Volume 25, Week 16
Full share & 🌻yellow🌻 half shares
218 Gates Avenue between Classon and Franklin
(IMPACCT Brooklyn at the Gibbs Mansion)
5:00 to 7:30 pm
Support Boots Bread (formerly Apt. 2), local bakers and friends of the CSA!
Hello,
It’s official, Apt. 2 Bread is evolving into a brick and mortar called Boots Bread, and I am reaching out in hopes you will support our Kickstarter campaign in the final 7-day stretch!
Many of you may remember picking up loaves from my Clinton Hill 2nd story window during the pandemic. Your support now is as meaningful as it was then. I encourage you to visit the link above to read more about the full concept and my new business partner, Megan Wang.
The current status is this:
We now estimate this project to cost about $350,000. This includes startup costs (obtaining keys, professional fees, etc.), the buildout, equipment, and working capital to survive the first 6-12 months.
We are in late-stage lease negotiations for a bakery space in Crown Heights.
We have received an updated buildout quote from our contractor that is $50k higher than expected.
While we reached our initial goal of $50,000 on Kickstarter yesterday, a true pinch-me moment that brought me to tears, the $50k increase in construction cost has extended our fundraising efforts until the campaign ends on September 22nd. We are receiving these updates in real time, and it's important to us to share them with our community, all of you.
In an ever-increasing world of disconnection from our food, our planet, our local farms, small businesses, and each other, we know in our hearts this project is essential. We’re excited to make fresh, nutritious bread with regionally-sourced grains.
Your support in any way, whether monetary or simply spreading the word, is deeply appreciated.
Thank you, and I can’t wait to bake for you again!
Carla
For those interested in supporting us in a larger way, we have a small-check investor deck we’d be happy to share. Reach out to carla@bootsbread.com for more information.
This week’s share
Tomatoes
Sweet Peppers
Chilis
Yellow and red onions
Assorted lettuces
Escarole
Spinach
Sweet corn
Delicata (or acorn) squash - Note: delicata squash crop is highly perishable this year. Please eat them within the next few days. Thank you for your understanding and support!
Baltic Rose potatoes - Note: these have yielded well because of the rain, but they are a little “scabby.” They’ll probably require extra washing or peeling. They are yellow, fleshy potatoes and are best roasted with an olive oil drizzle, salt, pepper and Rosemary. But they can also be boiled, pan fried or chopped and microwaved – they are not picky!
Fruit: likely Yonder Farm’s Sweet Maia apple, which is a cross between Honeycrisp and Winecrisp apples.
Extras: bread, eggs
News from Windflower Farm
Delivery #16, September 17, 2026
It’s a rainy Sunday morning, and the rainfall couldn’t have come at a better time. Toward the end of last week, we planted strawberries, the greens that will take us through to the end of the CSA season and numerous beds of cover crops.
The small Brillion seeder has been a good addition to our cover cropping toolbox. Although it is in desperate need of paint, it functions just as it should. The buckwheat Nate seeded in early August has come up well and given us an opportunity to calibrate the seeder. We’ve learned that it sows large seeds just as well as the small ones, but that it doesn’t bury them quite as deeply as we’d like. We’ll try to remedy this by adding flex tines ahead of the rollers. Unfortunately, weeds germinated with the buckwheat, so, if there is a chance that they’ll go to seed, we’ll turn the crop under next month and sow our usual fall mix. Nate has finished his oats, ryegrass and field peas seeding in places where we plan to get an early start next spring (these will winter kill and leave crop debris to protect against erosion) and he is now on to a blend of cereal rye, hairy vetch and white clover, the workhorse in our cover cropping system. Today’s rain bodes well for germination.
Here are a couple of things on tap for this week: On Sunday afternoon, we’ll prepare our high tunnel #4 for seeding spinach. The work involves ripping out the old crop, adding compost and shaping beds. We’ll sow the spinach with a push seeder that resembles a rolling pin and sows three rows at a time. One six-row bed takes two passes. The whole tunnel will be planted in the time it takes to push the roller a quarter mile. On Monday, we’ll harvest tomatoes (which are slowing down), sweet peppers, and chiles. Because of the rain, we won’t do much field work. Instead, we might start turning our barn’s rough cut lumber into shiplap, the final step before siding the new barn.
On Tuesday, we’ll harvest spinach, escarole, lettuce, and squashes. Some of us will sort, pack and wash vegetables. Counting vegetables into tubs is a large part of what we do here. The rest of us will get started on the sweet potato harvest. Sweet potatoes grow in clusters like bananas. Each “slip” of sweet potato that we planted at the end of May has produced an abundance of vines and a single cluster of roots. Harvesting entails removing the vines from the cluster and tossing them aside, pulling up the mulch and then pulling and sometimes digging the cluster out of the soil with the aid of an undercutting bar or potato digger. Laborious stuff, but filling bin after bin of these sweet roots is enormously gratifying. By Friday we hope to have harvested several beds of the roots and set up the curing room that is so essential to making them sweet.
Have a great week, Ted
Recipes
Peppers peppers peppers….why not experiment? Homemade charred pepper steak sauce (stop after step 1 for homemade charred peppers…), homemade harissa (you will have to obtain some dried chiles as well), and a few straightforward ones: couscous and feta stuffed peppers, and red pepper soup.
Did you know? Our website has recipes, food storage tips, and information about the vegetables you might come across in your share!