Whirlwind of Disasters
Post hurricane Irene brought us a whole whirlwind of disasters to deal with after the hurricane itself. At least 9” of rain fell during the deluge of the hurricane with 5” of rain falling the week before. The upper greenhouse was lost and Farmer Rich and the crew recovered it on Thursday. The Franklin was without power until just this Monday a.m. (the 5th) so this meant we were without the fans & water. Lack of the fans lead to the temperatures in the greenhouse to exceed what we normally desire and there was no pump to get water onto the crops. Fortunately Jim hooked up a generator on Thursday so Renee was able to water everything to keep it from totally dying. We do have significant crop losses needless to say in the Franklin greenhouse itself.
Meanwhile back at the farm almost nothing is doing well. Our farm is low lying which is great during dry years, but not so great during wet years. There are significant crop losses due to the excessive rains, but all is not loss. Almost all farmers we partner with are all in the same boat, so produce is getting harder to find.
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| Post Hurricane Irene – Upper Greenhouse plastic ripped away | Greenhouse Recovered on Thursday |
From the Fields: The crew pulled up four rows of plastic on the fields and we tilled the area to get it ready for garlic planting next month. Needless to say it was too wet to proceed. The weeds had gotten out of control so two days were spent weed whacking the remaining fields to promote better crop production on what remains. The crew was able to do some transplanting but the wet conditions are hampering everything.
Forty flats of mixed lettuce were transplanted into cells in the greenhouse. These will then be planted into the field over the next two weeks. The seeded cilantro, dill, mustard and arugula are all doing well for now. We seeded new chard, beets and they are up & growing.
Weather Report: More rain is in the forecast this week which is not needed! The post hurricane week was quite nice all in all with cooler temperatures and nice cool breezes at the farm. Too bad the winds didn’t dry everything out.
Fruit Report – The peaches 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)
· October 16th 5th Annual Garlic Fest @ the Hoboken Historical Museum 1 pm - 5 pm 1301 Hudson Street – Hoboken, NJ
Week of September 6th - 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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