THE BEET: VOLUME 20; WEEK 3
FULL SHARE & GREEN HALF SHARE PICKUP TONIGHT
and
CORE MEETING TONIGHT AT 6:15!
If you're curious about how the CSA works, or would like to become more involved, you are welcome to sit in!
218 Gates Avenue between Classon and Franklin
(IMPACCT Brooklyn at the Gibbs Mansion)
5:00 to 7:30 pm
Windflower Farm is seeking a truck unloading helper to work from 12:30 to 5:00 on Tuesdays and/or Thursdays. This is a temporary position, starting now and running through early November. We are very flexible as to how or by whom the position is filled. Compensation is $100 per day plus a CSA box.
On Tuesdays, we'd pick you up at our West Harlem location at the Broadway Presbyterian Church at 12:30 and drop you off at the Cornerstone Center on Bennet St. (or a subway station on Washington Ave.) at about 5:00.
On Thursdays, we'd pick you up at our Dean St. and New York Ave. Brooklyn location at 12:30 (or a little later if in Park Slope) and drop you off at Stanton Street in the Lower East Side (or a subway station in lower Manhattan) at 5:00.
Please send me an email if you are interested.
Thank you, Ted
tedblomgren@gmail.com
Order extras from Lewis Waite Farm!
The first Lewis Waite delivery is next Thursday, July 1st!
The Lewis Waite Farmer Network is a one-stop source for local, artisanal, and organic foods from small farms and producers in the Hudson Valley and Berkshires - and they deliver directly to our CSA! Place your order by 8:00 am, Wednesday, June 30th, for delivery on July 1st!
Click here to create an account (make sure you select "Clinton Hill" from the "shopping for" drop-down menu). If you're already registered, click here to sign in and start shopping!
This week's share
Dinosaur kale
Magenta or Panisse Lettuce
Garlic scapes
Zucchini or summer squash
Purple kohlrabi
Bunched green onions
Bok Choy or arugula
Potted rosemary
Fruit shares will be sweet cherries from Yonder Farm in Columbia County, and tonight is the first maple share delivery!
The News from Windflower Farm
Distribution #3 - Week of June 21, 2021
Our cucumbers will be starting next week, and should begin to yield significant fruit in the week after. In the meantime, zucchinis and squashes are starting and will be in many shares this week and most next week. Japanese turnips, red beets and purple and green kohlrabi are all on the cusp of ready and will begin showing up shortly.
Last Monday’s rain totaled 8/10ths, but it’s been dry since, with little chance of rain in the forecast, and so we are back at our irrigation routine. With some new equipment, and water in abundant supply, it is not bad work. Today, it was cucumbers, squashes, melons and tomatoes, tomorrow it will be peppers, teenage salad greens and new seedings of beets, carrots and arugula.
What’s new on the farm?
Although we won’t be shipping tomatoes to you for another three or four weeks, we’ve been spending quite a bit of time with our tomato crop lately. Tomatoes are vining plants, and if allowed to grow without intervention a single plant will produce dozens of vines. Each tomato plant is trained to two leaders by pinching out all of the new vines or suckers that come along over the course of the season. Each leader is trained to climb a string that is suspended from one of the trusses that form the greenhouse roof. The plants are four to five feet tall at present, but by season’s end, they will be eight or ten feet high. This year, we’ve filled three high tunnels and a dozen smaller tunnels with tomatoes, so keeping on top of tomato pruning takes a lot of time. A look at our tomato greenhouses is to know that the Medinas are caring and skilled craftspeople. Salvador and Candelaria have taught the rest of their family well, and together they make order out of our tomato jungle. They haul out crates and crates of newly pinched suckers each time they prune, tossing them onto the compost pile, and carefully wrap the tomato leaders around the strings they climb on. By the end, a tomato vine will have been wrapped twenty times or more around its string. It’s pleasant work, and the Medinas' conversation and laughter is unceasing. To watch them work is a joy.
Best wishes, Ted
Community Highlights
Check out this article in the Brooklyn Reader to learn more about Teens for Food Justice, a nonprofit that provides city youth with tools to grow their own produce. TFFJ sponsors the hydroponic farm at hte Unison School, the middle school located at our partner school PS 56.
Recipes
Here are seven ways to use your garlic scapes; a kohlrabi and cilantro slaw (here's a kohlrabi primer from our website, in case you're wondering what on earth to do with it), and a traditional (pits in!) cherry clafoutis for those of you with fruit shares!