Catalpa Ridge News–Volume 1–No 1–June 15, 2015

Lettuce Begin

Welcome to our 20^th year delivering fresh veggies from the farm to our CSA members in Mahwah, Hoboken, Franklin, Wantage and to the employee cafeteria at Valley Hospital & the Kraft Center in Ridgewood and Paramus respectively.

The crew is back - Lisa, Dory and Michael.Each spring seems to always bring a challenge and this year is not different. Our spring was all of too cold, too hot, too wet and too dry. In April we went from freezing weather to 95º+ all in the same week and many of our transplants for the field crops “cooked” in the greenhouse. All of these transplants were lost and had to be reseeded. This delayed our field planting by 2-3 weeks. In addition, we had no rain for a period of 26+ days in April-May. When the rain finally did come it was too much and the fields were just too wet to plant. To top off the end of May/early June our tractor broke which further delayed our initial plantings. We were able to plant the back & round field and luckily the Franklin greenhouse was fully planted.

Franklin Greenhouse Report: We planted Texas Super Sweet Onions instead of Texas Legend this year. They will be on the small side due to late planting and will start to appear in tonight’s delivery. This year we planted Red Gold potatoes and we should start harvesting them for next week’s delivery. The Chinese Greens, Radishes, Eggplant, Hot Peppers, and Cubanelle Peppers in the greenhouse are doing well and we have a really nice crop rotation plan in force. The replanted Rosemary that we lost last year survived this winter and is doing well. We have some great beds of basil growing nicely and we will be reseeding more Oriental Greens.

From the Fields: We are fortunate to finally have the round & back fields fully planted. The fava beans never got planted early enough due to the too cold, then too dry, then too wet periods we had so there won’t be any fava beans this spring though we will be able to harvest fava greens. In the round field we have tomatillos, cabbage, chard, zucchini, kale and summer savory all doing well. The back field is planted with multiple rows of tomatoes, cucumbers, chocolate mint, beets, dill, cilantro, sorrel, fava greens, sunchokes and chard all of which are also doing well. The main field has tomatoes, thyme, peppers (many sweet varieties), parsley, winter savory, purple basil, green basil, parcel, oregano and chives. We seeded soybeans (edamame) and transplanted more lettuce and collards. We have a great planting of red-noodle beans with anticipated harvest in about 1 month. The garlic that was planted last October is doing well and the garlic harvest will start in early July. We have already started snapping the garlic curls off of the hardneck varieties and you will have them in this week’s delivery.

Animal report: Over the winter the deer broke through our fencing with the help of them weakening from the winds and the heavy snow. We spent many hours fixing the fencing, though we were late in our repairs and one day Michael found a fawn hidden in the garlic patch.

Apparently it had become separated from its mother who was on the outside of our repaired fencing while the fawn was on the inside. Dory, pictured below, was able to rescue it and put it close to where its mother would be which is by our picnic area. They were reunited after several cries from the fawn. And they really do cry “Ma”!

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 19 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.