Vol 13 No 21 - Week of October 27th

Last week was a freeze, this week is the flu

Leslie has been out sick for 2 weeks now and fortunately Jessie & Allyson have helped Farmer Rich a few days during the week. Now Farmer Rich is sick and trying to work, but finding it difficult. He’ll be in the field harvesting a few radishes, then has to go & sit in the truck to rest, then go back out & try again. We usually have a large delivery at the end of the season as all the odds & ends are harvested, but with everyone sick it is virtually impossible to get them off the field & into the delivery. Last week we got behind with Leslie out all week and lost the spinach & sorrel. Fruit – This week we have picked up Suncrisp Apples from Windy Brow Farm located in Newton, NJ. This variety was introduced in 1992 by Rutgers. It is a complex cross of several varieties including Cox’s Orange Pippin, Golden Delicious & Cortland. From the Fields: We covered the garlic area with plastic for planting in November. Allyson helped with laying the plastic & Ron from Adam’s farm helped with making the beds. We got this done just in time before it rained on Saturday night. We have never planted garlic in plastic before. We had too big of a weed problem this year with the garlic and thought it best to give it a try. We did have a lot of success with the vegetables planted in plastic this year, so are trying it with the garlic. Hopefully we will have better harvests and larger bulbs for 2009.

Weather Report: About 3” of rain fell on Saturday night. We needed the rain, but it did little to help as this is the last delivery (Hoboken & Jersey City). Cold weather is predicted later this week and this will probably finish off all of the outside crops. Work Day @ the Farm Saturday, November 8th - Garlic Planting at the Farm 11 am- 2/3 pm help us plant garlic for the 2009 season. Please RSVP so we can plan on lunch & refreshments and send you directions. Possible rain dates (November 15th / 16th) Farming Quote of the Week: The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways. John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) Thirty-fifth President of the USA

Last deliveries Hoboken & Jersey City Sites: October 28th Hamburg: October 29th Mahwah: November 3/4th End of Season Potluck Dinner All CSA members are invited to the end of season potluck dinner to be held in Hoboken on November 1st starting @ 7:30 pm Hoboken Historical Museum 1301 Hudson Street – Hoboken please refer to the details in your weekly newsletter copy

Pick of the Week: click on the links below or to the right to bring you to the delivery specific to your pick-up location. Deliveries will be of similar variety & poundage, but may contain different items. Occasionally, some crops are ready to harvest but not enough to deliver to all our drop-off locations. What we do is start to filter them in each week to a different drop-off until there is enough to delivery to everyone.

• Recipe Links Beth Haverim Shir Shalom Delivery Hamburg Delivery Hoboken Midtown Delivery Hoboken South Delivery Hoboken West Delivery Jersey City Hamilton Park Delivery

Vol 13 No 20 - Week of October 20th

Freeze @ the farm

On Saturday we received a light frost, and then on Sunday morning we had a heavy freeze. It was probably about 25ºF. It did not have too much affect as we had already pulled down the warm weather crops (tomatoes, peppers, zucchini). If it had gotten a few degrees cooler the field greens were in jeopardy. This is probably the first year that all the warm weather crops are gone @ this point in the season as Farmer Rich is getting fields into production for garlic planting. On Thursday Farmer Rich chopped up the collards, tomatoes, peppers and zucchini plants and on Friday, an aspiring farmer, Allyson visited and helped with many field projects. These included ripping up all the plastic from the field beds, which is quite a project in itself. That area is ready to be tilled up for garlic production. Fruit – This week we have picked up Enterprise Apples from Windy Brow Farm located in Newton, NJ. This variety was first introduced in 1993. They are great for baking, eating, cooking and just about anything you would do with an apple. From the Fields: We have poor yields from the potato crop planted Scott’s fields and the delivery of last week & this week to all the drop-off locations is all we harvested. The potatoes you will be receiving will be mixed, as there was not enough of just a single variety to be delivered.

Weather Report: The cold temperatures are finally upon us and we are experiencing very DRY conditions. In the ying & yang of things if we do get a big rain we won’t be able to get the garlic fields ready but will have very nice greens.

Annual Woolly Bear Caterpillar Report- The annual Woolly Bear Caterpillar Report is in for this year. This has become an annual part of the newsletter for the past 12 years and for the most part has been pretty accurate. Weather folklore enthusiatasts have long assessed that the woolly bear caterpillar is one insect that is supposed to give us some insight as to how severe the winter will be. It is said that if the middle stripe is narrower than either of the black stripes, the winter will be severe. Conversely, if the center stripe is wide, we’ll have a mild winter. If all the stripes are the same size, we’ll have an average winter. (Photo taken on 10/10 – looks like a wide center stripe!)

Upcoming Events: October is Garlic month!Date to be announced – Garlic Planting at the FarmSometime in early November – help us plant garlic for the 2009 season.

Farming Quote of the Week: The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools. Henry Beston, Northern Farm

End of Season Potluck Dinner All CSA members are invited to the end of season potluck dinner to be held in Hoboken on November 1st starting @ 7:30 pm Hoboken Historical Museum 1301 Hudson Street – Hoboken please refer to the details in your weekly newsletter copy

Pick of the Week: click on the links below or to the right to bring you to the delivery specific to your pick-up location. Deliveries will be of similar variety & poundage, but may contain different items. Occasionally, some crops are ready to harvest but not enough to deliver to all our drop-off locations. What we do is start to filter them in each week to a different drop-off until there is enough to delivery to everyone.

• Recipe Links
• Beth Haverim Shir Shalom Delivery
• Hamburg Delivery
• Hoboken Midtown Delivery
• Hoboken South Delivery
• Hoboken West Delivery
• Jersey City Hamilton Park Delivery

Vol 13 No 19 - Week of October 13th

Season drawing to a close...soon

The last delivery for the season are:

• Mahwah - Beth Haverim November 3/4th (this makes up the week postponed due to Rosh Hashanah)
• Jersey City & Hoboken - October 28th
• Hamburg - October 29th
• On-Farm Pickup - October 31st/November 1st

With the season ending soon, now is a good time for members to let us know if there are any veggies you would like to try for next year, as we plan our seed order over the winter. We always like to receive feedback so let us know if there is anything you would like to receive more of, or less of during the harvest season. Seasonal eating can be a challenge to many. Perhaps most feedback we receive during the year is about the members trying new veggies they would never have thought to buy at the supermarket, or are even available there. Of course there are no guarantees. Our best laid plans sometimes go awry (i.e. cauliflower) due to crop loses, but we do try. The harvest of the all-blue potatoes was a bit disappointing this year. Our yields were not as high as in years past. Red Norland & Yukon Gold potatoes will be coming in the weeks ahead, as these were just recently harvested. They too do not have as high yields as we had hoped. There was a lack of rain during the summer, and the fields that they were in were not on our irrigation system. The potatoes planted up at our fields by Scott’s also did not receive enough water during the time the potatoes start to “potato up”! Fruit – This week we have picked up Ida Red Apples from Windy Brow Farm located in Newton, NJ. Ida Red Apples were developed at the Idaho Experiment Station in Moscow, Idaho from a cross between Jonathan and Wagener.

From the Fields: We are still contemplating where to plant the garlic for next year. Leslie started cleaning up some of the fields, removing the stakes from the tomato plants. This area is where we hope to plant the garlic. We still have to pull up the dead plants, remove the plastic, add compost, till it, then make raised beds. All this before it gets too cold!The autumn leaves are almost at their peak and that probably will happen this week. We notice quite a dramatic change when driving down to Bergen & Hudson counties, where the leaves have hardly changed as of today.

Weather Report: Fortunately, we did not receive a heavy frost at the farm, though many of our neighboring farmers did get it. This gave us a chance to harvest some of the warmer weather crops for tonight’s delivery. The tomatoes were already pulled for last week’s delivery so it looks like the tomato season is over.

Upcoming Events: October is Garlic month!Date to be announced – Garlic Planting at the FarmSometime in early November – help us plant garlic for the 2009 season.

Farming Quote of the Week: Whoever makes two ears of corn, or two blades of grass to grow where only one grew before, deserves better of mankind, and does more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together. Jonathan Swift

End of Season Potluck Dinner All CSA members are invited to the end of season potluck dinner to be held in Hoboken on November 1st starting @ 7:30 pm Hoboken Historical Museum 1301 Hudson Street – Hoboken more details to follow next week

Pick of the Week: click on the links below or to the right to bring you to the delivery specific to your pick-up location. Deliveries will be of similar variety & poundage, but may contain different items. Occasionally, some crops are ready to harvest but not enough to deliver to all our drop-off locations. What we do is start to filter them in each week to a different drop-off until there is enough to delivery to everyone.

• Recipe Links
• Beth Haverim Shir Shalom Delivery
• Hamburg Delivery
• Hoboken Midtown Delivery
• Hoboken South Delivery
• Hoboken West Delivery
• Jersey City Hamilton Park Delivery

Vol 13 No 18 Week of October 6th

Amber Waves of Grain

We are delivering winter wheat this week from Farmer Diane’s leased fields just down the street from our farm. During the summer we often stop by Diane’s farm stand to touch base with her & talk shop, and on one particular Sunday afternoon there was a breeze blowing & when looking over the wheat fields we understood where the “amber waves of grain” came from in America the Beautiful! It was truly stunning and only wish we could have captured it for you to see. We hope you find this an interesting addition to your deliveries. Technically, winter wheat is planted in the fall and harvested in July. Then it has to dry naturally. Please see recipes on the back & if any of you have any ideas for other uses of wheat, just e-mail Sometime Farmer Sue and we’ll pass them along to everyone! We had another delivery van problem on Tuesday morning and had to delay the Tuesday Jersey City & Hoboken deliveries until Wednesday. The fan belt snapped & fortunately Farmer Rich wasn’t stranded in the middle of no-where, but unfortunately it snapped about 45 minutes before the first drop-off. The veggies did not like being out the extra day and we apologize if the delivery looked abit off. We do hope this is the last of the delivery van problems for quite awhile. It has been breaking down so often that we just leave the key with the mechanic! Fruit – This week we have picked up Empire Apples from Windy Brow Farm located in Newton, NJ. From the Fields: The cool weather crops are looking extra good this week. We narrowly missed the frost that did affect other areas around us this past weekend. We are still behind preparing fields for garlic planting. Fortunately we secured some garlic for planting from a local grower and also some for the deliveries as we had losses in our field this year. The Franklin greenhouse is scheduled to have its plastic recovered. This greenhouse was extremely beneficial all season long for additional crop production than we could have done with just our on-farm greenhouses. We hope to be able to continue renting it again for the 2009 season. Weather Report:  Another 2” of rain fell on top of the 2” from the week before. The fields are fortunately spared from becoming too muddy.     Animal Report – Sometime Farmer Sue saw our resident Great Blue Heron on Sunday morning as we were loading the van for the Garlic Gathering.

Farming Quote of the Week:  Piles of gold are not as good as stores of grain. Chinese Proverb. 

Upcoming Events: October is Garlic month!

• 2^nd Annual Garlic Fest at the Hoboken Historical Museum on October 12^th – 1301 Hudson Street
• Date to be announced – Garlic Planting at the Farm Sometime in October – help us plant garlic for the 2009 season.

also, Windy Brow Farm (where we get your fruit) Pick-Your-Own-Apples 10am-4pm daily & weekends w/Wagon Rides 359 Ridge Road Newton, NJ info: 973.579.9657

Pick of the Week: click on the links below or to the right to bring you to the delivery specific to your pick-up location. Deliveries will be of similar variety & poundage, but may contain different items. Occasionally, some crops are ready to harvest but not enough to deliver to all our drop-off locations. What we do is start to filter them in each week to a different drop-off until there is enough to delivery to everyone.

• Recipe Links
• Beth Haverim Shir Shalom Delivery
• Hamburg Delivery
• Hoboken Midtown Delivery
• Hoboken South Delivery
• Hoboken West Delivery
• Jersey City Hamilton Park Delivery