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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Catalpa Ridge News–Volume 16 No 12–Week of August 29th

Hurricane Irene

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Needless to say, Hurricane Irene has created havoc all the way up to the farm in Sussex County. We hope that all of our CSA members are safe with minimal damage, but listening to the reports in the area know that there is a great deal of damage and flooding.

We lost our upper greenhouse (the heated greenhouse) due to the high winds which came after the heavy rains. Farmer Rich will get it recovered toward the end of the week. Also two in our crew have had serious damage to their homes and were unable to work on Monday having to clean up at their homes. Everyone is safe and no one got hurt.

I am still staying with my Mom & Dad in Ramsey due to my Dad's illness as we have been without the hospice aides due to the weather so are managing on our own. Things are status quo and we continue to keep my Dad comfortable.

Unfortunately, the Heirloom Tomato Tasting had to be cancelled. We look forward to the Garlic Fest at the Hoboken Historical Museum in October. Fortunately all the garlic was already harvested and drying in the middle greenhouse which did not get damaged. Had it been in the upper greenhouse the whole crop would have been lost and probably scattered out over Sussex County by the high winds.

From the Fields: Ongoing projects with planting and transplanting continued during the week. When the news hit about the impending hurricane, Farmer Rich switched his focus to get a plan together to harvest early as Sunday was going to be a “wash out”. The crew worked diligently all day Friday & Saturday to get the CSA deliveries harvested and separated by delivery site as the forecast keep looking grimmer each passing hour. Monday was a challenge to even get to the farm as many areas were flooded or had downed trees & wires. Once to the farm, Rich took about 1 ½ hours to get to Scotts where the delivery was stored in the cooler. This is normally a 10-15 minute ride. He then had the challenge to start heading south to Bergen County to make the first delivery to Mahwah. Though a challenge he did make is safely, abit late, but safe. Our next challenge is to make it into Hudson County for the Jersey City & Hoboken deliveries. Everyone was e-mailed regarding delivery time changes at Holly’s Midtown dropoff and Jennifer/Kristen’s West drop off.

Weather Report: We had reported last week as week of rain – NOW we got hit with the hurricane which we didn’t need. Excessive rain is causing crop damage.

Fruit Report – The apples (Red Free variety) are from Windy Brow Farm.

TECH NOTES - We have our OWN Community Toolbar that you can install in your Web Browser! Quick links to all our content: Newsletters, Harvest Identifiers, Facebook, Twitter, search, weather & more. Follow this link and then install http://jerseygrown.ourtoolbar.com/

clip_image002[5] Upcoming Events

· 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 29th  - 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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