THE BEET: VOLUME 18; WEEK 11

 

FULL SHARE & YELLOW HALF SHARE PICK UP TONIGHT

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

This Week's Share

  • Lettuce

  • Tomatoes

  • Sweet corn

  • Onions

  • Garlic

  • Swiss chard

  • Peppers or eggplants

  • Squashes or cucumbers

  • Cabbage

  • Fruit: Yonder Farm’s peaches or Windflower Farm's watermelons

Delivery #11, Week of August 19, 2019

Open house on the farm - September 7-8th

You are invited to our annual open house on the farm. We will be celebrating our 20th year here. The weekend will include tours of Windflower Farm on Saturday afternoon, followed by a wine and cheese social hour, a potluck dinner, music and a bonfire. Sunday’s activities include a hearty farm breakfast provided by your hosts, farm tours for latecomers, and local activities. You might go on the Washington County cheese tour, visit one of three wineries in the neighborhood or the Argyle Brewery, swim in the Battenkill River, hike Mt. Equinox, visit the Battenkill Creamery or go to the Schaghticoke Fair.

Camping on the farm is encouraged, but B&Bs can be found throughout the Saratoga Springs-Manchester, VT region. Kids, friends and friendly pets are welcome. Please bring a dish to pass for the Saturday evening meal. More details to come. Because we prepare quite a bit of food, it is important for us to know who is coming. Please RSVP by August 25th to windflowercsa [at] gmail [dot] com. 

Travel from NYC to Windflower Farm by public transportation is difficult. I would recommend car pooling. If you would like to offer a ride to a fellow CSA member, please let me know. And if you need a ride, let me know that, too. I’ll do my best to help you find each other.   

What’s new at the farm?

It’s county fair season in rural America, and kids and grownups everywhere are making pies, finishing quilts, testing jam recipes, brushing the burrs off of their beloved farm animals, trimming their most beautiful vegetables and gearing up for tractor pulls in hopes of winning ribbons, especially the coveted blue ribbon, the best in class. We have never entered our vegetables in a county fair, but our flowers have been entered in one convoluted way or another with surprising results.

Years ago, Frankie, a man from Brooklyn who worked with us just after having finished serving a sentence for arson, would arrange our extra flowers and give them to prospective girlfriends. One of those women, who was not especially interested in becoming Frankie’s girlfriend, entered the flowers in the Orange County Fair and won a blue ribbon for best arrangement. In an act of kindness, she gave the blue ribbon to Frankie who, from that point on, would proudly wear it whenever he deemed the occasion appropriate, which was far more often than you might expect.

The Washington County Fair gets underway here this week, and judging was yesterday. Young Brook, who is a senior at the Greenwich high school, came by on Friday to learn about flowers with Jan, and to photograph, harvest and arrange them for entry in the fair. We got the news today that she, too, won a blue ribbon. Fair season, there’s nothing quite like it. May there be a blue ribbon in your future.

I hope to see you here in September.

Best wishes, Ted

Veronica