Tag: gardening

Delivery #12, Week of August 18, 2025

The News from Windflower Farm

What’s in the vegetable share?

  • Cabbage
  • Arugula
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Tomatoes
  • Basil
  • Eggplant
  • Yellow onions
  • Green beans
  • Sweet corn

The fruit share will be more of Yonder Farm’s peaches.

If you ordered maple and grain shares for the August distribution, please pick them up this week. Please note, a few grain items will not be available this month. We will make these items up in October if possible. If you ordered grain this month, we will send you more details in a separate email. 

News from the farm

A Cornell extension agent has just left our farm. Our cucumbers have a disease and I’ve been stumped by it. I’m usually able to diagnose a vegetable plant disease after a few minutes with a dissecting scope, but not this time. I had dropped a note to Chuck, the agent, and to a Cornell University plant pathologist I know late last week and they decided our case was interesting enough to merit a lab analysis. Had it blown in from Canada or did it travel with the seed? Chuck had come to collect samples. Downy mildew of cucumbers had already taken out our field crop, which happens to most organic growers by the first week of August, and we suspected it was the culprit in the case of my greenhouse cucumbers. But the spots were the wrong color and the plants lacked any other telltale symptomatology, especially the dark fungal growth (sporangia) on the undersides of leaves. I was told to wrap some leaves in a wet paper towel and to reexamine them on Wednesday. I can’t wait.

A more likely contender is angular leaf spot, caused by a bacterium that can be seedborne. This fit because the spots were first detected on the cotyledons or seed leaves. A third contender, a nasty disease called scab, is also seedborne, and we’ve had it before. So, who knows? It’s my hope that incubating the pathogen in a petri dish will lead to a diagnosis. And perhaps to a plan for extending the cucumber season next year. I’ll keep you posted. In going down the list of diseases that can kill cucumbers, I’m happy that we can grow any at all.

It’s county fair week here in Washington County and the kids in the packing shed are bouncing off the wall today. (If I haven’t mentioned it: five teenagers from the neighborhood work here on Mondays and Wednesdays packing your vegetables. They’ll be going back to school soon.) The demolition derby is tonight and nearly all of them are going. Although none of them will be showing 4-H animals, several entered artwork and will find out tonight if they’ve won ribbons. The talk today was about tractor pulls, maple milkshakes and fried dough. It’s easily this agricultural county’s biggest happening all year, and I’m looking forward to going myself.   

Have a great week, Ted

Delivery #9, Week of July 28, 2025

The News from Windflower Farm 

What’s in the vegetable share?

  • Eggplant
  • Summer squashes
  • Yellow onions
  • Tomatoes
  • Basil
  • Fennel
  • Sweet corn
  • Bunched beets from Denison Farm
  • Lettuce from Denison Farm

The fruit share will consist of a quart of peaches from Yonder Farm.

The first of our sweet corn is coming this week. There is some bug damage in the tips. You may want to cut off the tips before shucking your corn. 

News from the farm

The water level in our primary irrigation pond, which is in a deep ravine in the middle of our farm, has been going down during these hot and dry weeks of midsummer, concentrating the aquatic wildlife in an ever-smaller pool, as happens every year at this time. The snapping turtles, fishes, frogs, and insects have come to reside in what I imagine is uncomfortable proximity. Nate and I were installing a dock on which to relocate an irrigation pump in a corner of the pond the other day when we encountered the remains of a crawdad that measured a whopping 7 ½ inches in length. Tracks in the mud suggested that the animal may have been mortally wounded by a racoon, a species known to relish crayfish. I once had crayfish at the Bobcat Café, in Bristol, Vermont, in a dish called prawns in marinara with linguine, and found them to be surprisingly good.

We were admiring the creature when Jan came running down the pond trail in pursuit by the county sheriff. “What had she done?” I wondered. “Are you OK?” she asked. It took us a minute to understand what was going on. It turns out that Nate had butt-dialed 9-1-1. The sheriff was surprised at how difficult it was to keep up with Jan, who first ran down a steep hill and then up another long one before getting to us. But I wasn’t – she was a track star in high school. He gets butt dials all the time, he said, and must respond to each one. He’s been to almost every farm in the county. The sheriff also said that Candelaria and Salvador, who are part of our Mexican staff, looked nervous when they saw him go by. “No kidding!” I thought.

After nearly an inch of rainfall today, the pond’s level has risen considerably, and its inhabitants are no doubt happy to have a little more space. And Nate is happy to have a break from irrigation this week.

Have a great week, Ted

Delivery #7, Week of July 13, 2025

The News from Windflower Farm

What’s in the vegetable share?

  • Lettuce
  • Tomatoes
  • Basil
  • Kale OR Greens Mix (your choice)
  • Arugula
  • Cucumbers
  • Yellow onions
  • Zucchini/Squash

Everything in this week’s share was grown organically at Windflower Farm

Your fruit share will be a pint of our own organically grown blueberries

News from the farm

On Thursday afternoon of last week, we had an impromptu visit by officials from the US Department of Labor and a significant hailstorm, and we will be feeling the impacts of these for the next couple of weeks.

Lucky us, the DOL inspector told Jan that he intends to do a full 5-year audit of our farm’s labor practices. Many farmers can spend their entire careers without encountering a federal DOL official. He also told Janthat our farm worker housing was the nicest he’d ever seen, which I hope he remembers when he encounters the inevitable shortcomings in my paperwork.

Farm workers and farm raids by ICE have been much in the news lately. Daniel, the young man from Mexico you might have met if you encountered our delivery truck, told me about the worker abuses at a farm in New Jersey that employs many of his neighbors from Guanajuato, the most flagrant of which is that they take so many “payroll deductions” from their paychecks that they effectively get only 55% of what they are entitled to. They are getting just $10/hour when they should be getting nearly $18.00. Why don’t they make a complaint?, I wondered. Because there is no way to earn $700/week in Mexico, was the answer. And they are willing to work the 70 hours a week their New Jersey farmer requires of them to earn it. Make a complaint and the job vanishes. These are the people who grow our food. We cannot allow them to betreated that way.

When it comes to the details of the audit here, I’m not worried about a bad outcome: we work hard to do everything by the book. Still, it will take hours to get together the paperwork they’ve asked for. My goal is to have it done by Monday because I want time to prepare for the Department of Agriculture produce safety inspection that is coming up on Wednesday.

The hailstorm, the other thing that happened on Thursday, caused substantial damage. The wind-driven hailstones came straight out of the north, shredding leaves and blowing the plastic off a greenhouse. Fortunately, we grow most of your tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers in tunnels, and some of your greens under cover. Most of the current crop of summer squashes and zucchinis were ruined, but more will come along soon. The young greens will recover, although this and next week’s greens will no doubt show some of the damage. The potatoes and squash and corn were all flattened, but I am confident that they’ll come back. We’ve experienced worse.

Best wishes, Ted

Delivery #6, Week of July 7, 2025

The News from Windflower Farm

What’s in the vegetable share?

  • Green oakleaf lettuce
  • Red leaf lettuce
  • Swiss chard
  • Slicing cucumbers
  • Asian cucumber
  • Zucchini/Summer Squash
  • Sweet onion
  • Purple kohlrabi
  • Tomatoes
  • Choice of Napa Cabbage OR Spinach OR Happy Rich Broccolini

The fruit share is a quart of Yonder Farm’s cherries or strawberries.

Coming soon: tomatoes, basil, bunched beets, and radicchio

News from the farm

We are harvesting the last of the overwintered onions and the first of the garlic today. The onions are a variety called ‘Forum’ that we’ve grown for years using sets produced in Holland, and they appear to have loved this season’s cool and wet spring. The garlic is a variety of ‘German White’ called ‘Music.’ Early indications are that it’s a lovely crop: good size, pretty color, and free of disease. Harvesting can be tough on the back, so we are bringing out some new tools. The first, a battery-powered electric hedge trimmer, lets us quickly trim the garlic to a length while it’s still in the field, allowing us to operate the tractor-mounted bed-lifter without separating the stem from the bulb. Following these two steps, it is much less difficult to pull the bulb out of the ground: we just grab it by its shortened stem and pull.  We’ll place the garlic in bulb crates and place them in the greenhouse for a week of drying to help preserve the crop for future distributions. Nate has planted a half dozen other varieties that we’ll harvest in the same way next week. They go by names like “Ozark,’ ‘Estonian Red,’ ‘Shandong Purple,’ and ‘Idaho Silver.’ The fall-planted ‘Ed’s Red’ (Dutch) and ‘Crème Brule’ (French) shallots are next on the early Allium harvest list.

Other upcoming harvests: tomatoes and basil. Summer is here and these will begin to show up soon! I’ve had my first of the season in the form of a cold gazpacho on a hot day last week. Hmmm.

Have a great week, Ted

PS. If you ordered a hat, they will be coming on the truck to your site this week and next week. Please stay tuned for an email from us about when your hat will be delivered.

Delivery #1, Week of May 26, 2025

The News From Windflower Farm

Hello from all of us at Windflower Farm! Thank you for being with us for the 2025 growing season. Your first shares of the season will be delivered this week.

What’s in the vegetable share?

  • ‘Coastal Star’ Romaine lettuce
  • ‘Red Russian’ kale
  • ‘Fordhook’ Swiss chard
  • ‘Astro’ arugula (a small bunch)
  • Baby bunched Dutch shallots
  • Potted purple or green basil
  • Egg shares start this week.
  • Fruit shares will start in a week or two.

News from the farm

Let’s begin by acknowledging that it’s been a miserable spring. I can hardly remember when I last felt the sunshine or was outside in temperatures warmer than 60-something. Yesterday’s high was 59 degrees, and it is the warmest it’s been in a week. I’m still wearing my thermals! Rainfall so far this May has been 5 inches above normal. The average brightness and solar radiation for the month of May has been just 2/3 of normal. It has been a spring unlike anything we’ve experienced.

These cool, wet and generally bleak conditions have presented us with challenges, but we are feeling optimistic. We have done much over the years to mitigate the effects of foul weather on our production. This year, we have deployed every manner of season-extending paraphernalia, from greenhouse plastics and floating row covers to soil-warming black plastic and woven fabric mulches to encourage our crops. And we use a permanent raised bed system to help achieve earliness.

The field season got underway on Earth Day this year and our first delivery will take place on Rachel Carson’s birthday. In those five weeks, we have planted tomatoes in two large greenhouses and 11 smaller greenhouses (which we call caterpillars). We have planted cucumbers in one large greenhouse, one caterpillar and three 375’ long low tunnels. We have planted peppers in seven caterpillars, lettuces in two caterpillars, kale in two more, and zucchinis in three 375′ low tunnels. And we have planted numerous beds of greens and early root crops in the field and covered them with floating row covers.

All of this is to say that, despite the cold and gray, the start to this season will appear very much like that of any other year – it’s a time for salads. We are happy to be getting started and hope you enjoy your first share.  

Best regards, Ted and the Windflower Team

PS: Windflower Farm hats are once again available for purchase:  If you are interested in a hat, please use this link to order:Windflower Farm Hat Order Form. We will send your hat to your site later this season.