Volume 22, Week 4

Full share & 🍋 yellow🍋 half shares

218 Gates Avenue between Classon and Franklin
(IMPACCT Brooklyn at the Gibbs Mansion)
5:00 to 7:30 pm

  • The first maple, grain and medicinal herbs will be delivered today!!!

  • Chef Annie from Maytree Marmalade will be joining us this evening with homemade marmalades and preserves! Taste a few samples and bring home a jar! **if the weather is very wet, we may reschedule this guest appearance

  • Box and container returns: There are a few items you can bring back to distribution for us to return to the farm! Please don't use the farm as a way to recycle damaged and dirty cartons and boxes. Also, please don't return used rubber bands and plastic bags. 

    Items we can accept:

    • clean egg cartons

    • clean maple bottle returns

    • pint and quart box returns, if they are clean and not stained with fruit juices.

  • Going out of town? Email the google group CHCSAHalfShare2023@clintonhillcsa.org. You may find someone who can swap pickup weeks with you!

This week’s share

  • Green butterhead lettuce

  • Bok choy

  • Kohlrabi

  • Hakurei turnips

  • Mixed kales

  • Garlic scapes

  • Fruit: Windflower strawberries and Yonder Farm’s rhubarb

  • Extras: eggs, bread, mushrooms, maple, grain, and medicinal herbs!

A note about share contents: While our farmers do their best to predict what they're sending each week, last-minute changes do happen. Sometimes a crop that they thought would be ready needs a little more time to grow, or another crop is facing challenges due to weather or pests. And sometimes we get a surprise in the form of a fruit or vegetable we weren't expecting. That's part of what CSA is all about!

News from Windflower Farm

Distribution #4, week of June 19th

Young Charlie walked in the door just before 8:00 this morning. You could hear him coming all the way from his house in his well-used Ford pickup. It was music to my ears. School is out for the summer, and it’s his first day at work. Charlie’s presence makes it possible for both Nate and me to be out on the farm today, Nate to cultivate and me to prepare beds for the next plantings of sweet corn, lettuce, cabbage, and other odds and ends.

 

Nate is juggling three tractors today. He’s using the John Deere 5425 and a Checchi-Magli hilling set in sweet corn, potatoes and leeks. He’s got the Duos (small discs) on the G tractor. They are for the direct seeded crops that have just emerged along with a flush of new weeds. And he’s got the Steketees (a collection of five sweeps) set up on the electric blue tractor. It’s for onions, beets, greens, and herbs. His goal is to get through the whole farm every week or two.   

 

Charlie is a high schooler from next door and in his second season with us. His sister worked for us for a couple of summers, and now, unbelievably, she has graduated from college and is already a nurse on her way to becoming a physician’s assistant. His little brother Brady will join us beginning next week. And I hope that Ezden and Kaitlin, kids from two other nearby families, will also be joining us shortly. If the moms or dads in the neighborhood want to know where their kids are, they might start here.

 

It’s safe now to remove the covers from our collards, cabbages, broccoli and even our bok choy. The flea beetles that the covers are intended to protect these crops from prefer younger, more tender plants like arugula. When we first put the covers on the beds, the plants are small, and the cover lies nearly flat on the ground. Over time, the developing crop pushes the cover up, sometimes, quite high. It was our hope today that what was pushing the covers up was all crop, but we were met with a surprise: a mix of pigweed, lambsquarters, lady’s purse, Galinsoga, and a few other invaders. And so there will be some hands-and-knees weeding, which is not our favorite way to deal with weeds, but it's OK. The rain has made it easy to pull weeds, the weather is comfortable, and we have a full crew, the many hands that will make light work of the project. 

 

Have a great week, Ted

 
Veronica