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Monday, June 22, 2009

Vol 14 No 3 - Week of June 22nd

Record Rain for June?

Needless to say we had a trying week (see additional comments under the animal report). The rain just kept coming and coming & coming. Last week we reported well over 5" of rain fell, so add another 4-5" on top of that. The field crops are not happy. The excessive rain with the lack of sun is causing some crop failures. About 30-40% of our broccoli, cauliflower and shallot crop has been lost as well as 50% of the kohlrabi. We do overplant to offset losses, but don't plan on having the losses this severe.Picking Daisies.jpg

Friday was our only nice sunny day at the farm, in which we were able to cultivate and weedwack trying to get the fields under control. Saturday with the forecast of rain all day, we worked in the Franklin greenhouse (Farmer Rich hates to work in the rain) and were able to totally turn-it-over. This involved harvesting all the remaining onions and set them out the dry on our wire racks (we just need some sun for them to dry). We weeded the beds, fertilized and planted oriental greens. We also transplanted cucumbers. Having both our on-farm greenhouses and the Franklin greenhouse allows us to adapt during the season. Without these greenhouses we would be very behind at this point in the season. Many field crop farmers are finding it extremely difficult with the excessive rains. We have a few more beds in the fields open for cucumbers and squash but have not been able to plant them. Fortunately the plants we had ready were sent over the Scotts to plant in our fields there. Our new seedlings (the cucurbits) are almost ready to be planted in the fields and we hope we have better weather this week to accomplish it.

We have to check in with Farmer Jim at Windy Brow Farm to check on the status of his fruit crop that we hope to start delivering in mid-July. These heavy rains may be affecting the fruit crop as well. We hope to have an updated report for the next newsletter.

We have decided to deliver the onions again this week, as we have to start the garlic harvest early and need the room on the drying racks for the garlic. Also with this high humidity with all the rain, we are unsure that the onions will dry correctly, so it is best to deliver them while they are good instead of losing them. The garlic looks like is may start to rot in the ground, so the main objective this week will be to harvest it as the sheaths are starting to rot away and exposing the cloves. We would rather have small garlic than no garlic at all!

From the Fields: Ali planted about 150 pounds of potatoes on Tuesday while Farmer Rich was making his deliveries and another 100 pounds on Wednesday. We hope that they don't get washed out. The furrows are like brooks between the rows. Since we have raised beds, our losses aren't as large as if we didn't have raised beds. We received the Stevia transplants from Richter's nursery (2 months late) and hope to get them in the fields this week, but the weather forecast is looking gloomy.

Weather Report: More rain, no sun! The impact of this weather is more than just soggy fields. It interrupts our planting schedule in the beds we had already prepared and we are unable to prepare new beds. It also contributes to fungal diseases such as roots rotting. The week ahead is not looking any better with more rain in the forecast, but a lot can change during the week. We'll hope for the best!

Animal report: Last Saturday we brought about 1200 tomato plants, 600 pepper plants, 200 eggplant and 600 squash plants up to our fields on Scott's farm and he & his crew promptly planted. The field is surrounded by an electric fence, but by Monday night one deer ate all the tomato plants. They are just stumps at this point and may come back. Fortunately the deer did not eat any of the pepper, eggplant or squash plants. More transplants are slated to be brought up to Scotts to be planted this 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.

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