Author: Grand Street CSA

CSA members may be interested in the curious Delancey Underground project — aka the LowLine — that’s been getting some attention recently. Basically the idea is to turn the unused trolley terminal underneath Delancey Street into a public park, with innovative solar collectors that would bring sunlight below ground, enabling grass and plants to grow.

One member has asked us to share an invitation for a fundraiser taking place Thursday evening at 7pm at Donnybrook (owned by another CSA member) on Clinton and Stanton.

 

Lower East Side Friends of the LowLine
cordially invite you to attend a fundraiser in support of
the Delancey Underground project (aka ‘LowLine’)

Please join us as Delancey Underground founders
DAN BARASCH & JAMES RAMSEY
will present their visionary concept for an underground park beneath Delancey Street

WHEN:  THURSDAY, APRIL 26 at 7:00 PM
WHERE: DONNYBROOK 35 Clinton Street (corner of Stanton Street)

Suggested donation is $50 (cash or check only, please)
$20+ donation gets you one glass of wine, beer, or well drink compliments of Donnybrook
Checks should be made out to: “The Underground Development Foundation”

Please RSVP: Friendsofthelowline@gmail.com

Can’t make it but still want to support the project? Donate online at delanceyunderground.org/donate

This invitation is transferable and can be forwarded to any interested parties.
Delancey Underground is a registered 501(c)(3) organization. All donations are tax deductible.

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Dear Friends,

It is with great pleasure that I sit down on this rainy day to write this newsletter! I have been watching the radar and checking the forecast for what seems like every hour for the past few days in great anticipation of this much needed rain

It couldn’t have come any earlier since for the past two weeks we have been busy planting broccoli, cabbage, chinese cabbage, scallions, lettuce, chard, kale, kohlrabi and beets out in the field. Two long season crops, our onions and leeks also went in this week. By far two of our favorite crops, we grow almost an entire acre of these pungent staple crops to ensure that your peppers aren’t lonely, and you have leeks for your potato leek soup! It is kind of funny to be thinking about fall in the first few weeks of spring but in order to ensure that our harvest buckets are full all season, we always keep an eye on the horizon.

Max has been busy putting seeds in the ground, including peas, greens, carrots, spinach, radishes and spring turnips, rounding us out to about 2 acres planted so far. When he’s not driving the seeding tractor, he’s been out preparing the land for planting and spreading our back pasture with compost to get it ready for the cows.

I have been scurrying about setting up irrigation, trying to keep up with the sun and drying winds that refuse to quit. Even our wet fields have been looking dry, our dry fields look like desert and the swamps have been getting lower by the minute. Without irrigation, we would not have been able to plant, end of story.

Still, most growers would agree, if you have a good irrigation system, a dry season is preferable to a wet one. You can always add water but you can never take it away. Excessive water can cause all kinds of problems, transmitting disease, drowning plants, and making it impossible to get tractors into the field. Too much rain can literally bring farm operations to a standstill.

We have inherited a great system set up at the Bailey fields that has been hard at work watering in all our broccoli and cabbage. However, as some of you returning members know, water has been an issue at our far fields in the past. Well not this year! Through the countless hours of dedicated hard work and a bit of much appreciated familial financial assistance from Larry(Kerry’s father), it looks like we will have an ample water supply for all of our crops this year. Larry has been hard at work designing, assembling and implementing a very practical, functional irrigation system for all of our previously, unirrigated land and we thank him for it!

The past two great big weeks of work wouldn’t be possible if it was just Max and I here on the farm. We are grateful to welcome our two wonderful apprentices to our farming family. Kara is a real local girl, hailing from Waterford CT. She has a degree in horticulture from UCONN and managed the gardens at the Mystic Seaport Museum. Tana has come all the way from the Pacific Northwest to join us here at Provider Farm. Last season she was the assistant grower at Overlook Farm in Rutland Mass. Our apprentices are really the back bone of our farm, we couldn’t do anything with out them. They have been undaunted by every task we have thrown at them, from picking rocks the size of our hatch back, to transplanting literally thousands of transplants in just two days.

Victory with baby Vinny.

By far the most exciting news of the week is the arrival of our two baby boy calves. It sure was refreshing to see some new life when everything else looked like it was ready to shrivel up. On the two hottest days in a row this spring, we came home from the fields to find Mamas Victory and Juno deciding it was a good time to calve. Juno was the first to go. Her progress was slow, but after two hours and with a little final coaxing from us, she was up and cleaning off her new calve Joe-baby. Victory, continuing to prove herself as a fine cow, popped Vinny out in just over a half an hour and was up and caring for him right away. We have one more calf to go . With the rain, we hope to see some good pasture growth and have the cows out grazing soon.

That’s it for now folks, we will see you all in about five weeks for the first share! I hope you enjoy this rain as much as I am.

On behalf of our farm crew,
Tana, Kara and Larry

Your Farmers,
Kerry and Max

Just Food is the non-profit group that helps to set up CSAs throughout NYC. Part of your membership fee ($5) goes to support their CSA in NYC program for expanding food opportunity throughout New York and supporting existing CSAs (like ours).

Their CSA Chef Program is designed to teach CSA members “how to conduct cooking demonstrations about local, seasonal eating and cooking; fruit and vegetable identification; and food storage and preparation.” Trained CSA chefs are then expected to offer cooking demonstrations at their CSA distribution sometime during the season.

There are two possible 1-day training sessions you could join, June 2 or June 9. Each session lasts from 9am to 5pm and is conveniently located at the Whole Foods on Houston and Bowery.

Each CSA is allowed to send only one member each year for training, so please email info@grandstreetcsa.org if you are interested and we can work out the details.

If you’re on Facebook, be sure to Like Provider Farm to get their updates directly as the season approaches. They’ve got two new calves on the farm, and have moved their first plantings from greenhouse to ground. Max and Kerry are dancing around like crazy to get some more of those April showers.

Also, we’ll have a big email going out shortly to let you know about limited supplies of Circle C Maple Syrup available again this year.

If you haven’t yet signed up for your work shifts, please do so soon — you are required to help out during two distribution shifts sometime during the season. Pick your dates now at VolunteerSpot. (And please sign up with the same email you used to register for the CSA, so we can credit your membership accurately.)

Finally, we have three shares left to sell, so if you have a friend or neighbor who’s been dithering, now’s the time to sign up.

Kerry writes in from the farm:

Well here it is 65 degrees outside and its only the middle of March. This has got to be the earliest spring we have ever seen here on the farm and we are making good use of it. Last week we started all of our onions, leeks, scallions and the first lettuce in the greenhouse. We are just starting to see the first onions poking up out of the ground. We grow all our own seedlings and over 60% of our crops get started in the greenhouse so we have many hours of seeding still ahead of us. This week we will be seeding beets, chard and cabbage.

Our greenhouse adventures began with a late Saturday afternoon recovering of our greenhouse. Every four years, the plastic on greenhouses needs to replaced as it is weakened by the sun and light does not transmit well through it. We had plans to cover the greenhouse early on a Sunday morning (calm mornings are important when you are pulling a giant heavy piece of plastic over a structure. Don’t want it to end up in the trees with one gust of wind!) but after sitting on our duffs all day at an organic agriculture conference, we were energized to get started on a Saturday afternoon.

We started by detaching the old plastic from the frame. By 5:00, we were ready to pull the new pieces onto the greenhouse. We debated it knowing full well we would be working in the dark if we started but decided to go for it since it was calm. So one by one, we pulled the sheets of plastic over the greenhouse (greenhouses are typically covered with two layers of plastic. A fan blows air in between the two layers to create an insulating bubble which helps keep the heat in the greenhouse). To get the plastic sheets over the greenhouse we tied ropes to the plastic (using a tennis ball to keep the rope from pulling off the plastic) and then all three of us grabbed a robe and pulled it over the greenhouse, hard! By nightfall, we were reattaching the new plastic to the frame and completed our project in the truck headlights. Not bad for an evening of work.

Max has started plowing up our early fields, getting the ground ready for peas, carrots, early greens and lettuce. It is still too early to seed anything but it is nice to get into the field and get things started. It is incredibly satisfying to turn over new ground at the beginning of each season. It feels great working late into the evening with the sun still out and a warm breeze blowing.

Our cows are not quite sure why we’re feeding them an hour earlier, I guess they don’t know about daylight savings time. Our girls are watching the pastures with interest, waiting for the first flush of new green grass. We have three pregnant heifers on the farm right now. They should be having their calves in the next month and we are looking forward to the new additions to the farm.

We have also started pulling some of the bigger rocks out of our field. I’ve heard rocks referred to as ‘New England potatoes’. They are always the first crop we pull out of the field in the spring and the last crop we pull out in the fall. We are in the process of organizing a rock picking party. Many hands make light work and it will give us a chance to share a meal together and enjoy some time in the fields together.

All members are reminded that they are required to work at two distribution shifts at some point during the season. Please pick your dates and times at VolunteerSpot:

There are three shifts each Tuesday:

• Set-up, from 4:30 to 5:45, requires lifting trays of vegetables from the delivery truck and/or fine penmanship.
• Bridge, from 5:30 to 7:15, requires a friendly demeanor and a passing familiarity with a broom.
• Closing, from 7:00 to 8:30, requires wiping, bagging, and stacking skills, plus a little carrying.

When you go to VolunteerSpot, you will be allowed to choose your own two shifts on whatever available dates are most convenient for you.

(IMPORTANT: Please sign up to volunteer with the same email address you used to sign up for the CSA.)

If for some reason you find it impossible to set aside two distribution shifts during the summer, you can fulfill your CSA work requirement by volunteering twice at the Our Lady of Sorrows food pantry on a Wednesday or Friday during the season. If you want more information about this option, please contact us at info@grandstreetcsa.org.

We still have some room for 2012 but we’re filling up fast — now’s the time to sign up! Tell your friends!

REGISTER NOW FOR THE 2012 SEASON.

Especially if you know anyone from the now-defunct LES CSA, please make sure they know the Grand Street CSA is their only chance for fresh, local, organic produce delivered to the neighborhood.

Sign up today!

A nice piece today on our favorite local news site:

There are plenty of reasons to participate in a CSA. It’s lovely to get fresh local vegetables every week. It’s fun to figure out new things to do with some of the more exotic or abundant ones. Eating seasonally is hard to argue with, too. And it feels good to know you’re part of a community supporting a local farmer. When the weather cooperates it’s also a good deal. But CSAs aren’t meant to be a deal, and some years your biggest reward for participating will be the knowledge that you made a tough year a little bit easier for a local farm.

Read the whole thing at the Lo-Down.

Registration is now open for 2012 season. Click here to sign up online.

Max and Kerry send this update from the farm in Salem, CT:

Hello Grand Street CSA,

We hope winter in the city is treating you well. Things are good here on the farm. We have been taking advantage of this unusually mild winter and are getting ready for spring. We have to remind ourselves that is the end of February because these days it really feels like the end of March. We are enjoying our last bit of down time on the farm before things really kick into gear. Our greenhouse is all set up and we will be firing up the heaters next week! Onions are the first thing we start in the greenhouse and they go in March 5th. After that Kerry and I will be spending many long days starting our seedlings waiting for our apprentices to get here April 1st.

Our cows are in pretty high spirits these days. I am sure they can’t wait to get onto lush spring pastures but they seem content to munch on their hay in the barn. I am not sure if their optimism is rubbing off on us or vice versa but it seems like spring is right around the corner. We will be plowing, planting and seeding in the fields before we know it!

We really want to thank all of you for your continued support of our farm. Your share deposits are helping us purchase all the seeds, supplies and equipment we need to have the best season possible! We really couldn’t do this without you. We hope that Manhattan has been as warm as South Eastern Connecticut this February and we are counting down the days till June!

Your Farmers,

Max and Kerry

P.S. Don’t forget to check our facebook page for lots of photos and updates from the farm @ facebook.com/providerfarm