THE BEET : VOLUME 12, ISSUE 14
THE BEET : VOLUME 12, ISSUE 14
CSA pickup times are, as always, Thursday, 5pm-7:30pm at PS 56 at Lewis and Gates
In this week’s BEET:
1. CSA Updates
2. Windflower Farm News
CSA Updates
The Newsletter is back! You may have noticed that the Clinton Hill CSA newsletter has gone MIA in recent weeks. Due to coordination issues, the newsletter has not been regularly emailed this season. The newsletter, however, is always posted to the CHCSA website on Thursday mornings. We apologize for the inconvenience and assure you that for the rest of the season the newsletter will be sent on Thursday (or on distribution day if it has to change for any reason) as a regular reminder of that evening’s pickup and as an update on the CSA. Also, please add clintonhillcsa@gmail.com to your address book to ensure the newsletter is not sent to spam. Please remember that Clinton Hill CSA is an entirely volunteer-run endeavor and the coordinators dedicate time to the operation of the CSA in addition to work, family and life responsibilities. Thank you so much for your patience.
Please check out the past issues of The Beet on clintonhillcsa.org. There are no recipes in this issue, but in the past month there have been great recipes posted for corn, two issues on heirloom tomatoes, and eggplant.
Tardy CSA truck delivery Those of you who pick up your CSA towards the beginning of distribution may have noticed that for the past month the truck has been coming very late, often after the start of distribution, thus delaying distribution itself. A number of factors have been at play in delaying the truck. We have discussed the problem with Farmer Ted, and he is working to fix it. Thank you to the members who have been so patient with us, and who have helped unload the truck when it is late. Hopefully starting this week the delivery will be back on track. If not, we will continue to work with Farmer Ted to ensure a timely delivery.
Volunteers! A reminder: All households are required to fulfill 4 hours of volunteer time each season. Those members who do not complete their volunteers will not be able to sign up for the CSA next year. There are a number of shifts coming up that desperately need volunteers. Please sign up for your hours here.
Volunteer cancellation If you need to cancel your volunteer shift, please email the distribution manager directly if the cancellation is within 24 hours of your shift so that she can try to replace you: information@clintonhillcsa.org
Reminder: A LA CARTE Milk Not Jails orders to be delivered TODAY THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 If you ordered the first a la carte Milk Not Jails order on Sunday, September 8, the delivery will be TODAY. If you also have a milk share order, that order will be packed separately; please ask for it as well. The next a la carte Milk Not Jails order dates will be: October: Order deadline Oct 6 / Deliveries the week of Oct 14 November: Order deadline Nov 3 / Deliveries the week of Nov 11 A link will be provided for ordering closer to the next deadline.
Lewis Waite Meat Share order deadline this Sunday Please place your meat share orders through their online order form by this Sunday, September 22th for delivery Thursday, September 26th.
WINDFLOWER FARM NEWS
We are including here all of the letters from Farmer Ted from past issues of The Beet that were not sent via email. They give great insight into the goings-on at Windflower Farm. From here on out these will be sent in the morning the day of distribution which will give you a heads-up on the vegetables you will receive this week.
Delivery #15, Week of September 16, 2013
This week you’ll be getting carrots, potatoes, corn and green beans. You’ll also be getting tomatoes, sweet peppers and chiles. And you’ll be getting lettuce, bok choy and broccoli raab or a braising mix. Fall arrives next week, and with it, or not long afterwards, a change in the contents of your shares, with warm-loving crops giving way to cool season and storage crops. Next week we’ll be sending yellow onions, broccoli or cabbage, radishes or turnips, and parsley, along with greens, beans, corn, tomatoes and peppers. I imagine next week will mark the start of our apple and pear season.
Much of our work this week has been done with an eye toward fall and winter harvests. We converted five of the small greenhouse tunnels that had been growing either cucumbers or basil or cut flowers into greens tunnels. We removed the debris of the old crop, rolled up and put away our fabric mulch and drip irrigation tubes for next year, applied compost, forked deeply, raked the earth into smooth beds, and planted the greens (Swiss chard, Tatsoi, Yukina Savoy, and various kales) we seeded in the greenhouse at the end of August. We also harvest all the tomatoes from a couple of small tunnels, removed their debris, and prepared them for the arugula, spinach and greens mix we’ll direct-seed this week.
Have a great week,
Ted
Delivery #13, Week of September 2, 2013
This week: corn at last! I’ve been as disappointed as I suspect you have that there has been no corn to help fill out our shares. Cathy Moses called today saying that they finally had corn for us, explaining that they had had difficulty establishing crops during the prolonged wet period in late spring and early summer. But now they are finally flush in corn, and she believes they will be for the next several weeks. Purchasing corn has always been at least partially about risk mitigation for us. It made sense to me that if we chose one or two crops that we would ask another farmer to produce for our CSA members, we’d reduce some of the risk related to crop losses that might be unique to our farm. We might have a hail storm, but, because hail storms are isolated and infrequent, it would be unlikely that one of our partner farms would also have hail. Asking the Moses Farm to produce corn for us seemed to me to be an effective way to spread the risk and help ensure that you’d get something in your share you find especially enjoyable. I still believe it to be a good strategy. The thing is, the rain this year was unusually damaging and widespread, and sometimes the risk in farming cannot be worked around. This week’s share will consist of sweet corn, tomatoes, Thai basil, red leaf lettuce, arugula, sweet peppers, edamame (if it’s ready) or green beans (if edamame is not ready), potatoes and onions (or cukes or squash). I hope you enjoy it. Next week you’ll be getting many of these items again, along with spinach and carrots. Your fruit will be peaches. Apple and pear season will be starting soon.
Best wishes,
Ted
Delivery #11, Week of August 19, 2013
It looks like a good tomato week. Expect to get a variety of beefsteak and small tomatoes. This week’s shares will also include peppers or eggplants, chiles, cucumbers or zucchinis, your choice of dill or cilantro, potatoes (we got the potato digger running again this weekend!), green snap beans, yellow onions, lettuces and arugula. Your fruit will be peaches. Our corn grower, Rich Moses, has struggled this year. The rainy start and deer pressure are largely to blame. I am told that they will have corn soon. In the meanwhile, I am looking for an alternative local sweet corn source.
It appears to me that the local tractor salesman knows what he’s doing. When I got home from delivering shares on Thursday, a new John Deere 5101E was in my yard. It’s outfitted with an air conditioned cab, four wheel drive, and 101 horse power. It’s an impressive machine. You might Google it. I had complained about the unreliability of my old John Deere down at the dealership when I was buying some parts and may have said something about trading it in. That’s all Jason, the salesman, needed to know. Hudson River Tractor Company trains its salesmen well, sending them on regular training trips to their manufacturing facilities in Illinois, Georgia and Germany. Jason can tell you about every John Deere ever made. He also knows, it seems, nearly everything about our little farm business. He knows the names and ages of my kids. He does his homework. Use it around the farm for a week or so, he told my wife, and let me know what you think. No strings attached, if you don’t like it, no big deal, I’ll have one of the guys bring it back to the dealership. He knows that Jan does most of the snow plowing here, and he told her he could picture her plowing comfortably, heat blasting warm air, and Burl Ives singing Jack Frost on the CD player. Nathaniel was the first to use it. He mowed an old field and reported that it was pretty terrific. I finally climbed aboard late on Friday afternoon. I mowed, chisel plowed, tilled and ran my deep rippers, and none of the tasks seemed to tax the tractors capabilities. Most exciting for me, it can pull my 400-bushel compost spreader. I can imagine all the remote fields getting the attention they deserve. The tractor was quiet, the air seat gave a more comfortable ride than I experience in my box truck travelling across 14th Street in Manhattan, and the air conditioning felt good. Jason told me that I could get twice as much work done in a cab tractor, isolated from the ill effects of the sun and the wind. And he said they’d not only give me $11,000 for my old John Deere 6400, but 0% for 60 months on the balance. Nothing could be easier.
I hope to see you here for this weekend’s farm open house (if you are coming, please RSVP with an email to tedblomgren@gmail.com).
Until then, have a great week,
Ted