Grand Street CSA

Meet the Farmers Recap

2010-03-09T23:49:00.000-05:00

We had a great meeting last night where we got to bring all the pieces of our CSA together: Abrons Arts Center, represented by Jay Wegman and Rose Ortiz; Henry Street Settlement, represented by David Garza; Our Lady of Sorrows Food Pantry, represented by Nivia Mendez; and our farmers, David and Julia Smagorinsky.

Thanks to everyone who participated, and all our members who came and tried the cheese!

The light was pretty dismal for phone camera pictures, but for the record is our slide show below:

Organic Beef! First-Come, First-Served

2010-03-09T22:38:00.000-05:00

Kezialain Farm in Westtown, NY will be offering us certified organic, 100% grassfed beef in early June. They are offering us a 20lb mixed package or a 10lb ground beef package, delivered vacuum packed and frozen. If it seems like too much for your freezer, consider sharing with a neighbor! If we are happy with the beef there can be options in the future for 40lb packs, eighths or quarters. More details are on the beef order form.

There are only 4 cows being processed this time around. Although that means 1600+ pounds of beef, we are competing with many other customers since orders will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. So, our apologies for such an immediate deadline, but after speaking to our farmer (who seems so authentic and lovely) it seemed necessary.

The form we're linking to here needs to be 1) printed out and filled out by you 2) mailed, along with a check to Martha at Kezialain Farm by Wednesday, March 17.

For those who miss the deadline: We will touch base with Martha after the 17th and if more beef is available we will let you know.

There is a total delivery charge of $100 which will be split among everyone who orders (not to exceed $10/head). We will let you know how much that is before the delivery so we can collect the remainder at the delivery.

Please stay tuned for more information regarding FRUIT, EGG, AND CHEESE shares! We can't wait for this season to begin!

Meet the Farmers

2010-03-02T22:47:00.000-05:00

We're really glad to be holding this event next Tuesday night at Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand St.). Dave and Julia Smagorinsky of Woodbridge Farm will join us, as will representatives from Breezy Hill Orchard. In addition, we expect to be joined by staff members of Henry Street Settlement and Abrons Arts Center, who host our distribution during the season, and Our Lady of Sorrows Food Pantry, where any extra food goes at the end of distribution.

Core Group members will be available to answer your questions about the CSA, and we'll be presenting you with information about extras you can sign up for: fruit, from Breezy Hill Orchard; eggs, from Knoll Crest Farms; cheese, from Woodbridge Farm; and 100% grassfed beef, from Kezialain Farm.

You'll also have the chance to sign up for your two volunteer spots, pay off the balance of your membership, buy a Grand Street CSA canvas bag for $10.

2010 Registration Now Closed

2010-02-24T13:23:00.000-05:00

We have filled our membership for 2010! Payments are still coming in, but we have enough commitments from old and new members to close our registration form.

If you are still interested in our CSA, you should sign up right away for our Wait List. There's always the possibility that someone who signed up decides to back out, in which case we would immediately turn to the wait list to fill in any extra shares.

Seattle's Pike Place Coming to New York's Peck Slip?

2010-02-22T10:04:00.000-05:00

This post from The City Greens: Quinn Proposes Regional Food Market In Lower Manhattan. (New Councilwoman Margaret Chin is also on board.)

For those of us who have enjoyed the New Amsterdam Market over the past year, or who are interested in the encouragement of local and sustainable agriculture (that's you, right?) this is welcome news.

General Registration for 2010

2010-02-20T07:00:00.000-05:00

We still have just a few shares available for 2010 and you can sign up right here.

If you need more information about us before you commit, please read our About Us page. If you still have questions, email us and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

These shares should go quickly, and we will close the sign-up form as soon as we are filled up. In that case, you should immediately put your name on our 2011 Wait List.

Membership Update

2010-02-19T10:35:00.000-05:00

We've just about completed our first two rounds of registration for past members and people on the wait list — and there are still about ten shares available for the 2010 season.

We'll open up general registration tomorrow, Saturday morning, right here on this site. If you know anyone who wants a chance to get organic produce from a local farm this summer, tell them to check back here this weekend.

TED Talk on the Obesity Crisis

2010-02-12T22:32:00.000-05:00

Paula Crossfield of Civil Eats picks up on this inspiring and entertaining TED Talk by Jamie Oliver this week accepting his $100,000 TED Prize.

Jamie Oliver — yeah, the Naked Chef — is like a cross between Michael Pollen and Bono. His crusade is against the totally preventable diseases associated with obesity, and in particular what he calls the child abuse perpetrated by government via school lunch programs.

The TED Prize is designed to help someone fulfill their wish; Oliver's is:

“I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.”

All of which dovetails nicely with all the good things the Michelle Obama has been saying this week.

2010 Registration Now Open to Wait List

2010-02-11T12:34:00.000-05:00

Everyone on our 2010 wait list has just received an email with instructions for registering for the season. Shares will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, and when we have reached our quota for the season we will close the form to any new members.

If by any chance there are still shares available in two weeks, on Feb. 25, we will open up registration to the public. Please check back here for information.

Links from Just Food

2010-02-10T14:07:00.000-05:00

I went to a great workshop at Just Food the other night, and was reminded that they're connected to a bunch of things that might be of interest to our members. (Just Food is the organization that helps connect communities in NYC with local farms — they got us started back in 2008.)

First of all, there's the CSA in NYC Conference coming up on Feb. 28. Several of our core members are going to be attending, but the conference is open to anyone at all who's interested in the current state of CSAs in the city.

On the way out of their office, I picked up some flyers that looked interesting:

Bee Native is a non-profit hoping to strengthen the health and increase the population of honey bees in the U.S. (And I learned that an old tradition of newlyweds drinking mead — honey wine — for the month after their wedding is where the word "honeymoon" comes from.)
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer is promoting a 10-point Food Charter, "Principles for a sustainable food system," including environment, education, and community. You can sign on to his food pledge.
A new cookbook called "Big Green Cookbook" gives lots of recipes and kitchen tips to help you reduce your carbon food-print.

For those of you hooked in to such things, Just Food has a useful Twitter feed and a lively Facebook page.

Fruit Share Update

2010-02-04T10:48:00.000-05:00

Several of you have asked, so we thought we'd post an answer: we do plan on having a fruit share available again for 2010, though we haven't yet worked out the details.

There were some concerns from members about our partner last year, Breezy Hill Orchard, mostly stemming from miscommunication early in the season. We've been in touch with them about those issues, and recently received this note from Breezy Hill's Elizabeth Ryan:

Hi, I am writing to touching base about our CSA program this year. As you know, last year was our first ever experience with CSAs, and it was a quite rocky. It took us a while to get a grip on the whole thing, and as it turned out, it was also a pretty challenging year in terms of the weather, The rain was unprecedented, there were actually only 4 days in June that did not rain., and that was only the beginning of some pretty challenging weather. We wanted to reach out to you to get an understanding of whether you want to work together this year.

We learned a lot last year. We will be making some very substantial changes in our CSA's this year. There will be significantly more summer fruit, more diversity, better communication and hopefully it will be a successful year. We have spent the last several months working through the successes and challenges of last year, and have had some very helpful conversations and feedback from CSA members and lots of great advice from other CSA farmers. We also have taken on another wonderful farm with lots of cherries,peaches, plums, and apricots,

We have a full time CSA coordinator this year, Anne Matos Diaz. We will be expanding the variety of the weekly shares, we heard a lot that the early season quantities were too small, and the members wanted more diversity of fruit on a weekly basis. We think we can do that. We will also be hosting a CSA blog so that member can have a better idea of what's ripe and ready each week.

Probably our most important innovation will be a discount program so that our CSA members can get an ongoing discount in the farmers markets. I am hoping to meet personally if possible at the beginning of the season with each CSA to be sure that we are all on the same page, and to answer questions in person. We have drafted a brochure that we will be handing out at the Just Food meetings, We want to be sure that the expectations on the part of the members are line with what is realistic from a production point of view. We also hope that CSA members will take advantage of the opportunity to visit our beautiful orchards more this year.

We will also be offering the egg and pasta shares again, that was pretty straight forward.

Please let me know, of course feel free to forward this to anyone who you think should get it,

with best regards,
Elizabeth Ryan

Community Gardens Forum

2010-01-22T11:25:00.000-05:00

The New York City Community Gardens Coalition (NYCCGC) holds an important forum on the future of New York's community gardens on Feb. 6 at the New School. From their flier:

In 2002, most community gardens were "saved" by a legal agreement. That agreement expires in September, 2010. After that, no city garden is "safe." United we will demand to know from our state and city representatives what is being done to make our community gardens permanent! All community gardeners and supporters need to be at this Forum!

If you're interested, you can get more info at their website, and register for free here.

Community gardens are a bigger part of life above Houston St. than in our corner of the lower east side, but the principles NYCCGC fights for could affect the future of empty lots all around us.

2010 Registration Now Open for 2009 Members

2010-01-20T15:11:00.000-05:00

Last year's members have just received an email with instructions for re-registering for the 2010 season. The deadline for re-registration is February 9, after which we will notify our wait list if there are shares still available for this year.

Raw Cooking Demo at Education Alliance

2010-01-15T22:55:00.000-05:00

Education Alliance is gearing up to do several joint events with Just Food, the great organization that brings CSA to NYC (and helped get us started up two years ago). The first one will be a raw cooking demonstration and tasting on February 9 with Stephanie Tourles, author of Raw Energy. See here for details.

2010 Registration Coming Soon

2010-01-14T18:29:00.000-05:00

2009 CSA members will be receiving instructions for re-registration via email within the next week, and will have until Feb. 9 to commit to the new season.

After that, everyone on our wait list will be notified via email about how to register for 2010.

Farmers Dave and Julia have already let us know that we'll have 10 more shares available for the new season, which means that we'll have room for up to 20 new members.

We'll keep this site updated with registration information over the next couple months while we fill up our roster.

LES Food Co-Op Meeting

2010-01-06T20:34:00.000-05:00

Brian Crowley from Hillman and Danny Rosenthal from Education Alliance are convening a second general meeting of community members interested in starting a food co-op in our neighborhood. This initiative is still in its earliest stages. Anyone at all interested is welcome to attend, get some more information, and figure out how to be involved.

Pasta with Parsnips and Bacon

2010-01-04T23:35:00.000-05:00

For all those storage parsnips languishing in the back of your frige and that wonderful Woodbridge Farm bacon because, as Nick Kindelsperger observes

' ... the fundamental property of the original Babbo dish remains the same: parsnips cooked in pork fat taste really good. They come out slightly sweet with a luscious, creamy texture. Whatever you do, don't mess with that.'

This dish is from Babbo via Epicurious via Serious Eats: New York.

Pasta with Parsnips and Bacon

- serves 4 -

Ingredients

1/4 pound bacon or pancetta, chopped into 1/4 inch dice
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 pounds parsnips, peeled, quartered lengthwise, and cut crosswise 1/4-inch-thick
8 ounces pasta (fresh pasta if you have it)
1/4 cup chopped parsley
Salt and pepper

Serve with: Grated parmesan

Procedure

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Meanwhile, add the chopped bacon to a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook until the bacon is browned, stirring often, about 5 minutes. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and let drain on a couple paper towels. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the bacon fat.

2. Turn the heat to medium and add the butter to skillet with the bacon fat. Add the parsnips and cook for about 12 minutes, stirring often. They should be lightly browned and very tender. Turn off the heat.

3. Cook pasta according to the directions on the box to al dente. When done, reserve 2 cups of the cooking water and then add the pasta directly to the skillet with the parsnips. Turn heat to high and add about 1 1/2 cups of the cooking water, the bacon, and the parsley. Cook for 1 minute, stirring often. Add more of the cooking water if it looks too dry. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Mulch Your Christmas Tree

2010-01-03T11:57:00.000-05:00

NYC Parks & Recreation sponsors MulchFest 2010 — instead of throwing your tree in the trash, drag it over to Corlears Hook Park on Saturday and Sunday, January 9 and 10, between 10am and 2pm. They'll be collecting trees to chip down for mulch throughout the city's parks.

Update: Apparently NYC Sanitation Dep't is collecting trees this year for mulch as well, from Jan. 4 through Jan. 15. Just leave the tree out on the curb for regular pickup, with no ornaments, stands, or bags. (There had been talk in the fall of suspending this program for budgetary reasons, but apparently it's been restored.)

Join the Core

2009-12-22T20:25:00.000-05:00

The core group does the basic admin work of the CSA — signing up new members, arranging distribution, creating special events, etc. In addition, there is a core member at each distribution shift during the season, which last year meant six volunteer shifts for each core member, as opposed to the usual two.

But specific responsibilities can vary depending on each member's interests and availability. If you're at all interested in participating in the CSA in a more constructive way, please join us for our first 2010 planning session on Jan. 13.

New Amsterdam Wintermarket

2009-12-19T21:17:00.000-05:00

Blizzard? Schblizzard! The New Amsterdam Wintermarket will be open as planned:

Sunday, December 20

Wintermarket

on South Street in Lower Manhattan

Between Beekman Street and Peck Slip

11:00am to 4:00pm

They have a pretty great set of vendors, dedicated to regional suppliers, sourced directly from farmers ... all the things you love about CSA, with even more variety.

WH.gov: Planting the Winter Garden

2009-12-18T21:38:00.000-05:00

Lovely, cheesy video about the White House garden getting covered for winter crops:

Planting the Winter Garden | The White House

Pork Delivery this Saturday

2009-12-17T23:12:00.001-05:00

Woodbridge Farm will be delivering pork shares again to the city this
coming Saturday. For those of you who missed out last time or need
another share (!) please email Dave and Julia to let them know:

woodbridgefarm@sbcglobal.net

The Mini Share is $150 and is roughly 17lbs of pork consisting of
bacon, sausage, ham, chops, ribs, shoulder.

Distribution will be at Roots & Vines (409 Grand St between Suffolk St
& Clinton St) from 3:30 to 6:00.

Happy Holidays!

Window Farms

2009-12-14T12:28:00.000-05:00

Moira came across this site about Window Farms — the idea is to grow food inside your own apartment, like some urban, indoor, modern wonder of the world.

Some of you probably already grow some herbs inside, or have a potted plant or two. The problem, as with everything else in the city, is finding enough floor space for everything you want to grow. So here's a good vertical solution.

If you register for their forum, you can download a PDF with D-I-Y instructions. (They're also trying to put some kits together, but they don't seem to have these available yet.)

Let us know in the comments below if you have any other innovative ways of farming indoors.

LES Food Coop Preliminary Meeting

2009-12-05T11:00:00.000-05:00

A very preliminary meeting to discuss the creation of a neighborhood food coop was held this past Thursday at the Education Alliance. A few members of the CSA attended, and many others expressed an interest in this project, so I thought I'd post some quick notes.

The meeting was hosted by Danny Rosenthal Education Alliance, though he made clear that he expected EA to have only a facilitating role in the project. Brian Crowley, of Hillman, also spoke -- he's a longtime member of the Park Slope Food Coop, and it was through his initiative that this meeting was held.

A food coop is, simply, a customer-owned and -operated grocery store. It's a small business, and it will be no simple thing to get this off the ground. Danny Rosenthal estimated a timeframe of 18-24 months, though there was certainly a lot of interest in exploring smaller seed projects that could possibly make a difference sooner, such as a buyers' club for dry goods, or an expanded CSA.

About 60-70 people showed up (including 8 CSA members). There was broad generational representation, though attendees were mostly from Seward, East River, and Hillman coops. Generally there was great interest in having healthier, less expensive options for food in the neighborhood, and, as you can imagine with so many people living in coops, strong support for the coop model.

One long-time resident spoke of how, in the 70s, she was involved in an urban farm on Grand Street (now paved over for parking). One new mother from Ecuador said that growing up she was able to pick fresh fruit from the trees in her yard, and wondered how she could give her daughter an experience anything like that. Neighbors involved in the restaurant business expressed their support. A representative of the Seward Coop Board attended, and said he would advocate for a partnership with the food coop, maybe even including use of the prized Hester St. lot (no promises!).

People were asked to sign up for two committees, a steering committee in charge of looking into how to actually start this business, and a short-term solutions committee to explore other smaller options. It was agreed that the first steering committee meeting would include representatives from the Park Slope and other coops in the city to draw a clearer picture of the nuts and bolts of this endeavor. No date was set.

If you're interested in joining the steering committee, you can apply to the Google Group here.

If you're interested in joining the short-term solutions committee, email Brian Crowley: bcrowley8 at gmail dot com

Notes from Woodbridge Farm

2009-12-02T11:06:00.000-05:00

Julia, from Woodbridge Farm, wrote in to give us some feedback on our feedback -- her response to our end-of-year survey:

"I would say, for us this has been the best season so far. There were certain issues with specific crops (see below) but overall we always had a good amount and variety of food available. There is of course always room for improvement, but with respect to the rainy season and the tomato-blight problem, we were not effected by either. A lot of other things happened on the farm: we finished the construction of the creamery, started to milk our cows and to make cheese. This is the other major component of our farm to enable us to become long term financially sustainable."

She was also able to respond, vegetable by vegetable, to the items we indicated we would like to see more of:

Sweet Potatoes
Although we planted them again this year, they unfortunately for the first time did not grow at all. I figure it was simply too cold. Also, we get a lot of damage through voles, who seem to love sweet potatoes, and through harvesting without adequate harvesting equipment. I can put that question out to the membership: do you care if the sweet potatoes are sometimes cut in half?

The other problem is that sweet potatoes want to be cured in 85F for 2 weeks, to enhance sweetness and storability. I have very limited capacities to do this.

Brussel Sprouts
Brussel sprouts are a late fall crop. They come in in late November and taste best after they experienced a first hard frost. This is really after the CSA has finished. The other problem is that the aphid pressure gets so strong in late fall, that I haven't been able to grow brussel sprouts successfully thus far.

Broccoli
I am very aware that broccoli is a favorite and considered a staple vegetable. For our situation it is actually very expensive to grow broccoli. It takes a lot of care, space, timely management, fertilizer, etc etc. And it only yields one proper head once. It is also a seasonal crop that grows in spring or in fall and gives you a harvest season of about 2 to 4 weeks each time. I have been working hard on improving the quality and quantity of our broccoli crop, and was actually extremely pleased with the results this year. I am not sure if I can substantially increase the supply in the future -- if we were to increase the quantity, it would increase the amount offered at those pickup weeks in which we already offer broccoli, but it would not increase the number of times when broccoli is offered (it simply does not produce anything for most part of the season). Please let me know if that is of any interest to you, and I can see what I can do.

Cauliflower
This is a crop that is even trickier to grow than broccoli, and after trying it for a couple of seasons I stepped back from it.

Cucumbers
Cucumbers (along with eggplants) were one of the crops severely impacted this year by the cool weather, as well as an abundance of pests of all kinds: beetles, voles, groundhogs etc etc - we are changing management practices next year, moving to a black plastic mulch system for all the heat loving crops (cucumbers, zucchinis, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, squash, this new system will also allow us to grow melons for the first time, which I am really excited about) - so hopefully this will solve most of the problems at once.

Spinach
For some reason, spinach is having an unusually difficult time in our fields. There appears to be a soil-borne fungus which wilts the leave before they can grow to any harvestable size. I have been trying every year, trying different varieties, supplementing with seaweed, etc etc but so far there has not been any reliable success - sorry, we'll keep trying, and hopefully we will find a solution

Scallions
We will have scallions again next year. We did plant them, but 80% never took, never started to grow. The only explanation I have for this phenomena is a crop rotation issue.

Eggplant
(see cucumbers above) - they will really love the added heat they get from the black plastic

Peas
Peas are very seasonal and are usually grown in spring. We grow a lot of peas for the amount of people we have available to harvest them all. It takes four people more than six hours to get through them all, and we have to do this twice a week. Considering the little market value peas have, it is actually quite unreasonable for us to grow them, but we do it anyhow, because everybody loves them so much. (This is the same for beans, the amount of time it takes to handpick peas and beans makes us completely incompatible with larger and more specialized farms that have mechanized harvesting systems.)

Onions
Both onions and leeks I am hoping to improve the quantity that we will be able to harvest in the coming year. So far we had very little turnout (the percentage of harvestable sized crops compared to the amount we planted has been very low.) I ran some trials on the leeks late in the season and was able to observe a very great response to foliar feeding with a seaweed extract. I will include these sprays in our management practices from now on and hopefully have much better results.

Leeks
(see above)

Tomatoes
We had a very good harvest of tomatoes this year (especially compared to all the problems the farms north and west of us had, who ended up with no tomatoes at all) - if you are looking for an earlier crop, I won't be able to supply that. Tomatoes grown in the field come in in mid August, Greenhouse tomatoes are 4 weeks earlier but we have very limited Greenhouse space. Unfortunately, the town doesn't really seem to support farming too much, so the second Greenhouse we build, we were never able to take into productive use, since the town did not allow us to put the plastic cover on it.

Beets
Beets are a riddle to me. Some germinate, some don't, some grow nice and large while the next one over stays really small. Why? I am not sure. I have a few hints to work with, namely application of lime at seeding, deeper seeding depth, earlier thinning (this is a real time constraint issue - maybe your CSA members can afford to come out to a volunteer beet thinning party?), possibly also seaweed extract application. Hopefully I will be able to solve this in the near future. I believe in addition to the normal riddle I experience growing beets, there was a problem of seed quality this year, the beets had extremely low germination rates.