Farm News – October 2, 2014

Hi Folks, We have once again been teased with the promise of rain only to be disappointed. The forecast for last Thursday was for 24 hours of rain, heavy at times, 1 to 2 inches. We got 5 hours of drizzle and a total of .14 inches! Total rainfall for September was 1.3 inches. We are doing the best we can with our irrigation system, but we just don’t have the capacity to keep everything well watered. The semi–drought has hurt our bean production and has greatly slowed down the greens and the fall root crops.

We have a final planting of zucchini and other summer squash that is just beginning to produce. I expect that next week we will begin a rotation to give members of all groups a few more of the summer types before settling into distribution of the hard squash for the duration of the season. We have some green cabbage for you this week and this will be the last of the cabbage until the end of the season. We will have kohlrabi next week and will hopefully start with broccoli the following week. We have more bok choy on the way and the Brussel sprout and cauliflower crops look good as well. The sweet potato crop looks good but we will give them another couple of weeks to size up a little more. There are a few large ones in each mound but also many small ones which need a little more time.

I was at the Hudson Valley Garlic festival on Sunday, buying seed garlic to plant for next year’s crop. We had a very poor crop this year due to the bad winter. I normally save a few hundred pounds of my own to replant but we only have enough for one more distribution this week. I don’t even have enough for my markets during the rest of the season.

The share will be: Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, lettuce, potatoes, beets or salad turnips, choice of kale or chard (mostly kale), green cabbage, garlic, spinach and choice of an herb (mostly dill or cilantro with some summer savory).

Enjoy!  Farmer John