Rearranging the Deck Chairs…..
As Farmer Rich so aptly put it this week, “It’s like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” in regard to the conditions at the farm, post Hurricane, post severe rain the following week and the damages that have occurred along the way.
Crop losses still abound (see photo of just one area below).
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| Showing the impact of just one small area where the severe wet has caused plants to die back and mud to be ever present |
On the positive side, the crew has managed to put together a nice delivery with the help of some other neighboring farmers.
On the negative side, the continued severe wet condition is causing problems with plants dying back and delivery quality. We had picked up some lettuce from a neighboring farm for this week’s delivery on Saturday and by Sunday it was undeliverable. This was probably due to it being too wet when harvested. Needless to say we didn’t deliver it.
Meanwhile at the Franklin Greenhouse, (now known as the shuffle board court on the upper deck of the Titanic) had a severe outbreak of aphids. There were none a week and a-half ago. There were so many, almost overnight, the crew had to throw out the bok choi, radishes and mustard greens as they were undeliverable.
Normally we depend on the Franklin Greenhouse to provide the late deliveries when autumn comes, as the plants usually do much better there then in the fields. Looks like this year it is not going to happen as we only have a handful of crops surviving there now. We’ll try to re-seed it with quick crops for the later deliveries.
There are a number of CSAs that have actually stopped delivering for the season due to massive flooding. While we overplant during the season to offset crop losses and also depend on our trading partner network of farmers close to us, the overplanting is helping but the crop losses have exceeded even our worst expectations and the neighboring farmers are either in the same shape as us or worse.
We are fortunate in one respect that the farm is high up on the mountain and we physically don’t get flooded from major rivers or streams. We didn’t have to worry like the farmers in the Hudson Valley, Pine Island and Great Meadows areas who were flooded by rivers and streams that were also contaminated. Our soil structure is very good for the dry times, but not so good for wet. We have never had 24” of rain in 2 ½ weeks in our 16 years. Hopefully it will be another 16 years before a season like this happens again.
From the Fields: We still need to prepare an area for garlic planting. Remember the photo from last week where we showed you the mini grand canyon! We hope things dry out in time for planting garlic in late October. We are ready to go – we have the compost, the garlic and the plastic – we just need a nice dry spot or two! Unfortunately, more rain is in the forecast for Thursday, Friday & Saturday.
Harvested potatoes were water logged and their storage life is about 16 hours. These you can add to the crop loss column.
The crew was able to plant the last of the lettuce transplants and hopefully they will produce before the season is over.
Weather Report: The temperatures are getting cooler and the low temperature so far this week was 39°F. Most of the field tomatoes are already shot, so it really doesn’t matter if we get an early frost! An early frost may kill the peppers. We have had a great pepper year and you probably don’t want any more peppers at this point!
Fruit Report –The Ginger Crisp apples are from Soons Orchard in Middletown, NY.
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Upcoming Events
· October 1st & 2nd 9th Annual Garlic Gathering @ Olde Lafayette Village 10 am - 4 pm Lafayette, NJ (Routes 94/15)
· CANCELLED - October 16th 5th Annual Garlic Fest @ the Hoboken Historical Museum – Hoboken, NJ
Week of September 19th - 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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