Volume 21, Week 21
Full share & đ green đ half shares
218 Gates Avenue between Classon and Franklin
(IMPACCT Brooklyn at the Gibbs Mansion)
5:00 to 7:30 pm
Please fill out the 2022 Member Survey!
Your opinion matters to us and helps us plan for future seasons! Let us know what you think!
Halloween Potluck Tonight!
We're resurrecting (yes, pun intended) our formerly-annual Halloween potluck this Thursday during distribution! There will be homemade treats, spooky decorations, and candy. Costumes are encouraged for the young and young at heart!
We have a raffle winner!
âŚdrumroll pleaseâŚthe winner is Amy Chien, of creamy plant-based tomato soup fame. Amy, you can claim your prize of Lewis Waite goodies tonight at distribution!
And sign up now for the Winter Share!
What is the winter share?
Three monthly deliveries, all packed to fit in a returnable box, that include (approximately)
2 lbs of organically grown greens (including spinach, a variety of kales and bok choy)
8-10 lb. of storage vegetables (including carrots, red and yellow onions, winter squash, a variety of potatoes, beets, leeks, sweet potatoes, shallots, popcorn and more)
4-6 lb. of fruits, and either apple cider, Deb's homemade jelly made from her organic berries or local honey
Extras: You can order eggs and maple products from Davis Family Farm, and Grains from Hickory Wind Farm when you order your Winter vegetable share. Other extras, like bread, mushrooms, and herbal medicine, may be available separately - stay tuned!
Where and when do I pick up?
Distribution will take place on three Saturdays: November 19th, December 10th, and January 7th, from 2:30-4pm at 345 Waverly Ave (between Lafayette and Greene) in Clinton Hill!
How do I sign up?
If you would like to sign up for the winter share, please register here: Windflower Farm's 2022-2023 Winter Share (wufoo.com). Current Carrot Plan members: we have funds to subsidize $100 for a limited number of winter shares, so the total cost will be $74. If you are interested and a current Carrot Plan member, please request a subsidized share in the notes section of the Wufoo signup form.
This weekâs scare
By: Parsley or Rosemary Bysshe Shelley
I met a CSA member from an antique land,
Who said: Two vast and funky leeks of stone
Stink in the refrigerator...Near them, on the shelf stands
Half sunk, a bag of shriveled produce, whose onion,
And wrinkled kale, and lettuce, and chiles,
Smell with odors much maligned,
Which yet survive, radiating from these lifeless things,
The hand that planted them, and the snail that slimed;
And in the compost worms appear
On potatoes, sweet potatoes, ginger, garlic, broccoli:
Look on my share, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains (extras: eggs, bread, double fruit). Round the decay
Of a colossal butternut squash, boundless and bare
The lone and level counter stretches far away.
News from Windflower Farm
Distribution #21 - Week of October 24th, 2022
Looking back at the list of items weâd delivered over the season, Andrea noticed that I miscounted the number of weeks that we sent fruit. We did not start in week #1 as per usual. And for those of you at our Thursday sites, youâll get a double share to make up for a recent missed week. So, it is this week that we deliver our final fruit shares. The share, which comes from Bordenâs Farm, is comprised of Honey Crisp and Ginger Gold apples, two of my favorites.
This is the last CSA delivery for those of you who purchased half shares and pickup on yellow weeks. I want to thank you very much for being with us and hope you have enjoyed this yearâs offerings. For everyone else, next weekâs will be your last delivery of the season. Information about our winter share and a sign-up link can be found below.
We dug half of the ginger over the weekend, and Nate, who takes the lead with ginger, is washing it as I write. Weâll send it this week and next. If you need an idea for how to use it, you can add it to your favorite Thai recipe, candy it or make sugar snap cookies. Or you might make a turmeric-ginger tea to help lessen the severity of a cold and to reduce inflammation. This is fresh ginger; it is not as strongly flavored as the âmotherâ plants youâd get from the Tropics, nor does it keep very long. If you donât intend to use it soon, freeze it, after which you can grate it into soups or other dishes.
The fall crops are now all in. Over the course of this week and next, weâll cover those crops with a winter cold barrier, and finish cleaning up the farm. We have a few small greenhouses to take down and hundreds of yards of irrigation line to organize and tuck away for next year. Next Friday, four of our team head to Mexico for the winter. Soon Daren will head off to Poland to help in a Ukrainian refugee relief program. Andrea and her new husband will visit family in Germany. And the rest of us will take a bit of time off before diving into winter projects. Mine will be to restore a bunch of disused farm equipment for resale in the very active regional farmer-to-farmer marketplace.
The ginger crop reminds me of how far afield your money goes when you buy a CSA share at Windflower Farm. Our ginger seed pieces come from Biker Dude on the Big Island of Hawaii. And when his crop fails, he sources starts for us in Peru. We get sweet potato slips from North Carolina and Irish potato seed pieces from Moose Tubers in Maine. I am pleased that most of our suppliers can be found within a 200-mile radius of our farm. Our primary seed producers â Johnnyâs, High Mowing and Fedco â are all in New England, but the seeds they sell, although increasingly local, can be from almost anywhere. The soil mix we use in our greenhouse is a blend we make using Vermont Compost in Montpellier and Fafard Organic Potting Mix from northern Quebec. Our cover crop seeds come from the Mid-Hudson, and our compost, which constitutes the lionâs share of our soil fertility program, comes from Western New York. When we buy produce, it always comes from nearby â your fruit comes from Yonder Farm in Columbia County and the Bordenâs, who are 5 miles away, your beans, when they are not our own, come from Markristo Farm in the lower Teconics, and your carrots this year have come from up the road at Denison Farm.
There are two categories of expense on our P&L statement that are not local. One is fuel and the other is machinery. But even these expenses have elements that are local, including sales, delivery and repair. Economists have said that your local food dollars are spent 3 ½ times or more in the community before their economic benefit is exhausted. Our payroll and associated taxes and benefits represent by far our biggest expenses. If the supplies noted above and payroll together represent half a million dollars of CSA spending, which is about the case at our farm, the impact on our rural community might come in at close to two million dollars. I recall a co-founder of the NYC Greenmarkets telling me years ago that the city had always supported the countryside. I believe that to be true, but I also appreciate that this is a reciprocal arrangement.
I hope to get around to producing a survey that asks for your feedback about this yearâs CSA shares and your overall CSA experience [editorâs note: we made one!]. If I donât, please send me an email with the thoughts or suggestions that you think will help us improve in the future. Thank you.