. Without irrigation, our crops would be stunted and sad.

The winter squash and sweet potato harvest is underway. Our 20-bushel totes are filling up quickly with acorn and Delicata squashes and pumpkins. You will likely see these beginning in Week #16. Our leek and potato harvests will start soon. For potatoes, first we mow and then burn off the weeds (The Maine potato farmers will tell you that “dry seasons grow weedy potatoes”) and then we harvest with the aid of a potato bed digger. This year, we’ve grown a red variety (Adirondack Red), a yellow variety (Natasha), and a baker (Golden Russet).

I’d like to acknowledge my thanks for the good and hard work of a wonderful group of people on this Labor Day: including the extended Aguilera-Medina family, who do the bulk of the harvesting and bunching; Andrea, who keeps the administrative side of this operation on the straight and level and organizes our tomato distribution; Kage, who keeps the Vegematic produce washer and the boxing line running smoothly; the work-share volunteers who count and sort tubs all day long; the five neighborhood kids who did that work all summer and just returned to school; and Nate and Jan, my nuclear team, who do most everything else. My thanks to all of you!  

Have a great week, Ted