Toto, We're Not in Kansas Anymore!
On Wednesday evening a category EF2 tornado hit Wantage, just 2 miles south of the farm. You probably saw some TV coverage of the event. One of the local dairy farmers got hit especially hard, with severe damage to his barn and the silo tumbled over. We were fortunate not to be in the path of the tornado, but the excessive rain washed away many of our on-farm roads and the fields we have at Scott's Farm on the other side of Wantage was almost in the direct path, it just missed those fields by about ¼ mile. We have many of the squash plants in those fields and production decreased this past week. Perhaps the plants were traumatized!
The NJ State Fair - Sussex Farm & Horse Show started on Friday. Ali & Lisa who both work at the farm entered some veggies into the Open Vegetable Show. It was their first year exhibiting and Ali placed 2nd overall with 15 blue ribbons and Lisa placed 5th with 9 blue ribbons. This was quite an accomplishment being their first time exhibiting. Ali also received three Best-in-Show placements for:
- Sebring Yellow Summer Squash
- Isikura Stem Onions
- Silver Fir Tree Tomato
From the Fields: The rain is not helping, but at this point there is not much we can do. We do have to harvest some potatoes soon and it is hard to judge just how our recently planted crops are doing. It appears we have lost about 1/3 of our tomato plants in the back field to the late blight that has been heavily reported in the news and is widespread throughout the state. The impact on the commercial tomato growers is devastating not to mention small growers like us. We even saw the impact at the NJ State Fair where the entries from local home gardeners dropped about 60% for the tomato entries. The tomato entries are usually the biggest part of the Vegetable Show and this year there were hardly any entries and most of the exhibitors were complaining about getting hit by the blight. It was just on Friday the 24th that Farmer Rich noticed the signs (blackening of the stems)and showed Ali & Lisa what to look for. They proceeded to remove the diseased parts in the hopes of saving the plants. It rained 2" that Sunday evening and by Monday morning the plants just "melted" away and can no longer be saved.
Weather Report: We hate to mention it again, but we have had non-stop rain most of the week. Over 6 inches of rain fell during the last week and the field crops are getting more & more water logged.
Animal report: A ground hog broke into the main field and ate some lettuce and another one decided to burrow underground to get into the greenhouse. Since that greenhouse had recently been harvested, there wasn't much for him to eat. A rabbit also broke in and just snacked on a few different veggies.
Fruit Deliveries - Since Farm Jim from Windy Brow Farm will not have the full poundage for one variety of fruit, we will be delivering plums one week to one site, then peaches the next. We will probably be swapping this off each week until there is sufficient harvest to stick with one variety. If you received plums last week you will be getting peaches this week (we hope we coordinated this correctly!!).
Work Day at the Farm - Scheduled for August 15th- the weather hasn't been cooperating for us to schedule a trip any earlier, so we are planning ahead in the hopes that we'll have great weather and be able to have CSA members come up to the farm & help with a few projects. More details to follow as we get closer to the 15th. We usually start late morning and give you a tour of the farm, start working on a project then break for an on-farm barbeque and hopefully go back to work after!
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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