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Sunday, June 24, 2012

Catalpa Ridge News–Volume 17 No 3–Week of June 25th

Busy Week ....

We had a busy week this week and accomplished quite a few tasks. The round field that we reported last week that hadn't been fenced-in was finally fenced on Saturday. The entire crew worked hard to accomplish this. Sunday was harvest day with Ali, Lisa & Dory concentrating on the harvest and Renee did some much needed seeding of collards, Chinese cabbage, Yard-long beans, lettuce, chicory and escarole. Meanwhile, John brush-hogged the harvested fava green beds to get them ready for our next planting.

One of our CSA members from Mahwah, Rich C, visited the farm to videotape what happens during a typical day at the farm. At Catalpa Ridge there is no typical day in the truest sense and we always seem to be in flux. One plan for the day may totally change within the hour to another plan. But, by the end of the day we usually are on schedule for our "list" of things to do. For future visits he wants to capture the harvest and then what happens during delivery & pickup. This will give others insight into the happenings of a CSA farm.

Franklin Greenhouse Report:The direct seeded Oriental greens in Franklin are up in 3 daOnionsCuringys. As we harvested the onions out of the beds, new veggies are being planted. In Franklin we transplanted husk cherries. Renee is working on the Micro-greens and this year we have tried a new system to utilize bench space in the greenhouse that is not used during the late spring & summer months. Unfortunately, this system appears to be more labor intensive and it is taking too long to harvest the micro-greens. We probably will rethink the process and may go back to our old way to improve turnaround time. The Franklin greenhouse is now about 90% replanted after the onion harvest.

From the Fields: We harvested the fava beans and it was all was done in one day. The yield is off from last year, which was disappointing. Instead of having two deliveries of fava beans, everyone will only get the one delivery this week. The summer squash is almost ready to be harvested and we look to have some available in next week's delivery. All the field crops enjoyed the rain that we received. The summer onions in the back field are looking great as are the cucumber, pepper, tomato and eggplants. The garlic is almost ready to be harvested, and we may actually have an earlier than normal harvest. Usually it is harvested after the 4th of July. The potato crop is looking ok, but not great. Yields appear down, but we won't know until the harvest actually is over. We have Red Norland & Yukon Gold varieties to harvest. We were unable to get our usual Blue potato seed to plant this year, due to the bad year last year. The wet weather throughout the season last year, contributed to blight problems on potatoes.

Weather Report:   We had a series of severe thunderstorms throughout the area late afternoon on Friday. High winds & hail were scattered across most of Sussex County with many trees downed as well. Fortunately, the hail did not fall over the farm. Both Farmer Rich & I had many detours in order to get home due to the downed trees, some flooding and the sheer joy of driving through a pretty intense hail storm. On the positive side - at least it cooled things off! All in all, about ½" of rain fell at the farm.

Animal report: It has been a quiet week in animal land without any incidents to speak of. There are about 20+ rabbits, all outside the fence, just waiting for a chance to break in. Obviously, they are enjoying the habitat that the brush along the borders of the fences is providing them.

Week of June 25th - 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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