Volume 22, Week 22

Full share & đŸȘ yellow đŸȘ half shares

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

Tonight’s the last night!

We want to thank you for participating in Clinton Hill CSA's 22nd season with Windflower Farm. If you've been reading Ted's letters, you know that climate-related challenges resulted in a tough year for the farm. We thank Ted and everyone else at Windflower for a summer of abundant, high-quality, and absolutely delicious produce. We thank our hosts at IMPACCT Brooklyn for our beautiful distribution location. But we also want to thank you, our members, for being a part of the CSA. We're not kidding when we say the CSA is volunteer-run: we could not exist without your help! But more than that, we appreciate your commitment to this community, to showing up with your adorable kids and thirsty dogs, to sharing recipes, to understanding when we run into the occasional glitch and celebrating the ways large and small that the CSA enriches our families and neighborhood. We'll look forward to seeing you at the Halloween potluck tonight, and we hope you've decided to join us for the winter share. We'll be in touch next spring when it's time to sign up for the 2024 season! And if you haven’t already - please take a moment to fill out our (brief) member survey - we want to know what you think!

Sign up for Winter Shares

Winter shares are going FAST! You can find out more information and register for a winter share using this link:  Windflower Farm's 2023-2024 Winter Share (wufoo.com). The deadline for signing up is November 1st or until we reach our limit.  Winter distributions occur monthly on Saturdays - November 18, December 16, and January 6th at 345 Waverly Place.

Thanksgiving Turkey Pre-Order!

You can order your Thanksgiving turkey (and probably everything else you’ll need) from Pleasant Valley Farm and have it delivered on November 18! The deadline to order a turkey is November 1st. There are two options: All Natural from Stonewood Farm and an organically pastured from Hepatica Farm . (You can click on each to be brought directly to each product). Turkeys will arrive fresh and they will be fine refrigerated until Thanksgiving.

This week’s share

  • Carrots

  • Beets

  • Leeks

  • Red onions

  • Green cabbage

  • Cauliflower

  • Sweet potatoes

  • Green leaf lettuce

  • Salad mix (mixed mustard bunch)

  • Kale

  • Garlic (more “seconds” from Brian)

  • Extras: bread, granola, mushrooms, eggs

News from Windflower Farm

Our vegetable car wash, the AZS Brusher-Washer we picked up in Lancaster County, PA a few years back, was busy all weekend. We sorted and washed perhaps 2000 pounds of sweet potatoes, 1000 bunches of leeks, 500 heads each of lettuce and escarole, 500 bunches each of kale and braising greens, perhaps 1500 pounds of carrots and over 1000 cauliflower heads (our first cauliflower crop ever!). And there’s more to do tomorrow. I’m not sure where we’d be without this fantastic machine!

 

You’ll find a link to an online Windflower Farm CSA survey here: 2023 CSA SURVEY (wufoo.com). If you haven’t already done so, please help us to be the best CSA we can be by taking five or ten minutes to fill it out. And you’ll find a link to our winter share information page and signup form here: Windflower Farm's 2023-2024 Winter Share (wufoo.com). The deadline for signing up is fast approaching!

 

Thank you to all who have filled out our CSA survey. I’ve read every one. More cucumbers and Delicata squash – I know, I know! It’s easier said than done, but we will try our hardest next year to increase your quantities of these veggies. We’ll have to bring back some version of free choice or the swap box to deal with the fact that equal numbers of you seem to like/dislike Swiss chard, fennel, and eggplant. Thank you for your excellent comments and kind words. We value your input; it will truly inform our 2024 crop planning.

 

Sweet potato soup, sweet potato lasagna and sweet potato omelets with cardamon are excellent ways to enjoy sweet potatoes. New to us this fall is something called sweet potato toast, but we’ve now had it with hummus and pumpkin seeds, onion jam, and sweet chili chutney. These bring to mind the meals Cher would prepare for Winona Ryder in Mermaids. Tomorrow, as part of our end-of-season potluck, Nate is making sweet potato toast topped with black beans and a dash of salsa and cilantro. Simply slice the sweet potato into slices (toasts) ÂŒ inch thick, place the pieces on parchment paper or oil on a cookie sheet, and bake at 400 degrees for about ten minutes on each side, or until fork soft. It’s better to underbake to avoid mushiness. Then top with your favorite concoction - perhaps a medley of diced roasted vegetables or finely chopped braised greens. In “Eating Bird Food,” Brittany Mullins lists several ways to enjoy sweet potato toast (www.eatingbirdfood.com).  

 

As you know, this is the last week of CSA deliveries for the summer season. Thank you for choosing to be a member of our CSA this year. I hope you’ve enjoyed the experience enough to want to come back next year. If you’d like more, sign up for a winter share. An extra big thanks goes to the folks in your neighborhood who help organize your CSA site - the CSA model depends on these community volunteers. Without them, we’d be a very different kind of farm. And you wouldn’t have this chance to make so many new friends among the vegetable lovers in your neighborhood.

 

Thank you, and best wishes from all of us at Windflower Farm, Ted

 
Veronica