The BEET: Volume 15, Issue 10
FULL SHARE & YELLOW HALF SHARE PICK UP TONIGHT
Pick up today: 5pm - 7:30pm at PS 56 on the corner of Gates and Downing
Call Out to Volunteers! These past few weeks we have been a bit shorthanded. Please Sign up!
Reminder: If you haven't paid your balance for this season- it's past due! Please bring a check to pick up tonight! Or mail it to our P.O. box. Thanks!
This Week's Share:
- Carrots
- Potatoes
- Scallions
- Tomatoes
- Basil
- Squashes
- Sweet corn
- Broccoli or Onions
- Cabbage or Cucumbers
From Windflower Farm - Get to know their team!
Much to our surprise and good fortune, many of the members of our staff keep coming back each year, several for as many as nine, ten and eleven years, representing a significant investment in our farm and a growing reservoir of know-how about how the farm functions. So, to make it a more interesting work experience for them and to make a better farm for all of us, we created a series of coordinating roles. Andrea, who you have probably heard from, is our membership coordinator. She also works on another small farm (to keep it interesting) and runs a micro-size herb farm of her own (to make sure there is never a dull moment). Victoria is our distribution coordinator. Hers is the only position that is not new. She is the mother of two, an avid homesteader and beer maker, and keeps the packing shed interesting with all kinds of word games. We always have a small number of newcomers, and they start by working under Victoria’s supervision in the packing shed. This year’s team includes Mallory, Kristoffer, Dagny and Wyatt. The starting wage on the farm is $12/hour.
Salvador is our weeding coordinator. He is the one who showed up with his brother-in-law one day ten years ago and said, “you really need our help.” And I did! Our farm has been forever improved by his and his family’s presence here. His wife, Candelaria, who works by his side every day, makes incredible tamales. Martin, Salvador’s brother-in-law, is our harvest coordinator. He comes to us from Mexico each year with his wife and Martin Jr., the oldest of his five children. Martin is expanding his own farm in the mountainous country southwest of Mexico City, and we talk a great deal about growing onions and cabbages (his biggest cash crops) and farm economics. They also grow corn, beans and squash, the three sister crops that sustain the family. Sara is our social media coordinator. Her dad’s chickens produce the eggs in your egg share and his maple trees are the source of the syrup that are sometimes in winter shares. She is our chief transplant tractor driver and Jan’s partner in pulling together your flower share. She is also a photographer and potter. Mack coordinates our cooler. She began working here as a kid, just graduated with a fine arts degree from FIT, and is now looking for a job in interior design.
Nate, my oldest son, is our payroll coordinator (which makes him quite popular) and our soil health coordinator. He has embraced cover cropping as the foundation of soil management here (his fields of oats and peas are impressive). Naomi is our delivery coordinator. She is the one that site coordinators get a call from when our truck is stuck behind a double-parked Fresh Direct van and will be late. Jan is my farming partner and wife of 25 years. She is in charge of flowers and serves as the general manager around here. What is left for me to do, you might ask? Well, much less, of course, but, in delegating these chores I am able to do a better job with my key chore, producing a good harvest. I focus on greenhouse scheduling, field preparation and pest management. No small business survives if its owner cannot build a good team and delegate, and that is what I am trying to do. I plan to farm for another fifteen years or so, but when I leave the farm, I’d like it not to skip a beat.
Have a great week, Ted
Save The Date!
Windflower Farm Open House Weekend :: August 27 & 28th.
Everyone is welcome to come visit our farm and stay the night! (Camping style of course) Saturday night there is a big pot luck dinner with friends and neighbors, and Sunday morning, Ted & Jan cook up a huge farm style breakfast. Windflower farm is about a 3 hour drive north of the city just east of Albany.
Recipe Ideas
Cabbage! While it may not seem like a summer vegetable- it's quite versatile, and pairs up nicely with a lot of popular summer dishes. (Like Hot Dogs!) Cabbage can be pickled, fermented, braised, sauteed or eaten raw. It is also one of the oldest known vegetables, there being documents of Europeans domesticating it around the year 1000 B.C. Cabbage is in the Brassica family, and is closely related to cauliflower and broccoli. It's a significant source of vitamins C & K, and B6.
One of the most nutritious things you can do with your cabbage is to ferment it into sauerkraut, or if you're into spice; kimchi.
SAUERKRAUT:: The Kitchn has a great guide here for mason jar sauerkraut.
KIMCHI:: For a simple Kimchi guide, I like this one at cultures for health. Cultures for health is also a great website for all kinds of fermentation. They have lots of videos, and starter kits for things like kombucha and kefir.
If you really want to fall down the rabbit hole of fermentation, I would highly recommend this book: Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Katz. It's got the basics for every kind of fermented food, with easy recipes, and clear instructions.
BORSCHT:: Cold soup for a hot day! Cold summer Borscht only gets better the longer it sits in your fridge. It's a Ukrainian beet & cabbage soup that can be served cold or hot. Here is a tried and true classic recipe, and if you want to try it before making it, I would highly recommend getting a bowl with a slice of home made bread at Veselka. Thank goodness they are still around!
COLESLAW:: The Food Lab offers up this in depth guide on making classic creamy slaw, and I'd also like to suggest this more traditional German recipe which does not use mayonnaise, and is very close to the way my grandmother made it.
What are you making with your farm share?
We want to know! If you have any recipes that you love, and want to share with your CSA community- send them in and I'll share them in the newsletter.
newsletter@clintonhillcsa.org
Spotlight on the Core!
Anne Goelz :: Newsletter Editor
As seen in Rocky Mountain State park this Spring.
1. What does your job entail?
Composing the newsletter each week & putting it on our website. I try to find relevant recipes, information, goings-on for everyone, and offer up insight on the vegetables and other food we get each week.
2. How long have you been part of the CSA? Of the core?
3 years with the CHCSA, and 2 years in the core. I was also a member of the 6th Street CSA in the east village for several years.
3. Where did you grow up?
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Did you know that “Milwaukee” is Algonquin for “The Good Land?”
4. What do you do in your real life?
I am a Production Designer and Art director for Film and TV. Currently I’m working on season 3 of “Mozart in the Jungle.”
5. What's your favorite part of belonging to the CHCSA?
I get a lot of satisfaction knowing that we are helping the local farm movement, and I have loved getting to know my fellow like-minded core members. It’s really nice to scale down in New York City and be involved in something that ties me to my small neighborhood and yet furthers the larger picture.
6. What's a veggie you love? How do you cook it?
Tomatoes. I wait all year for late summer tomatoes. I eat them raw in caprese salad, stewed in Ratatouille, slow roasted in a skillet with eggs, I bread and Fry the green ones, and then before the season ends I buy as many boxes as I can carry to make & can tomato sauce which will get me through the winter.
7. Veggie you're not crazy about? How do you use it?
Eggplant. I put it in the Ratatouille :)
8. Something no one would guess about you?
One time- I sailed to Antarctica.
9. If you were a fruit or a vegetable, what would you be?
I’d be an Avocado. I love trees & guacamole!