News from the Farm: The weather has been reasonably nice and work in the fields is moving along at a great pace. Though, still a bit behind after the wet spring, the beds are getting filled with plants. We have had two full crews working during the week transplanting.
Our only disaster this week was the walk-in-cooler at Scott’s froze on Tuesday & shut down on Wednesday. Luckily it was during the week when we didn’t need it as it was delivery time. Last year when it broke, it was during the weekend and the lettuces had all frozen before the delivery. Fortunately, had it not been fixed in time, the local volunteer firehouse offered their cooler to store our lettuces & escarole in for delivery.
Our Micro-Green project is working out well as we are able to harvest weekly the micro-greens from the Franklin greenhouse. The differences between micro-greens, sprouts and baby greens are:
· Sprouts: first stage of seed development and are consumed shortly after germination and usually are grown in jars with water.
· MicroGreens: 2nd stage of seed development with roots & first leaves called cotyledons
· Baby Greens: grown a week or two longer than micro-greens and they resemble salad greens
Our micro-greens are grown in soil and not at all similar to sprouts. The micro-green mixes we are harvesting may be just one variety one week, or may be a combination of two to six different greens, such as a radish & buckwheat. We are working on a mix of kale, broccoli, kohlrabi & mustard greens for future deliveries.
From the Fields: More herbs were planted as well as hot peppers, sweet peppers and tomatoes. The newly seeded lettuce in the top greenhouse is half-up. It will be awhile until it is ready to transplant.
The round field has been planted with tomatoes & sweet peppers and is about ¾ full at this point. We plan on putting in more pepper plants in this field as well.
In our back field the garlic is looking extra nice, but the fava bean plants are looking a little weaker than usual. We hope the yields will allow everyone to get them.
Our main field is showing a great looking zucchini crop. The plants are thriving and the newly planted tomatoes & peppers are doing well. It has only been a few weeks since the planting started and they have taken hold with few losses.
At our Franklin greenhouse: The carrots this week were harvested from this greenhouse and those beds will now be replaced with micro-greens and salad mixes over the course of the season.
Weather Report: We had a lot of rain this past week which has been good for the crops. The back field did have to be irrigated as it had gotten quite dry. The temperatures have been on the cool side which is just perfect for field work.
Animal report: A few rabbits are in the main field, but as of yet have not decided to eat the crops. The “Tasmanian devil” has returned and is tossing the sunflower patch. For those of you who have been members for awhile may remember our reports from a few years back of getting to the farm and noticing that plants had been tossed during the night shortly after they were planted in the field. There didn’t seem any rhyme or reason, just tossed here & there and we nicknamed the culprit the “Tasmanian devil”. It appears that it is back or perhaps and offspring as taken over tormenting Farmer Rich.
A few fawns are peaking through the fence at the crew probably wondering what’s going on. They are so cute and we hope to get a few pictures of them, but more importantly hope they remain on the outside of fence.
Remember these Resources for your web access to CSA news, recipes and our Harvest Identifier:
· PDF version of newsletters: http://www.jerseygrown.net/CSFNewsletters.htm
· Harvest Identifier: http://www.jerseygrown.net/HarvestIdentifier.htm
· Twitter: http://twitter.com/catalparidge
· Facebook: http://facebook.com/catalparidge
Week of June 20th - 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 at anytime during the season. 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.
1 comment:
We are so happy with our first delivery! Tonight we sauteed the Radishes as suggested on your recipe blog, adding caramelized onions and wilting the radish greens. Doubled the chives, and a squeeze of lemon to garnish. This became the centerpiece to a side of farmer's market corn, and couscous on the side. So Hearty from a veggie otherwise seen as a salad topping. Thanks for idea, and the ingredients to make this meal!
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