NJ State Fair – Sussex Farm & Horse Show Starts Friday!
The New Jersey State Fair – Sussex Farm & Horse Show starts on Friday, August 5th and runs to Sunday, August 14th. We are on the Vegetable Committee for the fair and have exhibited in the past, but now it’s the crews’ turn to exhibit. Last year Hannah & Lisa both exhibited and this year it looks like all four girls will exhibit some veggies & herbs.
The fair is great to visit if you want to see farm animals, crafts, agricultural events, horse shows and lots more. Go online at: www.njstatefair.org to see a schedule so you can see what day you might want to visit. If you do attend the fair, make sure you go by the greenhouse to see the Vegetable Show to see how the girls did on their exhibits. Last year Lisa was the Grand Champion and Hannah placed 3rd for the vegetable exhibits and they also won a few Best in Shows!
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| Last week’s Trip to the farm – Harvesting Beans |
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From the Fields: Where the garlic was harvested, John & Matt laid plastic with irrigation lines for a total of 5 beds. The Crew transplanted a late planting of zucchini & cucumbers into three of the beds. Two beds are awaiting planting as of the end of this week. We hope to get broccoli in at least one of them.
In another field the crew planted cilantro, dill, Chinese mustard & more fava greens. The heavy rain we received on Friday evening may have washed out the dill, but we’ll wait & see.
The beets planted in the back field are doing well, but we got behind on planting more turnips.
Next week we hope to get some conventional sweet corn (non-GMO) from Ideal Farm. We have been eating it ourselves for a while and it is really good!
Weather Report: It was cooler, but not my much over this past week. By 1:00 pm the crew was pretty much shot on most days, but they are starting early so plenty of work is getting done.
We did have two severe thunderstorms go through the area on Monday and then again on Friday. Both brought some much needed rain, as many crops were suffering from lack of water. Even though we are irrigating, we still need that “soaking in” kind of rain. At least 1” fell on both days. Fortunately, we didn’t get the hail or the high winds that came on Friday, but some sections in Sussex County did get hail and there were some reports of a possible tornado. Farmer Rich was predicting “cannon ball” sized hail in tune with the over exaggeration that the local weather was predicting, but the front passed without incident over the farm.
Animal report: As usual when it gets dry the animals make attempts to break through the fences to feast on the crops. This week brought a few ground hogs which were immediately relocated.
They sampled some squash, zucchini, tomatoes probably making a shopping list for the following day but we were able to prevent any further nibbling. The resident rabbit that is inside the fence is eating the weeds and not the crops, which continues to be a bit embarrassing.
Fruit Report – We finally were able to find peaches to deliver. For several years now we have gotten the peaches from Windy Brow Farm, but he advised us that he wouldn’t be able to provide them this year as there is a shortage. Come to find out Diane down the street from us was also having a problem finding peaches from her local orchard, so we know there is definitely a peach shortage going on. We reached out to a few local orchards and one was not able to provide any fruit, but the other one, Slate Hill was. They are just about 15 minutes from the farm and on the way to our large walk-in-cooler @ Scotts, so they immediately go put into the cooler for this delivery. We love to be able to provide local fruit as part of the CSA share over the years, and fortunately have been able to find another orchard this year.
Upcoming Events
- August 28th – 12th Annual Heirloom Tomato Tasting @ the Hoboken Historical Museum – 1 pm – 5 pm
- October 1st & 2nd 9th Annual Garlic Gathering @ Olde Lafayette Village 10 am - 4 pm Lafayette, NJ (Routes 94/15)
- October 16th 5th Annual Garlic Fest @ the Hoboken Historical Museum 1 pm - 5 pm 1301 Hudson Street – Hoboken, NJ
Week of August 1st - 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.
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