Meet Your Farmers Potluck and Cookout – Saturday, May 5th at 6pm

Sol Flower Farm & Herondale Farm are throwing a potluck cookout tomorrow –  Saturday, May 5th. We’ll be grilling Herondale burgers & hot dogs after a hard week of work out in the fields. Come on over to the farm located at 90 Wiltsie Bridge Road in Ancramdale at 6:00pm to hang out with the farm crew, meet your neighbors, and learn more about our CSA programs. Bring a side, salad, dessert, or beer! Kids welcome. Rsvp to solflowerfarm@gmail.com. Farmers Andy and Jerry will be leading us on a farm tour at 6:15pm, dinner at 6:45pm, and stick around for the after party, dance party late night.

The Herondale Farm store is open tomorrow from 10:00am – 3:00pm. We just harvested our delicious spring lettuce mix from the greenhouse. It’s $6.50 per pound. You’ll also find plants starts for sale at the store. Tomorrow we’re selling lettuce starts for $3.99 per 6 pack. We’ll have three varieties available: Sylvesta – a big, green Boston with thick flavorful leaves; Green Forest – a dark green Romaine, and New Red Fire – a heavier lettuce with frilly leaves.

Upcoming news & events: For our Brooklyn CSA members, we are a partner with the Brooklyn Food Conference, so please come visit if you are in the neighborhood. We are looking forward to this special event taking place on Saturday, May 12th from 9:00am – 6:00pm at the Brooklyn Technical High School, 29 Fort Greene Place. Over 5,000 people are expected to attend this free, all day event filled with keynotes from notable food activists, workshops, panel discussions, food demos, family programming, art and much more. The 2012 Conference will help strengthen the cooperative effort of individuals, groups and organizations fighting everyday for a healthy, sustainable and fair food system. Food activists, local farmers, academics, restaurateurs and health advocates and all those interested in food justice will gather to discuss the global food economy and its impact on our lives.

 

Water?

As most of you know we are having extreme weather conditions. Usually we are running out to plant our fields between spring rains and this year we keep looking up to find no rain.  Bring out the irrigation!  luckily we are a head of the game this year on our irrigation maintenance and able to pump water from the river right when we need it.   A lot has been happening in the fields this past week.  We have been transplanting, seeding, and watering. With over 4500 kale, cabbage, chard, lettuce, kohlrabi

even chuck is helping irrigate!

plants in the ground and thousands of feet of carrots, beets, spinach, peas, bok choy seeded there is lots to look after.  The farm crew is well into the  3rd week of the season and everyone is making great strides to grow this beautiful food on this beautiful land.  Keep spreading the word about our CSA offering!  we look forward to seeing you all on the farm soon!!!!

1 million babies

Warm days in the greenhouse are what march is all about! All is looking good with chard, kale, cabbage, kohlrabi, lettuces, fennel, scallions, onions and leeks growing taller everyday.  First fields are plowed with a few more to be turned this weekend.  Lots going on!

Welcome Staten Island and Garden City Crossfits!!!!

We are so excited to be adding 2 new CSA distribution sites to our list.  Our Veggies will now make it to the islands!  Please don’t hesitate to contact us with questions. We look forward to getting to know our new members of the farm!

Its July?  The earth is busting out and so are we!! I almost jumped in the river yesterday to cool off but no time to stop… to much to do.  This week the fields were spread with our yummy compost and our cover crop has turned emerald green ( 2 ways we bring fertility to our fields).  The baby seedlings have sprung up from their cozy soil blocks in the greenhouse and the first lettuce has been seeded in the earth.  After getting over the shock of summer it was kind of nice to get a running head start out here on the farm this week.  Do we really have to go back to March now?

 

SIGN UP FOR OUR 2012 CSA!

We are back and better than ever!  We hope you have had a restful winter season and are ready for the local flavors of Sol Flower Farm. We can’t wait for that first crisp head of lettuce and the sweet snap of peas! A lot has been happening behind the scenes lately, like our NEW WEBSITE!   We have our own Hayley Hunt to thank for the beautiful new site!  We hope you enjoy and welcome any feed back.  We have also been working hard getting ready for the season ahead.  You will notice a few new CSA options for pick-up, Millerton on Friday afternoons at the NECC and our new full season Park Slope, Brooklyn distribution on Wednesdays!  We will also be back at the Millbrook Farmers Market for our 4th year! and of course you will find us busting out in the Herondale Farm Store.  We are firing up the greenhouse at the end of the week, seeding our onions and first round of greens… amazing, here we go again, a million babies to raise!

We hope you will spread the word about the CSA and Sol Flower.   We are expanding our shares and looking for new members to join in this seasons bounty.  We are ready for a great season and look forward to seeing all your familiar faces.   Let us know if you have any questions.  Until then, back to the greenhouse!