Green Futures

November 24, 2025

The 2026 garlic is in! You’d think the annual excitement would wear off after all these years, but it never does. In November, when everything is turning brown, planting garlic is staking a claim on a green future. It’s hopeful, empowering, and exciting, at any age. Our first year we planted in Upper Williams, simply because it was the only field that was ready. As luck would have it, Upper Williams turned out to be one of our best fields! But garlic is a low-maintenance crop, so the following year we assigned it to Schenck, a small field on the far side of the Old Bethpage Village, where it was of sight and often out of mind. To avoid a monoculture, we planted half the field in garlic and the other half in cover crop, rotating back and forth each year. This worked well enough until 2017, when anthracnose levels crossed the threshold from acceptable to unacceptable. To break the disease cycle completely, we moved the garlic back to the main fields, this time to the steep and shady areas where other crops failed to thrive but where garlic holds a unique advantage. It can take root on a slope because heavy applications of compost and leaf mulch hold everything in place, and it isn’t troubled by shade because it does most of its growing in the early spring, before the trees have leafed out. For the next several years, the garlic rotated among our most challenging fields, none of which included Upper Williams. Finally, when we opened up New Pond Field, garlic was the perfect trailblazer for building much-needed organic matter, thanks to all the compost and mulch. We planted the entire 2025 crop in New Pond last year, taking up two thirds of the field, and we planted the remainder in garlic this year, but that only accounted for two thirds of the total crop. When casting about for an empty field to plant the remaining third, we landed on Upper Williams, simply because, once again, it was the only field that was ready. So the garlic journey comes full circle.

We loaded lots of people up for Thanksgiving at last weekend’s winter share pickup and farm stand, and we’re looking forward to doing it again tomorrow. Prepping for the November farm stands involves pulling certain items out of storage, hauling other items in from the fields, and praying the weather gods cooperate. At this point, all of the garlic, onions, potatoes, winter squash, cabbages, beets, and turnips have been harvested, but most of broccoli, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, carrots, and leeks are still in the field. Not only can these crops tolerate the cold, they prefer it, but we humans prefer harvesting when it’s sunny and mild.

After a lengthy delay, we finally launched CSA renewals last week. Ordinarily we start in September and offer a bonus Thanksgiving share for members who renew by November. But with our contract still up in the air, there was less incentive to plan that far in advance. Plus, the need to free up mental bandwidth is pushing me to reconsider the scope of our CSA program. As a business model that provides commitment and security, nothing beats CSA, but as Dan and I navigate our ongoing state of contract limbo, we need greater flexibility. So in October, I surveyed the members and proposed different share structures. The big takeaway, however, was that most members prefer for everything to remain as is (surprise, surprise). With that in mind, I hammered out a model that maintains as much of the original CSA structure as possible while still achieving my goal of freeing up time and space. I’m grateful for the patience and support members shared as I worked on the plan, and now that the renewals are coming in, I’m grateful for their votes of confidence. To have customers pay months in advance is awesome. To have them pay months in advance when we don’t have a contract is even better. To have them pay months in advance, without a contract, for something new, and without a Thanksgiving “bonus” to sweeten the deal…well…it leaves me speechless. For this level of loyalty, I can’t thank our CSA members enough.

So thanks for reading, Happy Thanksgiving, and looking forward to seeing you back at the farm soon.

—Caroline