Farm News- September 22, 2011

Hi Folks,

We continue to feel the ef- fects of the back to back inun- dations delivered by Irene and Lee. Some brassicas that were not flooded are wilting and dying from root diseases brought on by continuously saturated soil. We are still unable to machine dig potatoes and some of the crop that was in low pockets has almost certainly rotted. I have been chomping at the bit to try and finish my planting for the season. There is only another week or so to plant one final round of spinach, mustard greens, turnips and radishes. While most of my fields drain and dry out quickly, in almost every field one edge is lower and remains too soft and muddy to drive a tractor through. I nearly got the big John Deere stuck several times during the past week, but was able to escape each time. On Sunday however, my luck ran out and I sank one wheel deep in the muck.

Today we will attempt to pull it out with the other tractor. The weather forecasters continue to tease us with promises of a week of sunshine and no rain and then quickly change the prediction to a week of showers and scattered thunderstorms! We are also being affected by the sudden cool down, which along with shorter days, means everything grows slower. The tomato crop is essentially done for the season and production in the peppers and eggplant has greatly slowed. Both of the latter are flowering prolifically so I am hopeful we will begin to harvest some fruit in a week or two. Bean production is also slow as we wait for the late planting of bush beans to mature. We do have lettuce again and should have sufficient quantities for delivery through the rest of the season. The mustard greens are still a bit small but we will try to harvest some small bunches of tatsoi and other Asian mustards for this week. Arugula should be ready by next week and broccoli raab soon thereafter. This week will be one of the leanest of the season, but I expect gradual improvement in the size of the shares in the coming weeks. I will list only those items which I am fairly certain we will have; we will add other items to the shares as availability allows.

The share for this week will be:
Green leaf lettuce, carrots, onions, potatoes, and mustard greens

Enjoy!
Farmer John