Volume 25, Week 10

Full share & 🌼yellow🌼 half shares

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

It’s our 25th season!

2026 is our 25th year serving our community with vegetables and more from Windflower Farm. Throughout this season, we'll share announcements here of special events and ways for you to get involved.

Calling all young artists! 

We are seeking original illustrations of CSA fruits and vegetables from CSA members age 0-12 to post during distribution as we celebrate our 25th season! Send submissions to information@clintonhillcsa with the subject line "artwork" - a high quality photo or scan is fine. You are also welcome to bring drawings to distribution! Be sure to include the name of the fruit or vegetable (this can be part of the illustration), and the artist. A list of common share contents can be found here. We'll accept submissions on a rolling basis, and will continue to post them throughout the season! 

Reminder: fresh spices available a la carte from Sourcery

CSA members can order fresh spices from Sourcery and have them delivered to our site! The next delivery date is August 27. To order, make selections here: ClintonHillCSA Spices Website, and choose the Clinton Hill CSA pickup option.

This week’s share

  • Tomatoes

  • Sweet peppers or yellow wax beans

  • Sweet yellow onions

  • Parsley

  • Romaine lettuce

  • Choy

  • ‘Tendersweet’ Cabbage

  • Eggplants or squashes

  • Sweet corn

  • Fruit: Yonder Farm stone fruit

  • Extras: bread, eggs,

Two vegetable notes from Ted: Most ears of corn are free of worms, but they are undetectable until the corn has been husked. Cutting 2” off the tips off the ears of your corn prior to husking is an effective way of avoiding the worms altogether. Last week, we harvested an abundance of eggplant. Too much to send to you all at once. So, we have endeavored to store some until this week’s delivery. It does not keep long, so please use it as soon as possible. Fried eggplant medallions on pizza are favorites here.

News from Windflower Farm

Delivery #10, August 6, 2026

Summers at Windflower Farm have been relatively dry in recent years, at least from the perspective of the market gardener, and until last week, this summer was no exception. Our pond had been drawn down to its last irrigation, and we were becoming concerned. Vegetables are very thirsty, wanting an inch and a half of rain every week, and we were getting far less. Then came 6 ½” of rain in a 24-hour period, refilling the pond and giving the irrigation team time for other projects. (And somehow making this the second wettest July on record.)

With fields too wet for work, we turned our attention to the equipment barn we started last year. We erected posts and girders in the fall and trusses this past spring. Finally, we could focus on the roofing steel. The barn measures 24 X 48’ and to finish the roof, we’d need 17 steel panels to a side, each 36” wide by 16’ long. Nate and I thought we could get the entire job done in two long days. Well, two long days later, we have completed just the north half and need a break. It’s hot work up there with reflective steel magnifying the full sunshine! And working 20’ above the ground presents challenges, including how to hang on and use power tools at the same time.

By late Saturday afternoon, our soils were just dry enough to work with lightweight tractors. Nate managed to cultivate all our fall broccoli and cauliflower, which were sitting in a carpet of tiny weeds, and successions of lettuce, beans and fennel. The tractor-mounted tools we now have for weeding are something of a marvel. There are the “A-sweeps” for tackling weeds in the spaces between the rows. These are the brawn of the operation. Then there are the more delicate rubber “finger weeders” that reach into the crop row, destroying small weeds growing around the stem of the vegetable plant. These tools are mounted under the belly of the tractor and are visible to the driver. Finally, there are the “flex tines” that are mounted in gangs on the rear of the tractor. The tines are gentle enough that they don’t harm well-rooted vegetables, so they can be used “blind,” but aggressive enough to uproot very young weeds.  

Because we found a significant population of flea beetles in the Brassicas, I applied a mixture of beneficial fungi, root extracts and soap. In the morning, I’ll find out just how well it worked. By the end of August the adult beetles will burrow into the ground where they will spend the winter, and we will be able to put our sprayer away.

 

Have a great week, Ted

 
Veronica