Here We Grow Again !
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| Lisa and Ali |
Welcome to our 18th year delivering fresh veggies from the farm to our CSA members. We certainly have had a few weather challenges for the start of theseason. We went from frost on May 27th to 93˚F just a few days later. Then the remnants of tropical storm Andrea came with over 3” of rain falling at the farm on Friday the 7th. We saw on the news the flooding in Hoboken and hope our Hoboken members were not impacted that severely. The farm itself has had a lot of mud over the last several days but we managed to get in quite abit of planting in raised beds during the past two weeks. Lisa mentioned that the fields haven’t looked this good since she has been working with us! Always a good thing! Our largest greenhouse was destroyed during Hurricane Sandy in October and was beyond repair.We had to remove it fully and haven’t been able to
replace it yet. The field that it was over however, has been planted so
we did not lose any space, just earlier production. Fortunately, we have
a large greenhouse in Franklin that took up the slack.
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| Onions curing in the greenhouse |
We will roll over the beds where the onions were with planting Eggplant, hot peppers, oriental greens and micro greens. The rosemary overwintered well. The ginger that we planted in March is a bit slow, but we expect a reasonable harvest later in the season as ginger takes about 180 days.
From the Fields: The round field is too wet at this point to plant with actual standing water. This has never happened in the past and Farmer Rich is trying to figure out why. It has always been a little on the wet side, but never this bad. The back field is looking really great and the peas are probably the best we have ever had. We have yellow peas, blue peas and green peas slated to be harvested. They are all heirloom varieties. We do hope there is no major disaster that prevents their harvest and it will truly be a great treat. The garlic in that field is doing well, and the sorrel is probably going to be on the harvest plan a few weeks out. The sunchokes seem to be everywhere this year and the fava beans are starting to “bean-up”. Two more rows of heirloom tomatoes are slated to be planted this week.
Animal report: A family of gourmet baby rabbits has snuck into the large field. Being the gourmet that one of them is, he or she has only munched on the crunchy stalks of the Chinese cabbage and not on the leaves. The fencing around the field has since been secured, but not matter how secure we make it they spend all night trying to figure out how to break in. Fortunately the rabbits are not as big of a problem as the ground hogs. So far all the ground hogs are outside the fence and haven’t broken in YET!
Thank you for supporting our farm. It is only through the continued support of our members that our farm continues to be sustainable and we continue the practice of farming. We like to grow many interesting veggies, some of which you may have never tried before. We encourage you to try-it, you’ll like it!! We always provide you with recipes and have our Harvest Identifier online as well. The CSA deliveries are seasonal, so during the spring the deliveries will consist mostly of greens with perhaps 5-7 different items. As the season progresses, more variety will be included and the deliveries will become heavier. Weekly news and recipes will be included on the blog with links within the newsletter sent out to everyone. If you have some recipes to share, please feel free to forward them so that others may try them! It is our pleasure to welcome back many of you who have been supporting the farm for many of our 18 years and welcome many new members this year. Community supported farm members soon become connected to each other as the weeks go by. We welcome you all and look forward to working with all of you.
With you CSA support our farm provides a number of jobs. Meet the Crew – Lisa returns for her 5th year, Ali her 4th. Renee who manages our greenhouse in Franklin is back for her 4th year as well. Michael will join the crew again this year after school is out. We can’t forget John, who keeps all our machines running and helps with tilling and wrapping the beds with plastic and was instrumental in setting up the irrigation system. They are all doing an amazing job. They are instrumental in the pre-season and throughout the harvest year.
What’s Up & Growing: Here is an overview of what is up & growing on the Farm:
| Broccoli Cabbage Celery Chard Chinese Cabbage Collards Cucumbers Eggplant Escarole | Fava Beans Garlic Ginger Green Onions Herbs Hot Peppers Husk Cherries Kale Lettuce | Peas Peppers Potatoes Radicchio Radishes Tomatoes Zucchini |
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