Volume 22, Week 6
Full share & 🐥yellow🐥 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
‘Nancy’ green butterhead lettuce
‘Rouxai’ red oakleaf lettuce
Arugula
‘French Breakfast’ radishes
Yellow onions
Kale
Cucumbers (lots!!)
Zucchini or summer squash (lots!)
Fruit: Yonder Farm’s strawberries (From Ted: “I had hoped for cherries, but the three inches of rain that fell in the Hudson Valley last week caused them to split. Blueberries will be ripening soon, and I expect to send them next week.”)
Extras: Eggs, bread, mushrooms
News from Windflower Farm
Distribution #6, week of July 3rd
We missed a cultivation in the first and second successions of sweet corn because of the rain and mud, so Nate and I hoed it by hand today. Each row is 400’ long, which felt too long in the day’s heat. Placing water jugs at each end of the planting would have made better sense than what I did, which was to leave one jug back at the beginning of the row. We used stirrup hoes, which are comprised of thin blades that slice through weeds just below the soil surface and look, as you can imagine, just like stirrups. Our soil is stoney, and the openness of the stirrup allows stones to pass through, minimizing our effort. The blades are mounted on a bracket that allows them to oscillate. Back and forth, push then pull. I walk backwards down the row, which uses lower back muscles and biceps primarily, pulling the blade through the weeds, then pushing back through the soil and pulling again, making for three passes and an effective weed kill. When I get tired, I turn around and push the hoe, using triceps and stomach muscles. It’s an excellent core workout. There are 16 rows in these two successions, which is why we try to time our tractor cultivations to avoid this kind of work.
From the high ground where we were hoeing corn, we could see three young guys windrowing red onions. Two of the guys will be high school seniors in the fall and, when they are here, work almost exclusively in the packing shed. Their daylong stint in the field gave them a very different sense of work on the farm. Hot, sometimes buggy, sometimes back-breaking, often dirty work. Some of us love that stuff, others can’t get out of the field soon enough. The ‘Desert Sunrise’ onion variety that we planted last fall have sized up and their tops have gone down, signaling that it is time to harvest. The first step in the process is to pull them out of the earth, shake the soil out of their roots, and then to lay them in rows to dry. We are pleased with their size and color. We’ll snip tops and roots and bring them into the greenhouse before the next rain. These are not keepers, so they’ll be in shares soon.
We could also see Salvador and Candelaria and their boys in the field below the onions. They were taking covers off the peppers, eggplants, chiles and melons. This is the diminishing handful of crops we grow on black plastic mulch and under low wire hoops and fabric row covers. After a cold, windy and dry start to their lives in the field, we are happy to see how healthy the plants look. Salvador decided to abandon planting corn today. While it is hot and sunny, we have had quite a bit of rain in recent days, and the side hill where they were going to plant is too muddy. From there, they will be off to a planting of storage onions. We’ve never been able to escape at least some hand weeding in bare ground onions, and in this wet stretch, the weeds have outpaced our best effort. This is a tradeoff for us. If our onions were on black plastic mulch, we wouldn’t have this weeding chore, but we’d have plastic to throw away.
That’s all for now. Have a great week, Ted
Recipes
A pickle recipe straight from Windflower Farm!
Quick Cure Vodka Pickles
Cucumbers are abundant right now! Members will be getting 6 cukes per share this week. Here is my favorite recipe if you'd like to share with your membership via the newsletter or on social media. The vodka cooks off and helps to keep the pickles crispy. There is no alcohol aftertaste. It can be made without vodka as well and will be just as delicious.
3-4 medium cucumbers
2 cups of water
2 Tablespoons pickling or kosher salt
¼ cup vodka
½ cup white vinegar
4-6 cloves of garlic (to taste), crushed with the back of a knife
1-2 teaspoons pickling spice per jar*
crushed red pepper to taste
several dill flowers or dill sprigs
2 garlic scapes, cut in half lengthwise and crosswise in 2-inch pieces or a few cloves of fresh garlic
Wash the cucumbers and cut into rounds about ¼ inch thick or into spears to fit your jars. Put dill, pickling spice, garlic and red pepper into the bottom of a sterilized quart jar and pint jar. Pack the jars with the cucumbers, garlic scapes, dill flowers and sprigs. Bring water and salt to a boil. Off heat, stir in vodka and vinegar. Pour over the cucumbers to fill the jars. Leave ½ inch of headroom and seal. Cool to room temperature and store in the refrigerator. Makes one quart and one pint. Ready the next day. Keeps only a week, but they are so delicious, they will be gone before you know it. Always a hit at potlucks and picnics!
*Pickling Spice
In a small jar, mix:
1 Tablespoon whole coriander
1 Tablespoon dill seed
1 Tablespoon mustard seed (yellow or black or a combination)
1/2 Tablespoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon fennel seed (optional)
Did you know? Our website has recipes, food storage tips, and information about the vegetables you might come across in your share!