Category: Uncategorized

This week’s share should include:

• Head Lettuce
• Chard
• Salad Mix
• Kohlrabi
• Turnips
• Cilantro
• Scallions
• Radish
• Summer squash
• Zucchini

Apparently those Ziploc bags were a nuisance to only a small minority of our members. Most of you — 88% — like the convenience of our loose greens being pre-bagged. So that’s what we’ll stick with.

(Personally, I have a bit of nostalgic longing for taring the scales, but I guess that’s just me.)

This week’s share:

• Beets
• Kohlrabi
• Scallions
• Turnips
• Fennel
• Head Lettuce
• Summer Squash and Zucchini
• Spinach
• Cilantro
• Kale

Comment from Provider Farm:

Watch out, here comes summer with our first summer squash and zuke pick! The plants are beautiful, looks like a good harvest this year.

The whimsical kohlrabi is sweet and crispy. Chop it up in a salad or try cooking with it.

Also new this week, fennel. Tasty in sauces or slice it thin on salads.

As you saw last week, our new farmers are pre-bunching our veggies into full- and reduced-share sizes so that you don’t need to do any counting or weighing. Max and Kerry say it’s no problem for them to do this, and helps guarantee that they are providing the right amount of vegetables for all our members. (We were sure to tell them as we prepared for this season that running out of veggies before 8:00 was a nagging problem last year.) It makes picking up your share much easier, too: all you have to do is go down the line — reduced shares to the left, full shares to the right — and pick up one bunch from each bin.

But a few members last week complained that the loose salad greens were bunched into ziploc bags, and it does seem like a bit of a waste. (In fact, since a ziploc is not the best way to store these greens, as soon as I got home I transferred them to a slightly damp kitchen towel and wrapped them up for the fridge.)

What do you think? Should they come bagged or loose for members to weigh at distribution? Please vote below!

Week One reduced share from Provider Farm.

With week one behind us (and most of us already craving a fresh round of greens), we get the full set of shares for week two: fruit, eggs, and pasta shares will be delivered, along with our maple syrup from Circle C Farm.

Circle C should also have a few pints of dark amber syrup for sale for $13 each, in case you didn’t order in time. They’ll also have some maple sugar available — 2oz for $4 and 4oz for $7.

Beef and Veal from Provider Farm can still be ordered online here. If you have already ordered and not yet paid, please bring cash or check with you to distribution on Tuesday. Beef and Veal will be delivered on June 19 (week three).

We should also start getting a vegetable list from Provider Farm a day before distribution, so be sure to check here (or on Facebook, or Twitter) so you know what to expect.

Don’t forget, we have a great resource from Just Food — Veggie Tip Sheets. There’s a single page for just about every kind of vegetable we might end up with this summer, with suggestions on storage, preparation, and cooking. If you don’t know what to do with your garlic scapes, for example, scroll through to the “G” pages to discover that scapes can be eaten raw or cooked, added to a salad, omelette, or used for pesto.

We also always have the hard-copy version of these tip sheets available at distribution. If you have a question, just ask!

Well, folks, that’s it — we’re all sold out for 2012. If you know anyone who is interested but just couldn’t pull the trigger this year, make sure they put their name on our waitlist for 2013.

We will keep our maple syrup orders open for another day. Information is here and the order form is here.

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.

If you want to receive updates from Provider Farm in your own mail box, subscribe to their newsletter here.

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.