Volume 23, 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
Announcements for Week 4
Stay cool out there!
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!
This week’s share
Summer squash or zucchini
Cucumbers
Kohlrabi
Romaine lettuce - two heads
Kale
Spring turnips
Onions
Fruit: strawberries from Yonder Farm. Pete at Yonder Farm told me that it was likely the heavy rains that preceded last week’s berry harvest that produced the spoilage that some of you reported. Our sincere apologies. The current harvest looks much better.
Extras: eggs, bread, mushrooms, and the first maple and grain deliveries!
News from Windflower Farm
Distribution No. 4, Week of June 17, 2024
Warm temperatures are the on switch for summer squashes and zucchinis. We had a pretty good haul this week. Cucumbers are getting started, too. With respect to heat, however, there can be too much of a good thing: the temperature threshold above which pollen viability in squashes and cukes begins to decline is 90 degrees. And if pollination is reduced, fruit set and yield will also be reduced.
Are you wondering what to do with some of these weird spring vegetables? In our kitchen, kohlrabi is used mostly as a salad topper: we grate them and toss them on the top of any garden salad. But they are also good sliced and dipped into hummus, etc. Keep them in your refrigerator’s crisper drawer.
Happy Rich is a mini-headed broccoli that results when a Chinese kale (Gai Lan) is crossed with a broccoli. I find it to be sweeter and more tender than broccoli. The stems are good to eat and the flowers are edible, too. We are trying to figure out how to harvest it. We’ve been told that it can be managed as a cut-and-come-again with a long harvest window. These will begin showing up soon, as will regular broccoli. Store it cold and in a plastic wrap or air-tight container.
The variety of spring or salad turnips that we grow is called ‘Hakurei.’ Slice them like a radish or grate them and add them to any salad – they do not need to be cooked. They are not your grandmother’s turnips - they are milder and sweeter. In my view, their sweet mild flavor comes out best when sautéed with garlic and onions. Last night, I left the stems on, halved the root, and sauteed them on high in grapeseed oil. I then added onions, and, after a few minutes, a handful of Happy Rich florets. Good stuff. Store cold and in an air-tight container.
The week ahead: Having finished trellising the cucumbers and planting the winter squashes, we are now up to our eyeballs in weeds in the onions. And when we’ve finished that task, we’ll be on to another round of tomato trellising.
Next week’s share will likely contain the following: cucumbers, zucchinis, spring turnips, yellow onions, kale or chard, lettuce and possibly more kohlrabi.
Have a great week, Ted