News from the Farm

The season will last 22 weeks – from Thursday, June 7th to Thursday, November 1st.
Plan A: Households with a total income over $30,000 pay $505
Plan B: Households with a total income under $30,000 pay $320 Read the rest of this entry »

The season is of to a good start. Full greenhouses, great farm team, new driver. The garlic is up and looks super. We’ll start planting in the field (peas, potatoes, onions) when the rains stop. We’ll set tomato, pepper, eggplant, cucumber and melon plants out into the field greenhouses in just four weeks. Thousands of berry plants arriving in about two weeks!
–Ted

A sneak preview of this week’s Beet …

Your decision to buy locally really does have positive environmental impacts. There has been a lot of talk about reducing our carbon footprints lately. Growing and distributing food requires energy, of course, and one of the promises of buying locally is that, by reducing fuel consumption, it reduces our agricultural footprint. A couple of years ago, we calculated that we consume 2.5 gallons of fuel per share to deliver our produce to NYC in a box truck over a 23-week season. My best guess, based on what I’ve learned about the cargo capacity and fuel efficiency of large trucks, is that transporting a similar amount of produce from the West Coast, where more than 3/4 of this country’s fruits and vegetables are produced, would require at least four times that much fuel. That’s a huge savings. Each year we also use about a gallon of fuel per share to power our tractors in the field, and perhaps another gallon to heat our greenhouse. In total, we consume under five gallons of fuel per share for 23 weeks of vegetables. That’s about how much fuel a suburbanite uses to mow his small lawn during a summer.

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Jun 19, 2007 Greetings from Windflower Farm! To renewing members, we want to thank you for your continued support of our farm, and for your support of the growing local, organic food movement. We’re happy to have you back. To new members, we want to thank you, too, and to welcome you to our community. We hope you find your CSA experience a rewarding and enjoyable one. A simple tip for newcomers: Part of being a seasonal eater is about managing expectations. Tomatoes will come. But the first few weeks are about salad and cooking greens, a slowly growing number of root crops, and a handful of odds and ends, including scallions, kohlrabi, and peas. Bon appetite.

Your first shares of the season will consist of a buttery, lime green bib lettuce, scallions, assorted radishes, a light green kale for braising, a head of red crisphead or oakleaf lettuce, and basil plants that are suitable for eating now or planting in your own gardens. It isn’t the auspicious beginning we were looking for. Those hopes were dashes in fewer than ten minutes. But, nearly two weeks after hail wrought havoc here, outward signs of the storm are fading. And, although the first few shares will be lighter than we’d hoped for, they’ll be better then we’d have predicted just a week ago. Older leaves on Swiss chard and kale and lettuce still show shotgun blast holes, but these have already become obscured by tender, new leaves. In a flurry of activity, we have planted literally thousands of new plants in place of those that were destroyed. And still newer seedlings are growing in the greenhouse. We are still a bit jumpy – when a hard rain fell on the barn’s steel roof this morning, we panicked briefly as we mistook the loud drops for hail. But summer begins this week, we’ve worked hard, and we are beginning to relax a little….

Over the course of the season, I’ll share news, tell you about our excellent and dedicated staff, and tell stories about the farm. This first item is an update on warm season vegetables. We want to make sure you have more tomatoes, cucumbers, squashes, and bell peppers this year, compared with last year, so this is what we’ve done. We’ve planted four 16 X 200’ greenhouses to tomatoes, and we will plant another when we complete harvest of an early greens and scallion greenhouse. And we’ve planted two greenhouses to cucumbers (a 30 X 144’ unit planted to a trellised, long Asian variety, and a 16 X 200’ unit planted to a slicer called ‘Diva’), with a third going in following harvest of a greenhouse planted to early Swiss chard and kohlrabi. To increase our bell pepper and squash production, we’ve started by planting eight 300’ beds of each, and covered them with a cheesecloth-like fabric suspended over wire hoops. This apparatus keeps the insects away, minimizes hail damage, and provides a healthier crop. Look for some of these crops to begin showing up in another month or so.

Warmest regards,

Ted Blomgren

Aug 17, 2006 Onion bulbs and potato tubers swell, cabbage heads size up, and sweet corn kernels fill when there is good soil moisture. We haven’t irrigated our vegetables since April, when we ran the sprinklers to encourage our first root crops and greens to germinate, but I think it’s time.

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It has not rained in six days. Puddles have dried. Frogs are having to find new homes. And, of course, we are very relieved.

I am walking through our potato field. During this week’s brief hot, dry spell they showed signs of moisture stress. The heavy spring rains have encouraged shallow rooting. The rain has also robbed the soil of nitrogen the leaves are a dull green. We will probably have to supplement with Chilean nitrate, and begin irrigating soon. I notice some insect feeding activity, too. I stop and find a large striped beetle shaped like a Volkswagen, and dozens of brick-red larvae. Every spring, those of us who grow potatoes must confront a range of pests, including insects, pathogens and weeds.

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In this week’s share you’ll find a head of red crisphead or Romaine lettuce, ‘Hukurei’ turnips, scallions, boc choy, and another pot of herbs, among other spring vegetables. Enjoy!

As I set off in my truck for New York City this morning, I saw Jan heading through the hedgerow with six twenty-year-olds in tow. Read the rest of this entry »

January 2006
Dear CSA Friends,

Happy New Year!

I write to remind you that your January winter share delivery will take place this coming weekend. For future planning, keep in mind that deliveries are scheduled for the third Saturday of the month. February and March deliveries will both take place on the 18th day of those months.

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