Week 4 - 7/4/2010
Hello Folks,
I hope everyone had a pleasant Fourth of July weekend. We don’t get to take much of a break for the holiday here at the farm. Today, Monday was a regular workday and I spent most of yesterday on a marathon mission to finish planting the winter squash, I confess that I did catch some blues music and fireworks (ooh-ahh) in the nearby town of Sparta. The lack of rain in the last 2 weeks has us moving the irrigation equipment around from field to field, a task that interferes with our other pressing duties. Oh yes, and it’s been really hot, in case you hadn’t noticed. Many things are burning up in the fields, especially my workers and I. It looks like it will cool down a bit by the end of the week and we have a couple of chances of thunderstorms to bring some much needed precipitation.
I’m all for Alliums. I rarely cook a dish that doesn’t start with onions, garlic or some member of this tasty family. This is why I try to include some type of Allium in each delivery. I apologize for the absence of the pearl onions that were promised in last weeks share. I know we planted them, but we just couldn’t seem to find them in the field.
Everything gets name stakes as we plant but sometimes they get lost and at this point it’s hard to distinguish the cippolini onions and shallots from pearl onions. No matter though, we have lots of large onions that are ready earlier than expected, so last weeks delivery should be the only one of the season absent of Alliums.
The cucumbers have started producing heavily and a few groups received some last week. If you didn’t, you are likely to get some this week. The pea season has gone by in a flash owing to all the heat. We have some sugar snaps left and also a meager harvest of Fava beans, which we will offer as a choice this week. The bean crop is coming on strong and will be ready to fill in as the legume family member in 2 weeks, if not sooner.
The share for this week will be: Lettuce (either Boston or Oak leaf) broccoli, beets(either purple or Chioggia, also known as Candy cane), kohlrabi, sweet onions, summer squash, cucumbers, Swiss chard, choice of sugar snap peas or Fava beans and choice of an herb (basil or parsley)
Enjoy! Farmer John
Week 3 - 6/27/2010
Hello Everyone,
Well, it was a scorcher of a week! It’s summertime in New Jersey just like I remember it-hot and humid. While the hot warm weather crops such as the tomatoes and peppers have been in their glories, the cool weather plants have been looking quite dejected- wilting and droopy. Fortunately the heat wave is predicted to break and we will have some milder temperatures by mid-week. There’s no rain in sight though, and the ground is getting pretty dry. We are moving into the time of summer when passing thunderstorms are our best chance of precipitation. We find ourselves hoping for them, with the caveat that they not be accompanied by high winds or hail.
We are in the weeds, as they say; only in this case it is meant both literally and figuratively. We have been fighting to keep the grasses from swallowing the potatoes and the leeks and pulling the pigweed out of the carrot and beet crops. Once we begin deliveries and markets, harvesting occupies so much of our time that it’s hard to keep up with the maintenance. The pea picking is especially labor intensive and for that reason I wish to thank profusely the volunteers who came out on Sunday to help with the pea harvest. They picked nearly 300 lbs. of sugar snap peas, more than half what we will need for the week. The Guatemala workers I have been waiting for finally had their interview at the embassy this past week and were given visas. They will arrive this Wednesday day night. Hallelujah! Help is on the way!
We were visited this week by a gentleman named Mark from the state insect labs. He brought with him and released thousands of parasitic wasps. Parasites you say? Yes, but fortunately they only parasitize the larva of the Mexican bean beetle. This undocumented alien was once the scourge of bean growers throughout the state until this wonderful biological control program was developed. It’s a beautiful thing; one less crop that has to be sprayed and it’s good to know something good is being done with our tax dollars.
The share for this week will be: Green leaf lettuce, pearl onions, radishes, spinach bok choy, arugula, sugar snap peas, broccoli, summer squash, choice of escarole or endive, and choice of an herb. Enjoy!
Farmer John
Week 2 - 6/20/2010
Hi Folks!
The first round of deliveries seems to have gone fairly well, from all reports. There will generally be some glitches and confusion with the first couple of deliveries, especially with new groups. Some lucky groups got broccoli last week, an item that wasn’t on the list. Those that did not, will receive it this week. The earliest variety of broccoli we planted is producing a meager harvest due to stress from temperature extremes soon after transplanting. Stress in plants, it should be noted, is completely unconnected to stress in humans, except as it relates to my stress levels. Plants react to stress by flowering, which since broccoli is a flower, should be good, but the flower forms when the plant is still too small and hence produces a small bud. There are 4 other varieties in the field for which I have good expectations (not great though- sorry Charles).
We should have sufficient quantities for all groups several times in the coming weeks.
We are also beginning to cut summer squash, though not in great quantity, so we will begin a similar delivery rotation with this crop until we have more in 2 weeks. Which leads me to the following disclaimer: We reserve the right to omit or change any item on the farm update list from your actual share for that week. We also reserve the right to add a vegetable to your share which was not on the list. All legal facetiousness aside the update list should be considered a close approximation, my best guess, of what will be in the share. I can’t be 100% accurate all the time.
We have at present, what I suppose should be called a good problem to have- we have too much stuff (foodstuffs). There is enough spinach for this week and probably next week as well. It still looks beautiful but it won’t hold as we head into some hot days this next week (and I was trying so hard not to talk about the weather!). The problem is that we don’t have the time to harvest it all, and don’t want to overwhelm you, the members, with too many greens all at once. The Swiss chard looks great, but will have to wait. The bok choy is ready too, but next week will have to do. All of the mustards- tatsoi, broccoli raab, and green wave are bolting to flower and the arugula is already too far gone to salvage anything from this planting. We will be sending as much broccoli raab as we can as a choice with the mustard greens this week. The flowers have been damaged a bit by a new pest- the tarnished plant bug, but the leaf is nice, and there’s never much of a bud with raab anyway. There will also be Hakurei salad turnips in the share this week, a favorite among the veterans and hopefully a new treat for the neophytes. They are delicious eaten raw, sliced like a radish or grated in salads or can be cooked. The root is sweet and mild flavored and the leaf can also be steamed or braised.
I apologize that there was so much soil on several items last week. We had a torrential downpour last Sunday and it splashed a lot of soil onto the leaves. We can’t practically wash the leafy greens like lettuce and spinach, because if they remain too wet they rot quickly in storage and transport. My crew compounded the problem a bit by not removing enough of the lower, dirtier leaves, during harvest and so soiled the other heads in the tub. We will try to do better!
Many thanks to the pea picking volunteers who came out to the farm to lend a hand today. We had representatives from Metuchen, Jersey City, Westfield and Staten Island. Together they picked about 120 lbs. of peas.
The share for this will be: Red leaf lettuce, scallions, salad turnips, sugar snap peas, spinach, a mustard (tatsoi, broccoli raab, green wave), choice of endive or escarole, broccoli (some groups), summer squash (some groups) and choice of an herb (parsley, cilantro, dill)
Enjoy!
Farmer John
Week 1 - 6/13/2010
Hi Folks,
The week you have been waiting for has arrived, the first delivery. We have lots of nice stuff in store for the beginning of the season. The spinach looks beautiful as do the lettuces and the peas have been flowering profusely. We received a good slow rain just after my last writing and a drenching thunderstorm on Sunday, so we are in good shape in the moisture department. We finished transplanting most of the warm weather crops this past week, with just another 1000 or so tomatoes to put in this week. We will also be planting out the melons this week. The sweet potatoes plants have taken root nicely and should start to grow rapidly in another week. The stage is set for a great season, now all we have to do is follow through- keep ahead of the weeds, get the tomatoes and cucumbers tied and trellised, and get the harvesting done.
The biggest challenge I face right now is a shortage of labor. I have 5 field workers presently, but I have been planning and working at bringing 7 more workers from Central America for the season. At least some of these I expected to be here by now. I have experienced about every bureaucratic delay imaginable this year, beginning with the Dept. of Labor changing their address without notifying those who use the program or posting it on their website. After a month of correspondence with the Embassy in Guatemala I finally have appointments for the interviews the workers need to get their visas, on June 23. Hopefully the 3 workers from Guatemala will be here by early July. The other 4 from Honduras are still waiting in bureaucratic limbo for Immigration services to notify the Embassy there. I don’t expect to see them until at least August! In the meantime I will have to go in search of day laborers, which is not really the best use of my time. Any volunteer help with the harvest will be greatly appreciated. Calling all pea pickers!
The share for this week will be: Spinach, lettuce (various types), peas, garlic scapes, kale and radishes.
Enjoy!
Farmer John
Pre. 2 - 6/6/2010
Hello Everyone,
The battle is in full swing now and we are completely and exhaustingly engaged. Make no mistake about it; producing quality vegetables is a battle from start to finish. It’s quite amazing how many critters there are that want to dine on your veggies before they can make it to your plate. We have fenced around the pea patch to keep the deer out and buried fence along the periphery of one field to try (unsuccessfully) to exclude the ground hogs. Compared to the four-legged creatures, the six-legged ones don’t eat as much but they’re much more numerous. Our 2 worst insect pests, the flea beetle and the cucumber beetle have attacked with a vengeance this spring, and we are spraying to control them before their populations explode even further. We use only approved organic materials, products that are naturally derived, have low toxicity to humans and breakdown quickly.
The weather has been okay, too hot and a bit too dry, but it’s better than wet and cold! Most of our chances for rain over the past 3 weeks have been from scattered thunderstorms and none of these potential storms have materialized so far. We have a cool front moving in for the week ahead, which will make working conditions much more tolerable and hopefully bring some rain ahead of the front.
We are in the process of transplanting out into the field all the warm season crops. We have planted about a third of the 5,000 tomato plant and all of the eggplants, 1800 or so. On Friday the sweet potato plants arrived and we needed to get those in immediately as they have hardly any root and wilt quickly. They looked quite sad as they baked in the blazing sun, but most of them should take root. This week we will be planting the peppers, melons, summer squash, ground cherries, and the rest of the tomatoes. We also have herbs and flowers to set out.
The peas are flowering profusely and I expect an abundant supply for the first delivery and during the subsequent 3-4 weeks. The brassicas (broccoli, cabbage, etc.) are growing well for the most part. They could use a good rain and will enjoy the cooler temps forecast for the week ahead. One of the early varieties of broccoli is showing sign of “buttoning” because of the stress of several extremely cold nights in early May. Buttoning means flowering when the plant is still too small and producing a tiny head. If this variety is a complete loss, it will reduce the number of weeks we will have broccoli in the shares during the early summer harvest. I have also had problems with the emergence on my potato crop. Several varieties did not come up at all, and several others came up so spotty that I will have to abandon them. These few problems notwithstanding, most everything is growing well and we have lots of great stuff coming on for the beginning of the season; now just a little more than a week away.
Thanks to the volunteers who came out to help with covering the greenhouse on May 15th. We were able to get it done on the first try this year!
I look forward to seeing many of you at the farm visit next Saturday. Remember if you can’t make it on Saturday, you are welcome to come on Sunday.
Farmer John
Pre. 1 - 5/30/2010
Happy Spring Everyone!
Welcome to the 2010 Starbrite Farm CSA season. The weather has been beautiful this spring, or so you thought. For those new members, you will soon learn (if you follow these updates) that what most folks consider great weather is not always the best for farming. For the veterans out there, you are already accustomed to my weekly griping about the weather- it’s too hot , too cold, too wet , too dry; and all in the same week! The weather is always a rollercoaster ride in NJ in the spring but the ups and downs do seen to be becoming a bit more extreme. With two mini heat waves and a hailstorm already gone by, the biggest challenge this spring has been a scarcity of rain in April and early May. The biggest annoyance has been the wind, which has been blowing hard a lot this spring, and steadily and fiercely for the last 3 days. These are critical times for transplanting and for direct seeding of the cool weather crops such as broccoli, and peas. Fortunately we’ve gotten just enough precipitation to get by. The pea and fava bean crop has germinated well and is growing beautifully and the lettuces and cabbage family crops, which are transplanted, have taken root and are beginning to grow. My crew has planted over 80,000 onion plants and we are more than half way through with planting the 4,000 lbs of seed potatoes that we have ready for this year’s crop. The garlic and shallots which were planted last fall have come up well and are growing nicely. Carrots, parsnips, beets, spinach, and chard, which were planted several weeks back, are coming up well. I recently sowed radishes, turnips, arugula and other types of mustard greens as well as cilantro and dill. My workers and I have been busy since early March with greenhouse planting and we have thousands of tomato, pepper, cucumber and squash plants that will soon be ready to be set out. We’ve been working hard for you and I believe we’re on track for a great season. Thanks to those who came out to help cover the greenhouse on May 1st. Your help is greatly appreciated! Next chance is this Saturday as we will attempt to cover the big high tunnel greenhouse in Hardwick Twp. Keep your fingers crossed for calm winds!
Farmer John
