Volume 22, Week 2
Full share & 🐝 yellow 🐝 half shares
218 Gates Avenue between Classon and Franklin
(IMPACCT Brooklyn at the Gibbs Mansion)
5:00 to 7:30 pm
A few reminders!
We’re keeping our eye on the air quality, but are planning to hold pickup outdoors as planned - we advise all members and volunteers to mask up and do what you need to do to be safe!
Please bring bags! some items may be bunched or packed in plastic, but you will need tote bags to bring your share home! We’ll have a limited number of Clinton Hill CSA totes available for sale for $10.
Surprise - fruit shares start today! Mushrooms also start today and are delivered every other week (on the yellow schedule)! Eggs are up and running, as is bread from She Wolf Bakery (and you can still sign up! - we’ll have samples available during distribution). Maple and grain shares are delivered thrice - June 22, August 17, and October 12; and medicinal herbs will be delivered on June 22 and October 26, plus two dates in the winter.
A note about payment: We thank everyone who has made payments early and helped to support Windflower Farm and all our other suppliers of wonderful produce. We encourage you to check your inboxes and make sure you're up-to-date with payments. Remember that with some extra shares, like bread, mushrooms, or medicinal herbs, your invoices may not all come from Windflower Farm, so be sure you're opening the emails that tell you how to pay for your share. And on behalf of Windflower Farm and our other CSA suppliers, thank you!
This week’s share
Green romaine lettuce
Red oak leaf lettuce
Red radishes
Kohlrabi bulbs
Assorted kales
Genovese basil (potted)
Fruit: Strawberries :)
News from Windflower Farm
Distribution #2 , Week of June 5
Last week was hot and dry. Irrigation went on around the clock, making use of all three wells and one of two ponds. To conserve water, we applied drip irrigation tape to all our sweet corn, onions, leeks, shallots and beets, crops that would ordinarily have been overhead or sprinkler irrigated. Our first beans have germinated well and are ready for their first cultivation. We cultivated (meaning weeded by tractor) the greens, onions and potatoes. The only weedy patches now are where we’ve just pulled covers off our broccoli and cabbage. We directly sowed beds of arugula, spinach, radishes, dill and cilantro. We planted second successions of sweet corn, cucumbers and zucchinis. Sweet potato slips arrived on Friday from North Carolina and planting them along with the young winter squash plants growing in our greenhouse will be a focus of the week ahead. There’s a large, nearly full moon out tonight. I’d call it a Planter’s Moon if it were up to me. The black locusts have begun to bloom and it’s safe to plant your garden.
A truck farm needs a delivery truck. Our lease with Penske expired in January, and it became time for something new. We decided to purchase rather than to lease, and the truck we selected is a diesel Isuzu NRR. Its box is six feet shorter and its cab, being of the stub nose variety, is perhaps four feet shorter than our last truck, shortening the whole package by a whopping ten feet. This was happy news to Don and Daniel, our drivers, who must navigate the congested streets of New York City twice a week. Every bit as important to the task of ducking around double-parked cars and trucks is that its insulated box is 6” narrower than the old one. Compared to the Penske rig, this truck seems to be the better design for city driving. The more perfect iteration would be electric. They are becoming available now, but their current range is less than half of what we’d need for the round trip from the farm. I expect that the range we need will come in time.
I filled in as the driver during the first CSA distribution last week. The Isuzu is no sports car, but it’s relatively comfortable and quiet. Its air scoop gives it style, its seat is comfortable, its air conditioning works well, and its dashboard is impressive: the large roadmap, the Bluetooth telephone, the audio system. These are features that our 13-year-old Honda doesn’t have. The backup camera hadn’t been installed, so I took it back to the dealer on Friday. By lucky coincidence, they happen to be located near where I keep my ancient sailboat, so I went out to enjoy the day while they looked it over. The mechanic who inspected the truck was very excited for us. He told me that 90 percent of Isuzu box trucks make it to the 300,000-mile mark. I hope that it turns out to be reliable for us, but I still purchased an extended warranty. Perhaps by the time this Isuzu’s power train is worn out, we can drop an electric motor and transmission into this one and be part of the low carbon future.
Have a great week, Ted