Tag: health

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

Distribution #3, January 11, 2025

Winter News from Windflower Farm

Happy New Year from all of us at Windflower Farm! Your third and final box of the winter season will arrive this Saturday.

What you’ll get this month

  • Purple and ‘Toscano’ kale and spinach from our winter greenhouses
  • Sweet potatoes, Russet potatoes and a purple potato variety
  • A butternut squash (from friends at Denison Farm)
  • A bagful of yellow onions and ‘Rosa di Milano’ onions
  • Carrots, beets and celeriac in another bag
  • A jar of jelly made by our friend Deb using her own organically grown berries
  • And a bag of (mostly) ‘Ruby Frost’ apples from the Borden Farm

Special note: Please take home the winter share’s cardboard box and recycle it. Thank you!

News from the farm

We took the final harvest of the season today from our unheated high tunnel #3, and without much sunshine, it was cold. We were a team of five, so the workload was not heavy, but we were all happy when we were finished and we could head to the warmth of the barn. The greens were not only inside a greenhouse, but they were hooped and covered by two layers of a row cover made from spun polypropylene that looks like a painter’s ground cloth. Uncovering the greens on this frigid day, it was gratifying to see the healthy beds of dark green and purple kale and bright green spinach. There are few pests in winter greens. Still, the kale suffered a little from the cold; although it is good now, you should probably use it up within the week. The spinach will keep longer.

On this final harvest day of the season, we received our first box of seeds for next season. These came from High Mowing Seeds, a small New England purveyor of organically produced seeds for Northern growers. As a certified organic grower, Windflower Farm is required (and would choose anyway) to buy organically grown seeds. One of the many benefits of this requirement is that there is now a cottage industry in small scale seed production. Nate took a course in seed saving last winter, and we have been saving seeds of a few favorites. Now there are opportunities for small scale farms to generate additional sales by growing seed crops to sell to organic seed purveyors – a little seed side hustle. High Mowing was featured in the excellent book, The Town That Food Saved, by Ben Hewitt. The town, Hardwick, Vermont, was by coincidence where I first learned to farm many years ago.

And that’s a wrap. Thanks very much for being with us during these first several weeks of winter. Take good care. You’ll hear from us soon regarding the 2025 season.

Best wishes, Ted and the team

Distribution No. 19, Week of October 7, 2024

The News from Windflower Farm

It’s winter share signup season! Please read below to learn more.

What’s in the share?

  • Sweet peppers
  • Yellow onions
  • Pie pumpkin
  • Sweet potatoes
  • Basil (our last) or Rosemary
  • Potatoes
  • Broccoli
  • Spinach
  • Red Russian kale
  • Arugula

Your fruit share will be ‘Bosc’ pears from Yonder Farm. You’ll probably get ‘Empire’ apples next week.

What’s new on the farm?

It has been a lovely late summer and fall growing season. Our fields are still full of greens, including lettuces, choy, tatsoi, Swiss chard, and several varieties of kale. Fall broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower are coming along. And although we have harvested nearly all our storage crops, there are still several beds each of fresh carrots, beets and potatoes to dig. Next week’s vegetable share will look a lot like this one, with the exception that the hard squash will be ‘Delicata’ rather than pie pumpkin. Ginger and butternut squashes will be in your final two shares.  

A winter share anyone?

Purchasing a winter share is your chance to extend the fruit and vegetable season through the New Year.

What is it? In a nutshell, the winter share consists of a total of three one-bushel boxes, one delivered every fourth Saturday from mid-November through early January (November 16th, December 14thand January 11th). It contains a big bag of fresh greens (kale, spinach and more), 8-10 lb. of vegetables from our root cellar (including winter squashes, “Irish” and sweet potatoes, onions, carrots, beets, and other storage veggies), 4-6 lb. of delicious apples (and pears if available) from the Borden Farm, and a sweet treat every month (the Borden’s apple cider, Harry’s honey, and Deb’s jam). Optional grain, maple and egg shares are also available. Please follow the link for more details and to sign up.

Click here to learn more: Windflower Farm’s 2024-2025 Winter Share (wufoo.com).

We hope you’ll join us for the winter share season!

Take care, Ted

Why Join? Because the Food is Amazing!

Our farmers only harvest produce when it is ready to eat, instead of harvesting it weeks early to ship it across the country, or further!

If you are keeping count this is the third installment in our “Why Should I Join?” series. If you want to read the earlier posts here is the introand  part 1!

Delicious Food

My mother used to say “Boy, what you want isn’t always what’s best for you.” Who knew she was talking about vegetables? (Ok, she probably wasn’t but, the idea still fits here!) Although I would love to eat farm fresh tomatoes year-round, I cannot. Because I would rather not eat tomatoes, than eat a bland hot house tomato in early June, I have learned to heed Mom’s words.

The great thing about being a part of a CSA is that I can eat fresh, great tasting food all season, because our farmers only harvest the food when it is ready to eat, instead of harvesting it weeks early to ship it across the country (or further, yikes).  This means that the food is at it’s peak ripeness, and it’s peak nutritional value; you’re getting the vegetables that are the best for you, and the best tasting!

In the late summer, when the tomato harvest comes in, “Look out world, I’m on a natural high!” And in the meantime, I get to try fruits and vegetables that although I may have never tried before new, I know they taste the way they are supposed to.  And, learning to love new food is almost fun as eating a delicious favorite.

Central Brooklyn CSA has vegetable, fruit, and egg shares available. We are currently developing a wicked menu board, and are planning on hosting cooking demonstrations to boot, so if you like the idea of eating perfectly ripened fresh foods, but are not yet a kitchen wizard, fear not!