Catalpa Ridge News–October 30, 2017

Last Delivery of the Season

It was dry during the week, except for Sunday and we did nave seasonable temperatures. We haven’t had a frost yet at the farm, though some have occurred locally in the surrounding area. It appears from the weather forecast that we will receive a heavy frost on Wednesday morning. This usually happens after a heavy rain this time of year. Luckily the frost will be arriving after the end of the seasonal deliveries.

The beds that have been harvested will all be brush-hogged and then prepare them for next season. It is a bit late to plant a cover crop now, though we probably have enough mulching on top to cover the beds before winter.

The crew planting garlic during the week and we are ready to plant more during the first weekend of November. They also finished winterizing the heated greenhouse. It is now totally covered with a new door and plastic.

Our Annual Wooly Bear Caterpillar Report. According to folklore, the wooly bear can predict how severe the winter will be. Here is an excerpt from https://www.weather.gov/arx/woollybear

• According to folklore, the amount of black on the woolly bear in autumn varies proportionately with the severity of the coming winter in the locality where the caterpillar is found.  The longer the woolly bear's black bands, the longer, colder, snowier, and more severe the winter will be.  Similarly, the wider the middle brown band is associated with a milder upcoming winter.  The position of the longest dark bands supposedly indicates which part of winter will be coldest or hardest.  If the head end of the caterpillar is dark, the beginning of winter will be severe.  If the tail end is dark, the end of winter will be cold. In addition, the woolly bear caterpillar has 13 segments to its body, which traditional forecasters say correspond to the 13 weeks of winter.

At the farm, we have equal stripes so we guess it is a toss up as to what kind of winter it will be.

The is the last delivery of the season. Thank you for supporting our farm. We look forward to seeing you again in the spring!

Catalpa Ridge News–October 22, 2017

Garlic Planting

The trees are finally showing signs of color. Better late than never! About 30% of the trees around our area dropped their leaves before even turning color. You can see on the photo of the crew planting garlic on Sunday, the ash trees have no leaves on them. Usually this time of year they would be bright scarlet in color.

We had a light frost on Tuesday morning last week and Farmer Diane just down the road was hit hard and lost a lot of her crops. This has happened before as our higher altitude protected us during this frost. The cold air flows down the mountain and the warmer air moves up the mountain and that leads to us being less impacted during the early frosts. It is only a matter of time before a season ending frost comes.

The crew planted garlic on Sunday with a perfect day to do so. Temperatures were in the 70’s and hardly a cloud in the sky. They planted over 2000 cloves of German White and Italian Purple varieties. The remaining rows will be planted over the next week or two and we hope to get 8,000-10,000 cloves planted.

Last delivery of the season will be next week.

Catalpa Ridge News–October 16, 2017

Continued Warm Temps

The weather remains warm though the cooler temperatures are on the horizon. We pulled up the cucumber and bean trellises. We brush hogged that area and the sunchokes (Jerusalem Artichokes). The sunchokes are in the delivery today. The winter squash has all been harvested and they will be in the deliveries over the next few weeks. The tomato crop appears to be at the end and the plants are ready to be pulled up soon.

The garlic beds are ready and we plan on planting soon. It will be a bit later than we have planted in years past but with the warmer temperatures we wanted to put off planting as to not promote too much growth before the cold weather. In between the white plastic rows we have a summer annual covercrop. Normally by this time it is frozen and will die back but the warm temperatures it is still growing. We may even have to cut it prior to planting the garlic.

With just two more weeks to deliver after this week, we will be getting everything that is deliverable off the fields.

Catalpa Ridge News–October 8, 2017

Autumn Conditions Slowly Approaching

This week we had temperatures in the 70’s and they reached in the 80’s over the weekend. It was even hot early in the mornings, not typical for this time of year. The lack of rain and the warm temperatures are impacting the fall foliage. In our area it appears to that the leaves are just falling off the trees without much color. For optimum autumn color, the trees normally need a nice hard-frost, and this has not occurred nor is there one in the forecast in the near future.

We are preparing garlic for planting and the beds are ready to go. It is one of the crops that get planted late in the season for harvest next year. The garlic variety in the delivery is called Music. It was named after its developer, Al Music, the farmer who switched from growing tobacco to garlic in the early 1980’s. It was developed from a strain of garlic he acquired in Italy and brought to Ontario Canada.

The winter squash are coming along and the delivery this week includes Acorn. The butternut will be delivered next week. Our late summer squash did well with some zucchini production. Another variety we have is pattypan, a uniquely shaped squash, sometimes referred to as flying saucers!

The annual Monarch butterfly migration has started as evidenced by them appearing at the farm. We seem to be on their path south to Mexico. They continue to migrate through the end of October or the first severe freeze. They search for milkweed and we have plenty at the farm. An online article on monarchwatch.org discusses the mystery of how Monarchs find the overwintering sites each year. “Somehow they know their way, even though the butterflies returning to Mexico or California each fall are the great-great-grandchildren of the butterflies that left the previous spring. No one knows exactly how their homing system works; it is another of the many unanswered questions in the butterfly world. “

Catalpa Ridge News–October 2, 2017

Cooler Temperatures Return to the Farm

Last Sunday we covered the greenhouse and the temperature was approaching the mid 90’s and on Sunday it was struggling to get to 60-degrees. We still have not received much rain. We have noticed that with the higher temperatures during last week and the lack of rain appears to be postponing the fall foliage in the area. We can see the colors subtly changing but not the big bursts of color we usually see. The apple season is upon us and there are a number of great varieties available now.

The potatoes have been harvested and will be in today’s delivery and again in the future. This week we have Adirondack Blues. The winter squash will start to be delivered next week. The sunchokes are almost ready to harvest and we anticipate them being ready in about 2 weeks. The tomatoes are pretty much done but we can probably squeeze out some more deliveries over the next few weeks, just as long as we don’t get a heavy frost. Our second planting of zucchini will probably be ready in about 2 weeks as well. All of our oriental greens in the greenhouse have some bug problems. Since we don’t spray they may become a crop loss.

We made a trip to Saugerties on Saturday to pick up some new varieties of garlic to plant for next year. A few varieties we haven’t had in a few years are: Marengo, Georgia Fire and Russian Red.

Catalpa Ridge News–September 25, 2017

Autumn Arrived

As summer has refused to leave, being 90-degrees over the weekend, we will be transitioning into autumn soon enough. In preparation of the end of the season we finally finished covering the greenhouse with new plastic. The nice thing about this project was that with the high temperatures on Sunday and virtually no wind, the crew completed the recovering and when the colder temperatures come the plastic will have a super close fit.

We are looking at another two weeks of higher than normal temperatures and no rain is in the forecast.

This week the crew started disassembling the trellises from the cucumber patch that has stopped producing and brush hogged that and the first squash field in preparation of planting a cover crop before winter. The tomatoes in the same area are slowly decreasing production and we’ll probably start pulling up those trellises over the next week. The garlic beds are all prepared and we hope to plant around the middle of October.

We have had twin deer visiting us off and on during the summer. Luckily they are staying outside the fences. They do like to watch what we are doing. We also had another visitor on Sunday, a giant praying mantis decided to sit on the tractor and see what was going on!

Catalpa Ridge News–Week of September 17, 2017

There were warmer temperatures during the week and that helped perk-up some of the crops. Our planting of zucchini are really looking good as they were helped by the warmer temps and additional tomatoes are ripening. While there are beans in tonight’s delivery the plants are pretty much shutting down for the remainder of the season. During this time of year, mid to late September, the warm weather crops start to end producing and the cold weather crops pick up. With this warm trend we can extend some of the harvest.

For field work, we have started taking down some trellises from the tomatoes and cucumber rows and started preparing those areas for next season. More beds were wrapped for planting garlic and onions for next year. This will probably be done about mid-October.

The salad greens in the greenhouse are really looking good and will start appearing in the deliveries over the next week or two. We have a variety of Red Mustard, Tokyo Bekanna, Green Mustark, and some Red Daikon, a Minosiaese cross. The Cherry Bell Radishes were a stunning crop this year, perhaps the best we have had.

It has been a good year for apples and this week we are delivering Gala apples from a local orchard.

Catalpa Ridge News–September 4, 2017

Colder Temps still @ the Farm

We had a low of 40 degrees on Saturday morning. Fortunately it was dry all week and only rained on Sunday morning. We actually had to use some irrigation during the week (only about the third time this year), to keep the crops from drying out.

The eroded field from earlier in the year has finally been put back together & we hope it won’t be a problem again. We were able to lay down new beds and actually used the bed wrapping attachment to the tractor to install the plastic and that will be used for garlic. We will also use some of the beds for spring onions and will transplant some of our perennials herbs into them. As autumn approaches we start to plan our fields for next season. Some of our beds have been tilled already and we just need to add soil amendments and fertilizer to prepare them for next year. The soil amendments add minerals and nutrients for the succeeding crops.

The Jerusalem Artichoke (Sunchokes) plants are looking good this year. We anticipate harvesting them in about one month. Winter squash may be limited to Spaghetti, Butternut and Acorn this year due to the excessive rain ruining some plantings.

The final steps to complete the repairs on the greenhouse were delayed as we had to harvest on Saturday due to the forecast for rain on Sunday and of course we had rain on Sunday. The crew did some inside work in the greenhouse

Upcoming Event – we will be at the:

Sussex County Harvest, Honey & Garlic Festival

Celebrating the best in Sussex County and Northern NJ Agritourism, Ecotourism and Heritage Tourism

October 7, 2017 - Sussex County Fairgrounds

10am-4pm

Catalpa Ridge News–August 28, 2017

Cooler Temperatures

Cooler Temperatures and low humidity was the weather of the week. We had much nicer working conditions and alot of field work was accomplished. We harvested the potatoes (red, white & blue varieties). Blue potatoes will be in this week’s delivery. We did loose 2 rows due to excessive rain over the past month.

The greenhouse work progressed, with Michael tackling the repairs. We wanted to cover the greenhouse with new plastic over the weekend but new structural problems arose so we hope to get it accomplished by next weekend. Since the repaired greenhouse is on the list to recover we thought as we might as well cover the other upper greenhouse.

Our recent squash planting is coming along really well and in about 2 weeks we should have a bumper crop of zucchini. The winter squash and pumpkins have not bounced back with all the rain, though we should be able to harvest some.

About 2 months ago during a period of excessive rain, we lost a major part of the main field due to erosion (a min-grand canyon!). We finally were able to put this field back together again. Using our tractor we back filled the area with wood chips and was able to move the soil around to remediate the field. The way the weather looks we hope to have this field primed up for next year’s plantings.

Catalpa Ridge News–August 21, 2017

More Rain ……

It was another rainy week at the farm. We received 2 1/2” over the course of the week. Farmer Rich thinks this may have been the rainiest season yet. Impact on the crops are as follows:

• The pumpkins, winter squash, potatoes & and the cucumbers in the wetter fields are suffering by being too water logged.

From the Fields

The zucchini, which have done fairly well this year, are coming close to the end of the harvest season. We did another planting a few weeks and they are coming along nicely. The second planting of cucumbers, in a better spot, are also doing well.

The potatoes plan to be harvested in the next week or two. We have red, whites & blue varieties in the mix. Our peppers continue to produce nice fruit, though the hot peppers seem to have slowed down. The really hot ones (such as Ghost and Habanero) are taking really long. Unfortunately the Carolina Reapers never survived transplanting.

The tomatoes right now are producing great, perhaps a bumper crop year. We have problems in some of the fields. The cooler nights along with the plants being too wet yields some diseases that can just collapse the plants overnight. These conditions put a lot of pressure on the plants (and on Farmer Rich too!!).

The cabbage plants are starting the head up (slowly). We seeded some radishes and Oriental greens this week.

Greenhouse Construction: Our heated greenhouse is about 20 years old at this point and was in desperate need of repair. All the joints at the soil line were decayed and starting to break apart. Actually we were surprised that it didn’t collapse over the winter. The only thing holding it together was the plastic. The crew started the repair on Thursdays and continued through Saturday. We hope to complete it next weekend as the crew will be harvesting on Sunday.

Catalpa Ridge News–August 14, 2017

Rain – Rain – Rain

After an incredibly rainy season we received another 2 1/2” of rain on Friday evening. This could impact future harvesting as many of the plants are water logged. The pumpkin plants are compromised at this point though the winter squash plants are OK. The cucumbers are suffering abit, although we hope that they will bounce back for another few weeks. The peppers & tomatoes continue to produce nicely. The chard, kale & cabbages are happy!

The main planting of zucchini are almost at the end, but the 2nd planting is doing incredibly well. The oriental greens planted in the greenhouse are harvested for delivery and that area will be replanted with greens for autumn deliveries.

The crew picked apples from our on-farm apple trees during the week. These are Red Free variety. This variety was developed by Developed by: PRI (Purdue, Rutgers, Illinois Co Op). They are small but tasty!.

With the lushness outside the fences, due to the rainy season, the animals have not been too much of a problem breaking into the fields. We have had just some minor problems with the occasional deer and a ground hog. There is a large crop of rabbits running around the outside the fences and we are happy that they haven’t decided the break in and eat your crops.

We did find a deer resting among the tractors, apparently finding a nice area to lie down.

Catalpa Ridge News–Volume 22 No 1–June 28, 2017

Late start to the season

Better late than never! After a horrible early spring; no sun, lots of rain and cold temperatures, the harvest season has finally started. We are about 1-2 weeks behind from prior years’ start dates. Now that the warm weather has come the crops are caught up and the harvest has begun.

Farmer Rich and crew have been diligently working over the past several weeks, despite the challenging weather. The greenhouses that were full of plants for our spring heirloom plant sales are now changed over for the CSA deliveries to our corporate, Franklin & On-Farm pickup members. We gave up delivering to Hoboken this year as we can classify Farmer Rich as semi-retired.

The fields are planted with tomatoes, zucchini, cabbage, Brussel Sprouts, peppers, chard, kale and lots of different herbs. All of the plantings in the fields are our own transplants and we have a really nice variety of tomatoes and peppers. Cucumbers and winter squash were seeded last week and they are up and growing already. Some beans were planted but they aren’t doing well.

This week’s delivery is mostly greens, remember the deliveries are seasonal. The tomatoes are greenhouse ripened. The field tomatoes will be coming probably by the end of July and of course there will be many heirloom varieties.

Thank you for your support and we look forward to a bountiful harvest year.