Volume 22, Week 5
Full share & 🥬 green🥬 half shares
218 Gates Avenue between Classon and Franklin
(IMPACCT Brooklyn at the Gibbs Mansion)
5:00 to 7:30 pm
Please take a moment to complete this survey!
We've been approached by longtime Lewis Waite neighbors who are interested in starting a new business that would take the place of Lewis Waite in the CSA marketplace, offering access to the meat, pantry items, and other goods produced by small, artisanal vendors in upstate New York and New England. They'd like to survey CSA members to get a sense of how much interest is out there for their products and where to concentrate their efforts. The survey is here, and we hope you'll take the time to fill it out!
And just a few weekly reminders…
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
Red butterhead lettuce
Green or red oakleaf lettuce
Arugula
‘Joi Choy’
‘French Breakfast’ radishes
Garlic Scapes
‘Boro’ beets
Cucumbers
Summer squash or zucchini!
Fruit: Yonder Farm’s strawberries rhubarb
Extras: eggs and bread
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 #5, week of June 26th
I’ve escaped chores for the past two days, so, today, it was my turn to clean the outhouses and water plants.
It’s been a rainy Saturday ahead of what is expected to be a wet week. After a walk around the farm to produce the week’s harvest and to-do lists (string tomatoes and peppers and weed, weed, weed!), I’ve headed into the workshop. Four small projects are on deck. The first is to make more of our mini pallets (under the new Food Safety Modernization Act, crates brought from the field to the packing shed may never touch the floor), the second is to make a tractor mount for an old basket weeder we’ve had laying around, the third is to install a solar battery charger on the roof of a cultivating tractor, and the fourth is to clear my things out of the shop – the tomato harvest will soon require that space! All are rainy weather projects. I think that Nate will help me.
Basket weeders are old-school weeding technology dating to the 1940s, before the widespread adoption of herbicides. They were designed for direct-seeded vegetables like carrots and beets and only continue to be used by organic growers. Picture a five-foot-long axle on which five rolling baskets that look like hamster cages are mounted. Now picture two such axles arranged in parallel so that each basket on the front axle has a partner aligned directly behind it. The axles are linked by a chain and sprockets, and the whole apparatus is held together by means of a simple frame. Both baskets roll across the ground, but the rear one rotates a bit more slowly than the one in front because its drive sprocket is larger. As a result, the rear basket effectively skids across the ground, thereby uprooting any little weeds in its path. There are gaps between the five pairs of baskets, so that the four rows of vegetables are left unmolested. There was a time when virtually every vegetable farm in America had one of these, but now most are rusting in their hedgerows.
Today’s rain has moved off to the north and east, the sun has set, and a crescent moon and stars can be seen to the west. The big dipper has just emerged from behind remnant clouds. The crickets are noisy, and the fireflies fill the back lawn with their blinking lights, some shooting straight up and into the night sky like so many comets. I checked the rain gauge: 9/10 inches. No need to irrigate this week. Instead, we’ll work in the tunnels, catching up on our tomato stringing and pepper trellising.
Have a great week, Ted