here’s John’s note from the farm this week!

Hello Folks,

We’ve been busy this past week trying to catch up with the planting and with the weeding that we were unable to get done this past month due to the rain.

I have almost finished planting the pumpkins and the winter squash. On Monday I will finish up with planting the acorn squash and will also try to plant the edamame soybeans. We have also begun to harvest the garlic and hang it in the barn to cure. We should finish that project as well early this week.

We have also been busy in the greenhouse planting broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and other thing for the fall crop. The tops on some of the onions have begun to die back so we will be starting the onion harvest next week.

The share for this week will be: Romaine lettuce, Chinese cabbage, carrots, fresh garlic, peas, basil and choice of mustard or dandelion greens.

Enjoy,

Farmer John

Hello Folks,

The weather looks good for the week ahead so perhaps this means we have reached the end of the monsoon season here in the Northeast.  With abundant sunshine and some moderate heat the warm weather crops should begin to grow rapidly.

The summer squash has recovered from the hail damage and is beginning to produce prolifically. The tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants are beginning to flower, so we should have these in another 3 or 4 weeks. The sweet potatoes, cucumbers and beans are growing nicely, although the main bean crop was planted about 2 weeks later than planned, so it could be awhile until beans are abundant.The broccoli crop is still coming in heavily so we should have broccoli to deliver for the next 2 shares.

The pea patch, which looked so beautiful and promising for the longest time has succumbed to the one two punch of hail and repeated rains. Most of the dwarf varieties, which are not trellised, were flattened and the developing pods ended up against the soil under a mat of wet vegetation making them quite ugly if not completely rotten. This has been an especially bad problem with the sugar snaps since they are eaten whole. I hope to have peas in the shares for the next 2 weeks, but I can’t make any promises as to the quantities or quality.

By the way, I promise not to open next week’s update with a weather report or mention the hail storm again!

You will have a choice this week of baby salad turnips or red skinned turnips, which are generally cooked. I suspect than many of you may be tired of the radish and turnip rotation by now, so I wanted to reassure you that this will be the last until the fall, and that carrots and beets are coming! If you still have your radishes, take the tops off and they will keep for weeks until you find a use for them (this is true for the turnips as well). Radishes can be cooked in stir fries or soups and lose much of their spiciness in the process. One idea for getting your family to eat turnips is to make fritters out of them substituting them for potatoes in a potato pancake recipe.

The share for this week will be: Peas, scallions, summer squash, Oak leaf lettuce, choice of tatsoi or kale, turnips, choice of dill or cilantro, and kohlrabi (broccoli for those groups who got kohlrabi last week).

Enjoy!

Farmer John

Hi Folks,

Well it seems that we are in for another week of scattered thunderstorms.  Hopefully it won’t be quite as bad as this past month has been.

We were caught out in the field several times this past week as strong storms rolled through unexpectedly. They always seem to come at the most inopportune times, such as in the middle of transplanting or with me on the tractor in one field and my workers scattered around in others and needing to be picked up.

We were finally able to transplant the melons this past week and a few thousand lettuce plants.  We were interrupted  by one of the storms while planting the lettuce and a dozen or so flats had to be left  in the barn out of sun (sun? what sun?) for several days because they had already been pulled from their cells. We were finally able to finish the job on Saturday evening; working around a couple of passing showers and plodding through the mud.

In spite of the difficult weather many crops are doing great and have recovered fairly well from the hail damage.  The carrot crop looks good and we should have them in the share in another 2 or 3 weeks. The beets are coming along and should start sizing up soon as well. The Chinese (napa) cabbage is heading up and should be ready in 2 weeks. In the meantime there’s lots of broccoli coming on and it should be in the shares for the next several weeks.

The share for this week will be: Radishes, mustard greens, broccoli, peas, red leaf lettuce, choice of escarole or endive, bok choy, and choice of cilantro or dill.

Enjoy!
Farmer John

Hello Everyone,

The cool wet weather continues to make life difficult here on the farm. Unfortunately I have an even worse weather phenomenon to report. On Monday evening the Andover farm was hit by a quite severe hailstorm. Virtually all of the crops in these fields were damaged. The plants with softer leaves, such as lettuce, spinach, and other greens suffered the worst damage. About 20% of the tomato plants were damaged beyond recovery. The peppers which were flowering and beginning to set fruit, had all the flowers and fruit ripped off.  The pea plants were flattened and the peas are pockmarked with white spots.  The bok choy, which looked beautiful and which I expected to deliver in the share this week, has had most of the outside leaf destroyed. The summer squash which was just beginning to fruit has lost all of the large outer leaves and the young fruit are riddled with holes.

What this means for the CSA members is that greens will be rather scarce for the next 2 or 3 weeks. Lettuces, cauliflower and broccoli will be smaller than usual. It also means that the warm weather crops, such as tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant will be delayed by at least 2 weeks from their normal start date of late July.

It was truly heartbreaking to see the damage to so many crops that were growing so beautifully and that we have worked so hard to plant and maintain.  I confess that I am quite discouraged and disheartened, but I don’t give up easily.  We will forge ahead, make the best of what is left, and replant those crops which we are able.

In last weeks update I mentioned spraying, which prompted an inquiry from one of the members. Since I imagine there are others who may be concerned about this issue, I thought I should address it. I have at times heard conventional farmers say that one of their crops is organic. When asked to explain they say that since there was no need to spray that crop it became organic. In the same way that simply not spraying a crop does not make it organic, spraying a crop does not preclude it from being organic. Almost all organic farmers use sprays to control insects and disease, as well as for foliar feeding.

As a certified organic farm we are allowed to use various products which are approved for organic production by the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) and reviewed and evaluated by OMRI (Organic Materials Review Institute). These products may be elemental, such as copper or sulfur, which are fungicidal or biological such as bacillus thuringensis (Bt) which affect only Lepidoptera family insects (caterpillars).  They may also be natural insecticides derived from plants such as pyrethrum, which is derived from a chrysanthemum, or neem oil from the seeds of the Neem tree.

All of these products breakdown quickly, are not persistent in the environment, and have low toxicity to humans and other animals. One of my favorite products as a fungicide is called Sporan which contains essential oils of clove, rosemary and wintergreen. It works well and it smells great too! While there are cultural methods employed to minimize pest problems such as crop rotation, there are still times when pests can do sufficient damage to seriously reduce yields or render a crop unmarketable. Timely spraying, done when pests first arrive or emerge (many overwinter in the soil) can do much to control the problem before populations explode out of control. While I have spoken to a few organic farmers who say that they don’t spray, I believe that what they are guaranteeing their customers is produce laced with holes and worms in their broccoli or cabbage. I have also spoken to the members of one of these farms and been told about all the crops they don’t receive.

I strictly adhere to the rules governing what is allowed in organic production and do not spray any crop that is close to being harvested.

The share for this week will be: Escarole, Red leaf lettuce, broccoli, baby salad turnips (edible tops) and peas.

Enjoy!

Farmer John

Hello Everyone and Happy Spring!

Welcome to the first installment of the 2009 farm updates. I’m a bit late getting this out, but April was a very hectic month. We’ve been busy in the greenhouse since early March planting seed for the many crops that are transplanted out into the field, from broccoli and cabbage to tomatoes and peppers. The early spring was not quite as cold as it was last year and not quite as wet as it can sometimes be, but it was quite gray. With many days in a row without sunshine the plants seemed to grow extremely slowly. One of the challenges that come along with gray weather is watering; without sunshine the soil in the flats stays too wet and with cool nights can lead to damping off, a fungal disease of the roots. We experienced a bit of this with the lettuce plants but with a little care most of them have recovered and almost caught up with the others. Of course the 4 day April heat wave we just experienced was another kind of challenge; keeping me running back an forth between the 2 greenhouses I am using, trying to keep everything from burning up!

In early April I began planting peas and fava beans in the field, all of which have come up nicely and are growing well. I calculate that I have planted about 15,000 row ft. or nearly 3 miles of these crops. The next step is to finish putting up some fencing around this field before the plants are tall enough to be attractive to the deer (the theme of a bad dream I had just last night!).

At the end of last week we transplanted thousands of cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower plants in a marathon session through drizzle and sometimes heavier rain. Having waited until after the heat broke I was anxious to get these plants in the ground ahead of more rain.

One of this weeks major tasks will be setting out the thousand of lettuce, radicchio, and escarole plants that have also been waiting in the wings for the heat to abate. We have so far planted about 1500 lbs. of potatoes (1500 to go) and 40,000 onion plants (20,000 to go). The garlic and shallots which were planted last fall have come up well and are growing beautifully. Now is the time for direct seeding many of the root crops and greens.

In the next week I will be planting carrots parsnips, radishes, spinach, chard, arugula and many other types of mustard greens. The wet weather predicted will of course make this difficult, but one has to watch for windows when the soil dries out enough just before the next round of rain begins. It hasn’t been an easy spring here on the farm but then again it never is; on the whole I think we’re on track for a good season.

Thanks to all those who came out to help cover the greenhouse on April 18^th, and to those who helped with transplanting this past weekend. Your help is greatly appreciated! Next chance is this Sunday as we try again to cover the big high tunnel greenhouse. Keep your fingers crossed for calm winds and no rain!

Farmer John