THE BEET: VOLUME 19; WEEK 17
FULL SHARE & YELLOW HALF SHARE
PICK UP TONIGHT
5pm–7:30pm at JACK Theater
18 Putnam Ave (between Grand and Downing)
Please wear a mask and practice social distancing!
Our waitlist signup for the 2021 summer season is now live! If you have any friends or neighbors who are interested in joining, be sure to let them know! For those interested in winter shares, stay tuned - we'll be sharing more information soon.
There are some interesting (and free!) virtual events happening next week at the Brooklyn Book Festival! Food-centric programming includes panels on pandemic cooking, ethical consumption, and gatekeeping in the food world - these, as well as lots of other panels in fiction, art, poetry, and history are happening throughout the day on Sunday, October 4th. Children's and Y.A. programming happens on Saturday, October 3rd.
On the topic of books - many branches of the Brooklyn Public Library are open for lobby service! Click here to read up on their safety protocol, and to get started reserving some books for pick up! The Clinton Hill branch isn't open yet, but you can follow them on Facebook for updates.
The News from Windflower Farm
Distribution #17, Week of September 28, 2020
This week’s share:
Assorted tomatoes
Winter squash
Eggplant
Shallots
Chiles
Cilantro
Leeks
Lettuce
Koji
Kale
This week’s fruit share will be Gala apples and Bosc pears from Yonder Farm.
Next week, you’ll get butternut squash, sweet potatoes, garlic, sweet peppers, onions, a variety of greens and the last tomatoes of the season, and your fruit share will be more apples and a half gallon of the Borden’s cider.
What’s new on the farm?
It has been very dry throughout September, but it’s raining as I write this and, because we sowed several acres of cover crops this past week, we are pleased. Soon, winter rye, hairy vetch, oats and pea seedlings will emerge in fields that grew this year’s vegetables. The cover crops will protect the soil from erosion during the winter, and they will capture nitrogen and carbon, enhancing soil organic matter. The rain means that our fall greens and new strawberries will also have a little more of what they need. There are still five weeks to go in the CSA distribution season, and the greens need regular watering.
Next week, we will remove all of the tomato plants from our tunnels so that we can transplant winter greens into them. This is something that we’ve done for the past fifteen years or so. It’s always a little sad to see summer tomatoes disappear from the share, but the shorter and cooler days mean that tomato flavor has begun to deteriorate anyway. And October 10th is the last day to plant greens before we run the risk that they won’t have developed before the cold stops them altogether. And so, after a last harvest, we will yank the tomato vines out one by one, throwing them in a heap on the compost pile. Then we’ll add fresh compost to the beds, work them with our smallest tractor, a Kubota 3700, and plant the greens, four rows to a bed, nine inches apart. With any luck, they will be fully grown six weeks later.
Have a great week, Ted
Recipes
Get out your ladles and open a bottle of dry white wine - we're making risotto! Try a lemony eggplant risotto, a creamy leek risotto, or a roasted winter squash risotto. Bonus: you can make arancini with the leftovers!