THE BEET: VOLUME 16; ISSUE 17

FULL SHARE & GREEN HALF SHARE

Pick up today: 5pm - 7:30pm at PS 56 on the corner of Gates and Downing

Of CSA Note!

  • We're looking for a distribution site for our winter share. Each year, a Clinton Hill CSA member hosts the Windflower Farm winter share: four monthly deliveries of veggies and other goodies. In return for hosting, you get a free winter share! What is needed: A front stoop or area in front of your home where you can take delivery of the winter share boxes (note the winter share is prepackaged, so you just need a location for members to pick up their boxes). A place for the truck to unload, ideally on a side street or one-way street where there is room for Ted's truck to stop without blocking traffic. You need to be available, with a core member, for the 1 and 1/2 hour distribution, and to take delivery the same day of the Lewis Waite order. If you're interested, please contact the core at information@clintonhillcsa.org or speak to our distribution manager. 
  • We've just created a Twitter account. We'd love for you to follow along @clintonhillcsa ! 
  • If you can't make your share, want to swap, or have any reason to get in touch with fellow community members, we invite you to post on our community forum. If you're not already a member, ask to join and you'll be added to the group tout suite!

This Week's Share

  • Spinach
  • Carrots
  • Broccoli
  • Dill or Cilantro
  • Tomatoes
  • Cilantro
  • Chiles
  • Onions
  • Salanova Lettuce
  • 'Valentino' Green Beans
  • Swiss Chard, Tatsoi, or Dinosaur Kale
  • Sweet Peppers, Eggplants, Summer Squashes, or Cabbages
  • Fruit: Paula red apples

News from Windflower Farm

Your broccoli might have little green worms – do not fear, they are easily washed off. Next week, you’ll get winter squashes and potatoes, but, because this unusually warm weather has prolonged the summer crop season, you’ll also get sweet corn and green beans and tomatoes. It’s been an odd year from a farmer’s perspective: yesterday’s 90-plus-degree temperature was the first day over 90 degrees since mid-June. The spring was cold and wet, the summer cool, and the late summer and start of fall have been strangely warm. Your fruit share will consist of apples. Pears and the Borden’s apple cider will be coming soon.

We don’t waste much at Windflower Farm. Everything that we can send to you, we do send. We don’t go to other markets – we are exclusively a CSA. About one in ten of our shares – our “pantry shares” - go to soup kitchens and soup pantries. The balance of our shares go to neighborhood CSAs like yours. Nothing is wasted in the CSA distribution model. We don’t bring home any unsold crops that have to be tossed out. When you can’t get to the pickup site, your share is hauled off to a nearby soup kitchen where it is used and much appreciated by your neighbors in need. If a harvest is of “seconds” quality here, we donate it to the food pantry in town. If a vegetable is harvested and then the processing team here culls it, it goes to our compost heap (a picture of which has just been posted to our Instagram page), from which it is returned to the soil as “fertilizer.” And if it isn’t good enough to harvest, it is returned to the soil in much the same way that a cover crop is turned under to feed the soil. Cover crops and compost provide nearly 100% of the fertility of our soils here, so they are subjects we take seriously. But we are also serious about waste. I’m curious, how much of the food you take home is wasted? Please let me know, and let me know what we can do in terms of crop selection, quantities and handling to help.     

Like many people who work at home, I like to get away every now and then. Last weekend, I spent the day in a lot alongside Town Farm Bay, on the Vermont side of Lake Champlain, where I have been restoring a 40-year old sailboat its previous owner named ‘Destiny’. There is certainly something therapeutic about working with wood (I have been oiling the teak and painting the ceiling) and giving new life to something so long neglected, but I look forward to that point when my therapy takes on a slightly different shape: to casting off, hoisting the main and jib, watching the sails fill with an easy wind, and sitting back. The old boat is up on blocks, but with a little more work, it should be ready for the water next year. I took a break to paddle my canoe in a nearby backwater. A Foam IPA, a nap, and a swim later, and I was back to work on Destiny. The Dog Days of summer.

Here’s hoping your Dog Days are as enjoyable as mine,

Ted 

Waste Not... (Or Not?)

You'll notice that Ted asks an important question in his letter this week: how much of the food you receive from the CSA is wasted? We're curious, too. Is some of your share going to waste? What kinds of veggies? Do you know why? Let us know, as it will help all of us--and especially Ted--plan for next season and serve you better. You can email us at information@clintonhillcsa.org or share on our Facebook page. Sincerely, your CSA Core

Veronica