Volume 23, 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
Windflower Farm Tours are back!!!
Windflower Farm Tours: After a 5 (!!) year hiatus, Windflower Farm weekend is back, and this time they’re celebrating 25 years of farming! The open house will take place June 29th and 30th. A reservation is required for our planning purposes, and the deadline is June 16th.
What to expect: You will be able to meet some of the farm team, join Ted for a tour of the farm, and enjoy community and conversation with other CSA members over a potluck dinner and a light breakfast. Breakfast will be self-serve and will include light fare such as baked goods, granola, yogurts, cold dishes, coffee and tea. Members are welcome to camp out in our hayfield on Saturday night or book lodgings in nearby hotels, motels, Airbnbs, and inns. Spend your time on the farm playing games, sitting by the bonfire, and taking in the beautiful setting, or venture out to visit a local winery, swim or rent a kayak or canoe, or check out Jazz Fest in Saratoga Springs!
More information and a schedule of events can be found in the signup form. Please register by Sunday, June 16th. Hope to see you there!
To help you get in the farm spirit -
Nate has designed two different Windflower Farm hats. Orders must be in by June 9th. They can be ordered at Windflower Farm's Hat Order Form (wufoo.com). And - something you may not be aware of: Nate has put together a 20-minute film about the farm, and it can be found at Windflower Farm CSA (youtube.com).
Announcements for Week 2
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 (new colors: rust and periwinkle!) totes available for sale for $10 - cash and venmo accepted!
Extra share info: Coffee and Mushroom shares start today, and are delivered every other week on the yellow schedule! Maple and grain shares are delivered thrice - June 20, August 22, and October 17. We’ll also have some fun pop ups this season - including coffee and flowers this evening (more info below)!
Work Shift Reminder: Members with full vegetable shares are required to complete 2 two-hour work shifts, for a total of four hours. Members with half vegetable shares must complete 1 two-hour work shift. Sign up for your 2024 work shifts here! For those who find volunteering on site to be a problem, we may have other opportunities. Please email volunteer@clintonhillcsa.org for more information.
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!
Flower and coffee pop ups this week!
Clinton Hill floral designer Molly Halpin of Brownstone Botanical has called the neighborhood home for the last 7 years. Inspired by her southern roots and a thorough obsession with charming Brownstone Brooklyn, she blends the best of both worlds into her organic floral designs that you may have seen spilling out of her vintage blue Ford pick up truck near Fort Greene Park on Saturdays. Molly loves nothing more than bringing gorgeous local blooms to the neighborhood during the growing season and will feature some of her favorite local farms in her hand-tied bouquets during her first Clinton Hill CSA pop up on June 6.
Felicia & Domingo Coffee is a Peruvian specialty coffee company that serves as a platform to empower Peruvian coffee farmers and artisans.
Roasted in Brooklyn, their high quality, single-origin specialty beans are grown where the Andes Mountains meet the Peruvian Amazon jungle. Sustainably sourced and fair-trade, their delicious coffee beans offer some of the best flavors of Peru, with notes of dark chocolate, milk chocolate, sugar cane, and citrus.
Check them out on Instagram: @FeliciaDomingoCoffee
This week’s share
Green Romaine Lettuce
Red lettuce
Bok choy
Red Russian kale
Salad turnips (waste not - tops are edible)
Green onions
Potted Genovese basil or garlic scapes
Fruit: Strawberries
Extras: mushrooms, eggs, bread, granola, and pop ups from
News from Windflower Farm
Distribution No. 2, Week of June 3, 2024
We’ve been trellising cucumbers this weekend. It has been many years since we last grew greenhouse cucumbers and were happy to learn when brushing up on best cultural practices that many new varieties and techniques have been developed in the meantime. The system we’ve decided to use is new to us. It involves overhead wires, a gizmo that resembles a croquet wicket, although one with a few additional bends, a ball of string, compostable clips, scissors, and a step ladder.
The process has three steps. First, we wrap about 15’ of trellising string around the wicket and then climb the ladder to attach it to the overhead wire, some 10’ above the ground, letting a tail of string reach down to a plant. One wicket for each plant, one heavy overhead wire for each of the six 130-foot rows of cucumbers in the greenhouse. In the next step, we attach the cucumber plant to the string with one or two clips, and in this way the cucumber begins to climb the trellis. We’ll add clips every week as the vines grow. In the final step, we prune the plant to a single vine or leader, removing suckers and any baby cucumbers until the plant has grown large enough to support fruit. Once the cucumber vine has grown tall enough to reach the overhead wire, we will unspool several feet of string from the wicket, effectively lowering the fruiting portion of the cucumber vine to a workable, harvesting height. We expect to do this three times over the life of the plant. You should see these cucumbers in your CSA shares in a couple of weeks.
The tunnel contains more than 700 plants, so we’ll be at it for a while. I am alone this morning. To make the time pass, I’m listening to The Hunter, the second of Tana French’s novels set in Ireland. In one scene, a group of sheep farmers are talking about selling out to an Englishman who wants the gold they have been told lies under their farms. “What would you do with all that money?” they are asked. One would buy a prize ram. All would fix up their farmhouses, mend fences, repair barns, perhaps take a little more time for themselves. But none would sell their flocks or leave. Which sounds about right. If it were me, I wouldn’t sell either, although, on this very hot morning in the greenhouse, and only for a moment, I could be tempted. Images of a small yacht tucked in a scenic harbor on the cool and breezy coast of Maine come to mind.
Have a great week, Ted
Recipes
To everyone who’s dumping their radishes in the swap box - you don’t know what you’re missing! Slice them and top with butter and salt for a classic French snack, roast or sauté them for a savory side dish , or work them into a salad or noodle dish for a peppery crunch - lots of good ideas here!!
Did you know? Our website has recipes, food storage tips, and information about the vegetables you might come across in your share!