*** POTLUCK ***

THIS SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 4TH

   COME JOIN YOUR FARMERS AND FELLOW MEMBERS FOR A MEAL.

WHEN: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4TH @ 5:30

WHERE: PARK AT THE SHARE ROOM AND WALK A SHORT DISTANCE TO OUR HOUSE WHICH  IS SOUTH ON RIVER RD. (RT. 47). WE WILL BE IN THE BACK YARD NEAR THE GREENHOUSES.

WHAT TO BRING: BRING A DISH TO SHARE (ENOUGH FOR 7) AND A BLANKET. ALSO INCLUDE A LIST OF INGREDIENTS FOR THOSE WITH FOOD ALLERGIES.

 

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE !!

 

Dear Friends,

             It’s cooler at night, darker later in the morning and earlier in the evening, and some soaking rains have finally come.  This can only mean one thing here on August 23rd...we are getting our first little taste of Fall.  Fall is my favorite time of year both on and off of the farm.  As it stands we only have 4 more of our weekly greens seedings to get in the ground and 1 more planting of Chinese cabbage to put in with the transplanter, meaning that we’ll soon be focusing much of our attention on the major fall harvests of winter squash, potatoes, and sweet potatoes.  Additionally, we’ll continue the weekly harvests for the share, begin to put this year’s early vegetable land into soil building cover crops, and finish up with some of our final large weeding tasks such as next year’s strawberries and our celeriac.  In the early and mid part of September we are still cranking with some of the summer crops like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, summer squash, and cucumbers.  Slowly but surely the fall crops work their way into the mix as we begin to harvest broccoli, cauliflower, leeks, and spinach. 

Last week we checked 1 major harvest off of the list as we brought in the remainder of our storage onions.  This year’s storage onion crop is surely the best we’ve ever grown (and it is the first year that we’ve had a decent crop of red storage onions)!  When growing 60+ crops it is a real challenge to meet the specific needs of each individual one which is something we are constantly trying to improve upon.  At the outset of this year it was a goal of mine to grow a great onion crop so we really tried all season to be at the beckon call of our pungent little friends and wait on them hand and foot.

We grow a little over an acre of storage onions many of which are distributed in the farm share but some of them go to our other markets as well.  Onions are one of the more labor intensive crops we grow on the farm.  They were the first thing to be seeded in the greenhouse way back on March 5th and they are the single largest greenhouse seeding we do all year.  Because of their odd seed shape we can’t use our vacuum seeder to get the job done and need to do the entire seeding by hand.  When the seeding is done over 80,000 onion seeds have passed through our grubby little hands.  From there they are watered 2-3 times daily for a month and 1/2.  

   This year we drastically cut down the amount of time it takes to transplant our onions into the field with the help of our brand new mechanical transplanter (if you

remember from an earlier newsletter I described how it took 4 of us 1 leisurely day to plant the onions this spring when last year it took 7 of us plus a volunteer crew the better part of 3 days).  From the day they go in the ground for the next 3 months, tame the weeds is the name of the game.  Onions are one of the least competitive and least weed tolerant crops that we grow and they grow over a very long period of time.  We spent hours upon hours keeping our onion crop weed free (relatively speaking) to allow them the light and nutrients they need to go from seedlings to consistently baseball sized beautifully round bulbs. 

An added management strategy that we employed this year in our onion culture was to attempt to control a pest called the onion thrip.  Thrips are tiny insects that hide themselves down in the growing tip of the onion plants coming out in the evening with their little rasping mouth parts to literally suck the life out of the succulent onion foliage.  The past 2 growing seasons they’ve wreaked havoc on our poor onions reducing yields and storage potential.  Last winter we did a lot of research into the management options organic growers have for thrips and came up with a plan that involved a somewhat regular (3 times) application of 2 organic materials (Pyganic a chrysanthemum extract and Surround a kaolin clay product).  Thrip pressure was higher than normal this year (they like it hot and dry) and while we still had them in our onions thankfully our management plan did not allow the population get high enough to do significant damage.

When the time comes for harvest the onion foliage has died back and the necks begin to seal up. To harvest we  pull all the onions by hand, lay them in windrows, and then come back and pick them all up into our harvest buckets.  We load the buckets onto the truck and haul them off to the greenhouse to cure.  They cure on the very tables in the greenhouse where their life began except  the tables are flipped over and we line the bottom with chicken wire so we can just pour the onions in.  The curing process further seals the necks of the onions making them able to store without rotting.  We completely filled the greenhouse and then some with over 14,000#’s of beautiful onions and by week’s end we were all strutting around like…. uh… farmers with a greenhouse full of really nice onions.  This week will be the last full week for one of our crew members.  Mike has been here busting his tail with us since mid May.  He is now headed back to UMASS for his senior year.  He may still be here part-time with us this Fall but for now we’ll pat him

on the back and thank him for all of his hard work and dedication to what we’re doing here.  We’ll miss you Mike! 

 

In your Share this week …

Carrots, Beets, Onions, Peppers, Eggplant, Tomatoes, Summer Squash, Zucchini, the beginnings of our 3rd and final Cucumber planting, Salad Greens, and Cooking Greens.  After 4 tremendous weeks we bid farewell to 2010’s amazing melon crop.

 

Upick update …

There are still tons of cherry tomatoes out there though this last rainfall made some of them split.  This week we’ll increase the sauce tomato amount in the share so get ‘em while you can.  There are still some really nice herbs and flowers out there and the soybeans will be ready for picking soon!

 

** POTLUCK SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 4th 5:30 pm **

Last month’s potluck was awesome and we’re hoping for an equally nice evening for this one.  Come join your farmers for a meal!  Bring a large dish to share, a blanket to sit on, and your friends and family.  We’ll provide the salad and some beverages.  Potluck will be behind our house @ 206 River Rd. (across the street from and to the south of the share room and parking lot).

 

 

 

*Sauce Boxes For Sale*

  15+ pounds of tomatoes for only $12.00 !!!

Sauce em',  can em',  freeze em', dry em'

Get them now before the tomato season ends.

We will be selling boxes on Thursday and Saturday this week and on all share days next week.

 

 

Dear Friends,

             In this corner weighing in at 5 or more pounds we have cantaloupe and in this corner weighing in at 10 to 15 pounds we have watermelon.  It seems as if these two crops conspired over the last 2 weeks to deliver us a one two punch that we wouldn’t be able to get up from.  Each of them trying in earnest to out do the other and be the most bountiful.  As the dry period we’ve been experiencing continued and the warm weather prevailed it created the perfect storm for all of the melons to ripen all at once.  At the end of the week before last we had picked over 2,000 cantaloupe and at the end of last week we had picked over 1,400 watermelon.  Thankfully we’re all still standing but we hope we didn’t drown all of you in melons with the unusually large amount we were giving out in the share.  When we do our melon plan, along with the rest of the crop plan in the winter, we plant 3 varieties of each that differ by about a week in “days to maturity” (which is of course a relative term).  Our intention is to spread the harvest out and have a smaller amount of melons ready at once and harvest them over a longer period of time.  Unfortunately it didn’t work out quite as planned but how can you complain about a lot of melons??  And they are sooooo good.  Alas, it would have been nice if that cantaloupe had lasted a little longer than one precious week but the good news is that we still have one more week of watermelons ahead (this week it will be less). 

My comment above about the one two punch is mainly about the athletic harvest we perform each share day to get those melons out of the field and into the shareroom.  Melons are probably my favorite crop to harvest and not just because we are forced to sample them to figure out which ones are ready.  When we go into the field there will be 1 or 2 people responsible for selecting the ripe melons and throwing them to a partner at the edge of the field. The partner has the job of catching the melons that the picker selects and then windrow them at the edge of the field.  When we are done windrowing the melons we’ll then drive the tractor down the field edge with bins on it and do the same throw and catch routine (except this time at lightning speed because we don’t have to hunt for the melons) until all the melons are picked up and ready to go into the shareroom.  The watermelons especially make for a good abdominal work out akin to throwing medicine balls from the ground to 5 ft. as fast as you can.  We sure have a lot of fun with it.  That said it never ceases to amaze me when eating  

a melon and spitting the seeds that one of those tiny little seeds is where it all began.  The melons you’ll be seeing in the share this week, crimson sweet, are my favorite.  The texture is amazingly dense and each one is a meal in itself.  We picked one for the record books on Saturday that weighed 28#’s!  I cracked it open with a machete on Saturday night and it was promptly devoured with the help of a few friends. 

Melons aside most other crops are doing well and harvests have been great.  We started our storage onion harvest today and the crop may be the best we’ve ever grown, large and in charge.  The one shortfall we can forsee will be in the summer squash, zucchini, and cucumbers.  Our second succession planting (the one we are picking from now) was hit with a disease called powdery mildew meaning this will be the last week we’ll be picking in there.  The 3rd and final planting will not be ready for another 2-3 weeks so there will be a period of time starting next week that we will not have any of those crops in the share.  To compensate we may have to lower the bag size or figure out another creative way to make up for the shortfall.  We’ll keep you posted.

A big thanks to everyone who made it to our first potluck of the year two Saturday’s ago.  We had a great turnout and a beautiful evening filled with delicious food and good conversation.  For the next one in September we’ll try to line up a musical guest or two (any leads???).

Enjoy the harvest!

On behalf of the farm crew Max, Margot, Jason, Mike, and Sue….

Your Farmers,

Rob and Meghan

 

U PICK FORECAST

Cherry tomatoes:  here comes the flood… we’ve adjusted the amount accordingly allowing you to pick until your heart and stomach is content

Flowers: they are cranking and the sunflowers are amazing right now... don’t miss out

Beans:  We’ve just opened a new planting and raised the amounts…. There are some great purple beans in this planting

Herbs:  We’ve been holding back on the rosemary to let the plants size up… now that they are bigger we’ll open ‘em up.

Sauce Tomatoes: coming soon!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Friends,

             After a prolonged hot and dry spell, finally the rains came and though we were thrilled to get some water without doing any work it quickly became too much water.  Last Wednesday we were then hit with a severe thunderstorm that brought 50mph winds to our doorstep and we watched in horror as the wind took our earliest planting of tomatoes (that looked so beautiful!) and pushed 80% of the field to the ground snapping the stakes at the soil level.  While we will still be able to pick that planting of tomatoes (you’ll have some in the share this week) the yield we’ll get from those plants will be reduced as we’ll lose some of the fruit to sunscald (as they are no longer protected by the foliage). In addition, because the plants are lying on the ground foliar diseases will take over a lot sooner than they would if they were upright meaning the amount of time we’ll be picking from that field will be shortened.

 Now for a good news/bad news scenario.  First the good….  Our main season planting of tomatoes was not blown over by the storm and in fact it looks like a great crop but the bad news is... late blight (the disease that decimated our tomato crop last year) has been found on a few local farms.  Last year, if you remember, we struggled with the decision of whether or not to use an organically approved copper spray to prevent the blight from destroying our tomatoes.  In the end we elected not to spray in hopes that we’d still get a small crop.  By this time last year our tomatoes were just about dead and we had to till in the entire planting to minimize the spread of blight to other neighboring farms.  After experiencing last year’s loss and educating ourselves more on late blight and how to manage the disease organically we made the decision that if we were put back in the same position as 2009 we would do anything in our power to control the disease and  eek out a tomato crop.  The investment involved in producing tomatoes is simply too significant to allow this disease to destroy the crop without exhausting all of our management options.  That said, we have elected to spray our main season tomato crop with an organically approved copper hydroxide product.  I’ve included an excerpt from a UMASS extension newsletter  that describes in detail how the copper works.  The 2 most important things to take away from all of this are… #1. We are not spraying and will not spray the u-pick tomatoes (this of course means they may get blight and we may lose the crop) #2.  You should wash all tomatoes in your share.   

You are not at risk of any ill effects from eating the tomatoes the oral toxicity of copper is less than that of caffeine or asprin.  Our hope is that you all agree with our decision to carefully use copper in the management of our main season tomato crop.  While this was a difficult decision for us to make we figured it was best for us to have tomatoes in the share and let you make the choice on whether or not to take them (if for some reason you don’t support our use of copper) rather than not having any tomatoes available at all.   Please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any questions regarding this.

While there are some concerning things that are happening on the farm I assure you it’s not all gloom and doom.  There are several crops that are really booming this year and it is a real lift to know that those things are waiting in the wings.  This week we’ll begin harvesting from our amazing field of cantaloupe and the watermelons that will be here in a week or two look equally as good.  Our storage onion crop has sized up nicely and we are hoping for some dry weather in the next couple of weeks to allow the necks to begin sealing up.  The carrots and beets have been and will continue to be a great crop both in size and flavor and the peppers that are coming on look great. 

July is probably the most stressful month for us on the farm because we are still juggling a lot of planting tasks while the harvest is ever increasing and the weeds are relentless.  Sometimes the whole thing feels really overwhelming and we have to stop for a moment and ask ourselves why we do this.  But we are quickly reminded when all of you show up at the farm to pick up your share and reinvigorate us with your smiles, stories, understanding, and well wishes.  Thank you! And enjoy the harvest!

On behalf of the farm crew.

Your Farmers,

Rob and Meghan

 

1st FARM POTLUCK OF 2010

We’ll be holding our first potluck of the year this Saturday July 31st at 5:30 pm.  Come share a meal with your farmers!  Bring a dish to share that can feed 7 people, and a list of ingredients for those with food allergies and sensitivities.  We’ll be holding the potluck in our backyard (206 River Rd. the white house across the road from and to the south of the farm parking lot) Hope to see you here!!!

 

SCISSOR ALERT!!!!! … We’ve bought several pair of scissors for U-pickers this year and just about all of them have disappeared PLEASE RETURN THE SCISSORS!

 

The information below is from the UMASS EXTENSION SERVICE it is slightly dated in that late blight has now been detected on 2 farms in Hadley.  We hope this gives some insight into our decision to spray copper.

Copper Fungicides for Organic Farms

(exerpts from “Vegetable Notes” June 24^th, 2010; R. Hazzard and A. Cavanagh)

Late blight has not been reported in Massachusetts at this time, but it has showed up in isolated spots already this year with reported cases in MD, CT, FL, NY, LA, KY, and PA. Given the widespread epidemic in the Northeast last season, the likelihood that infected over wintered potato tubers will grow new infected plant tissue somewhere in Massachusetts is a fairly high. Now is the time to make decisions about how to handle the disease if and when it shows up in our area. Conventional growers have access to fungicides that can effectively slow or control the disease. Organic growers have more limited options.

The only material available to organic growers that has proven effective in preventing late blight is copper. Despite being ‘organic’ and less toxic than many conventional materials, copper is not without its dangers. Organic growers who sell primarily to retail or wholesale markets may feel that they have no choice but to do what is necessary to try to save their crop in order to recoup their investment. Organic CSA’s have a different set of considerations and may find themselves on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, shareholders may not want anything sprayed on their produce, no matter how benign. On the other hand, shareholders will be very disappointed if there are no tomatoes, which is almost certain to be the result if we see late blight show up here early in the year again and copper isn’t applied preventively on

a regular schedule. Even more importantly, if we do see late blight this year and crops are not treated preventively or destroyed at the first sign of infection, they will become reservoirs of disease and serve to prolong and worsen the epidemic and will contribute to crop losses and increased fungicide use at other farms.

Copper has no curative value, and once an infection is established in your fields spraying copper will do little to slow it’s spread. The time to decide whether and how to spray copper is now, before we see the disease in our local fields. Using copper will also reduce incidence of other tomato diseases such as early blight, Septoria leaf spot, and

bacterial diseases.

One copper product that is allowed in certified organic production is registered in Massachusetts: NuCop 50WP. Copper hydroxide is the active ingredient. Copper fungicides are protectants, so they MUST be applied to the foliage before infection.

The copper ion is absorbed by the germinating spore, and the copper denatures spore proteins and kills the fungus before it infects the plant. Once infection of the tissue has occurred, copper has no effect on the growth of existing lesions in foliage or stems. In other words, once you can see the disease it’s too late for copper to control it, at least on that plant.

Human health hazards:

Read the label and follow directions for personal protective equipment, mixing and handling, restricted entry period, and days to harvest. Skin and especially eye exposure is the most serious risk associated with using copper hydroxide. The greatest health risk is to the person who mixes and sprays the material. Proper protective equipment should be worn when handling or applying any pesticide or fertilizer.

Copper can be an excellent tool in times when there is really no other way to save a crop. It can be dangerous and is not a tool to be taken lightly, but when applied carefully and correctly it has minimal danger to the applicator or the environment.

Copper will not save an infected field, but if we see another late blight epidemic like last year’s it may make the difference between acceptable yields and no crop at all.

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Friends,

             What a relief it is to feel a morning that’s cooler than 75°and to see these strange clear droplets falling from above.  After two plus weeks of hot dry weather this makes life on the farm a little easier.  I’m happy to report that expect to wear only one t-shirt today and by days end it won’t be soaked with sweat.  It took some time this week to remember how to farm when it’s hot and dry.  While we have the capacity to irrigate some of our fields, there are many parts of the farm that we can’t.  There is a stretch in early July when we do many of our fall plantings of root crops, broccoli family crops, and late flowers in addition to our weekly succession plantings of greens, herbs, and beans.  The lack of moisture put our plans on hold and we had to look back in our playbook to remember all of our little tricks for farming in drought conditions. 

   The first thing we did was start to water things that we already had irrigation set up for, our longer season crops like eggplant, peppers, summer squash, and cucumbers.  These crops we grow on black plastic mulch which we lay by machine in the spring.  As we are laying plastic we simultaneously lay lines of drip tape (similar to a soaker hose) close to where the crop roots will be.  The field that we have these crops in this year makes getting water to them pretty straightforward but because we are only using a small (3/4”) hose line to do so it is very time consuming and we can only run a few rows at one time.

   Getting land ready for seeding when it’s dry is a whole different animal.  Most vegetable seeds need constant contact with moist soil in order to germinate.  To create those conditions for small seeded crops like carrots, beets, parsnips, and greens our best bet is to pre-irrigate the land and then seed into it.  The hitch here is… we only have one available field (by the river) that we have the capacity to do this operation in that isn’t yet filled with summer crops.  In the winter when we do our crop planning we spend days and days in front of the computer laying out our crop rotation (where to put what crop) and during the season we stick to the plan pretty religiously for several different reasons.  This week we were met with a situation where we had to asses our options and the best one was to drop back and punt.  By this I mean we had to shift our crop plan around a bit and plant some fall roots on land that we had slated for the 3 and final succession planting of summer squash and cucumbers.  All this means really is that we had to do some juggling and recalculating in hopes to arrive at the same finished product.

  While that one move solved our beet and rutabaga problem we still had to solve the carrot problem.  Our fall carrots are about 75 days from seed to harvest so if we don’t get them in the ground by July 10th or so we’ll end up with immature carrots (and nobody likes a carrot that pulls your hair or repeats every word you say).  We had to get them seeded and so we did what I like to call “carrots the hard way”.  In this scenario we seed the carrots like normal and then pull out drip tape lines for each carrot row and lay the lines on top.  We can only run 3 lines at once and they need to run for 5 hours.  After we run those 3 lines we have to move them over to the next 3 rows and on and on.  Watering a 1/2 acre of carrots like this is enough to make you want to dig a well with a blunt spoon.  Long story short most of the fall roots are in, we’ve got a mean case of poison ivy from setting the pump up down by the river, and we saw the first red tomato just the other day… it must be July.

  Enjoy the harvest!!

On behalf of the crew Max, Mike, Margot, Jason, and Sue..

  Your Farmers,

Rob and Meghan

   What’s in the share??

This week we’ll have carrots, beets, cipollini onions, superstar onions, cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini, yellow zucchini, eggplant (both Asian and classic types), and red cabbage.  There will be no head lettuce in the share and we’ll be a little short on the salad and cooking greens (remember that rain that flooded our freshly seeded greens last month???)

   What’s for U-Pick??

At long last the peas are done.  With the 2 main spring u-pick crops done for the season (peas and strawberries) we’ll move on to beans, more herbs (including a newly opened planting of basil that contains 3 different varieties Thai, red, and Italian) more flowers, and coming soon cherry tomatoes!

   FARM POTLUCKS!!!!

Here it is July and we’ve yet to set our potluck dates.  Shame on us!!!  So here they are all at once Saturday July 31st 5:30pm, Saturday September 4th 5:30pm, and our annual Pumpkin Carving Potluck will be held Saturday October 23rd 3:30pm.  Potlucks will be in a new location  behind our house 206 River Rd. (diagonally across from the share room and parking lot)

 

 

 

 

 

June 28, 2010

 

Dear Friends,

             Last week marked the official beginning of summer, though it has felt like summer weather since May.  The warm weather and some well timed rains have really given most crops a boost and we are still experiencing earlier than planned harvests.  This week we’ll pull some new crops out of the field and onto your plate including carrots and cippolini onions (the first of the fresh onions).  The cucumbers and squash, now in their second week of production, will really start peaking and the parade of beets will continue from now through the fall.  These new crops coming in will replace some of our spring crops that have or soon will fade away such as our broccoli, radishes, spinach, turnips, and Chinese cabbage.  Our summer crops have really started to bulk up giving us plenty to look forward to.  Our earliest planting of tomatoes is up to my chest and loaded down with green fruit, there are small fruits on the peppers and eggplant, and if the weather keeps up the melons are poised to be the best crop we’ve ever grown (knock on wood!).

It’s funny but after a couple of bad growing years I’m a little gun shy about saying all these positive things and I find my mental editor is always trying to keep me in check.  As if when I finish typing the sky will open up and negate each word of my discourse.  I’m realizing that when things are good I have almost as much anxiety as when things are bad.  A few nights ago I dreamt of scenario where there was so much water on the farm that I was swimming through it to unplug the drains in the field and ended up being attacked by an alligator.  Considering that is pretty unlikely... the best we can do is hope to ride this train of great weather all the way into the fall.

Given the favorable weather disease pressure has been pretty low, insect pressure has been a little higher, and weed pressure has been off the charts!  The crops are growing great and so are the weeds… meaning we have been spending every spare moment hand pulling (or crawling as we affectionately call it) weeds especially in our onions and several succession plantings of lettuce and greens.  Weeds aside, by far the most pesky of pests this year has been the elusive Marmota monax  (the groundhog, woodchuck, or whistlepig to the layperson).  They are in many of our fields but are doing the most damage to the u-pick herb section and parts of our watermelon field.  They successfully destroyed our first cilantro, dill, and parsley planting and have already done a number on the second planting.    

I'm starting to feel like Bill Murray in Caddyshack with my many failed attempts to catch these portly little fur balls.  Overall they really are at worst a nuisance and at best maybe we can figure out how to cut a deal with them where they only eat our plentiful and prolific weeds in which case we really would be living the dream.

             The next few weeks will be filled with both transplanting and direct seeding of many fall crops including celery, brussel sprouts, carrots, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and cabbage.  The strawberries planted in 2008 have now been plowed in and we’ll turn that field into fall radishes, turnips, fennel, and rutabaga.  We are counting down the weeks in the greenhouse and with only 3 more large seedings to go, we’ll be able to look back and see that we’ve planted over 375,000 seeds in that protected environment.  If we were to include our direct seedings (things we seed right into the field like carrots, lettuce, beets, greens, winter squash) that number would easily be over 2 million.  We’ll soon reach a turning point in the season when the bulk of planting is done and we’ll pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and race around to bring in the bounty!  Enjoy the harvest.

On behalf of the farm crew…

Your Farmers,

Rob and Meghan

 

What’s in the share?

This week we’ll have Cipollini onions (fresh onions), Beets,   Carrots, Fennel, Scallions, Summer Squash, Zucchini, Cucumbers, Head Lettuce, Garlic Scapes, and our usual array of salad and cooking greens.

 

What’s up with the Mix and Match?   

This week will mark a shift in the share distribution when we move to the mix and match system.  Simply put the hard vegetable portion of your share will be distributed much the same as the greens portion of the share has been distributed.  We give you a specific “bag size” and you are able to fill that bag to the specified volume with the vegetables of your choice that are part of the mix and match.  We will still do some vegetables by the count (usually the ones that we only have a limited amt. of).  The bags we use for this system are standard size plastic “t shirt” grocery bags.  As a alternative we sell Riverland Farm “Chico bags” at cost in the shareroom that are the same size as the t-shirt bags.

What’s for U-Pick?

The strawberries have come and gone.  When they were good they were real good but the season was cut short by the untimely wet weather.  Bring on the peas!!! This will be a big week for what has turned out to be a stellar crop.  The shelling peas are fading out but the snap peas are here in full force so now is the time to get pickin’.  The flowers are amazing right now, take full advantage to let someone special know you love them.  There will be more herbs open this week and the beans are on their way!

Check out our Recipe page and feel free to add your own !

 

 

 

 

June 13, 2010

Dear Friends,

             So I had to open my big mouth and detail what a perfect season we are having.  Then mother nature, as if to remind us who really runs the bingo around here, decided to rain on us and rain on us and just when we thought it was over… she rained again.  Thursday evening we got over 2.5” of rain in about 30 minutes.  I just joined a pick-up baseball league and Thursday was to be my first game.  The game was cancelled and I got back to the farm to find a lot of standing water.  One part of the farm had a puddle that was about 750’ long and 1’ deep at it’s deepest.  The puddle happened to be sitting on top of our most recently seeded greens planting done on Wednesday.  We have a few drains in the lower areas of the field so I set out to unclog them by the waning sunlight armed with a piece of rebar while yacking on the phone with my mom.  I freed one of the drains up hearing that satisfying scccchooooppp and watching the water rush down eventually ending up in a creek bed about 1000’ from the east edge of our fields.  I then took one step in the wrong direction, still shod in my baseball cleats and sunk up to my knee in mud.  I’m sure I said some sort of expletive my mom hasn’t heard me say since my teenage years... just shocked at how wet the farm got in such a short period of time.  The water has receded and it looks like things are clearing up.  All in all the crops are fine but the jury is still out on what will happen with that greens seeding and we’re hoping the rain didn’t rot too many strawberries (look for the u-pick amounts to increase this week).  

Weather speak aside… it seems like a great opportunity to introduce this year’s farm crew who’s hard work has really added another layer of lacquer to the farm’s sheen.  This year we are lucky to have these 5 incredibly solid people pushing the farm along with us….

Mike is a UMASS student studying exercise science.  One day his chiropractic work may just save all of our backs.   This is his 1st farm job and while we’re not sure if he knew what he was in for, he has come out of the gate like champ.  He picks up new skills quickly and has a positive attitude.  Mike does our off farm deliveries putting his previous experience of operating large equipment to good use.

Jason came to us at the end of last season and gave us a big boost, pushing us through those final root harvests .  He has worked on farms for the last couple years both at Seeds of Solidarity in Orange and Drumlin Farm in Lincoln.  He is meticulous in his work and his sense of humor keeps

everyone going through the most tedious of farm tasks.  It sure is nice to have another Red Sox fan on the farm.

             Margot hails from the Berkshires bringing her own farm experience to the table.  She has worked on Indian Line Farm and Farm Girl Farm and is no stranger to having her hands in the dirt.  Margot just finished building a tepee to live in for the summer that we’re all eager to see.  Among other things, Margot rocks the washroom on the farm so you can thank her for all of your glistening vegetables.

Max is back with us for another year! Solid as a rock and steady as a draft horse he is our assistant manager and we feel very lucky to have him.  Max came to us in August of 2008 while working at Seeds of Solidarity following up on a Craigslist job posting we put out.  He had 2 days off per week that he couldn’t wait to fill with more farm work and has been with us ever since working full time in ‘09 through December when he took some “time off” and followed the farm season down to New Zealand where he worked on a few livestock farms.  Max keeps the crew going with drive to accomplish the day’s task list even when it’s longer than his arm. He can be regularly seen doing any one of the myriad of tractor tasks of a given day.

Sue is also back with us this year on a part-time basis.  After working with us full time during the ‘09 season she has been applying to grad school, doing lab work at UMASS, and can be spotted behind the counter at the Lady Killigrew.  She is currently here 1 day a week though we keep trying to convince her to work more (just like anywhere else she’s ever worked!).  For now she’ll be harvesting with us Tuesday mornings and running the share room in the afternoon/evening.  Her interest in agricultural pests and diseases may just land her a university extension service job one of these days!

While these folks make up the everyday crew we are also lucky to have the support of family and friends who’ll strangely come by at the most opportune time and pitch in to build some stairs, fix our computers, pull some weeds, or make us dinner.  These wonderful people are all responsible for feeding us…. It really does take a village!

Enjoy the harvest.

On behalf of the farm crew…(check out pictures of the crew on our photo page)

Your Farmers,

Rob and Meghan

Check out recipes for garlic scapes on our recipe page

 

WHAT’S IN YOUR SHARE

This week we’ll have Beets, Scallions, Kohlrabi (for the last week), Summer Squash, Zucchini, Turnips, Radishes, Garlic Scapes, and our usual array of Salad and Cooking Greens

 WHAT’S FOR U-PICK

The strawberries are exploding out there and we’ve adjusted the u-pick amounts accordingly.  This wet weather did rot some berries but for every rotten one there are 15 or more good ones so keep picking!  We’ve opened up the flowers on a small scale this week but there are many more to come.  There will also be a sparse planting of cilantro and dill open this week (our pesky resident ground hog go the better of this planting)

 WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON

In the share... you can expect cucumbers to start coming in next week as well as more squash and zucchini.  We have another planting of broccoli coming in that should also be ready for next week along with our spring crop of fennel.  This will be the last week for kohlrabi so if you haven’t tried it don’t miss out!   

 

 

 

We are opening the strawberries to our members for U-pick !

The hours for picking are Mon.-Sunday during daylight hours.

You can pick any day of the week but only up to the amounts listed on our U-pick board which changes weekly. We normally start off with a low picking amount ( for ex. 1 pint or 1 quart) and continue to increase the picking amounts until it is unlimited picking (provided the weather cooperates). We anticipate a bountiful strawberry crop. We also try to keep people out of the fields while it is raining and especially thunderstorming. Hope to see you all soon !

 

Thanks

 

 

May 30th, 2010

Dear Friends,

              Here we are at the beginning of the 2010 harvest season and the fields are brimming with early vegetables ready for harvest.  It was hardly the end of March this year when the weather warmed up, the soil dried out, and we sprung into action... zero to sixty from one day to the next.  Ever since we’ve had mostly favorable weather though it has been pretty dry and very windy.  The rain that has come our way has been a product of intense and sometimes damaging thunderstorms.  The one we had last Wednesday was by far the most dramatic. 

Knowing the power of the wind here on this open plain in Sunderland, we make it a point to  close down all of our barn and greenhouse doors in the evening.  Forgetting to do that simple task on Wednesday made for an eventful night.  As that storm came in Meghan and I both shot out of bed, disoriented but knowing exactly what we had to do.  At that time I was so focused on closing everything down that things like clothes and shoes seemed unimportant.  Despite our best efforts the wind got to the barn  before we did and took a 6’ x 11’ 200#  barn door off and threw it into the road like a piece of cardboard.  We reached the greenhouse in time preventing any structural damage though the wind did take several of our plug trays and scatter them all over the farm and smash up a solid wood bench that we use for filling trays with soil.  The hail that came in with the storm did some minimal cosmetic damage to our first head lettuce, bok choy, and some of the swiss chard and spinach.  Overall the storm was mostly just mentally traumatic but ended up being good fodder for comedy when I think back on running around in my birthday suit closing things down.

The early start we had to the season this year has pushed many crops ahead of schedule which will make for an abundant 1st share week.  For the first time during our farming career we’ll be harvesting broccoli on the 1st of June.  The unseasonably  warm weather we’ve been experiencing since our early start pushed the transplants along in our greenhouse to the point that all of our field planting dates were moved up by at least a week.  In a normal year it is a real crunch to get all of our hot crops (tomatoes, peppers, melons, eggplant, sweet potatoes) in the ground before the share starts.  This year we got all those crops in and for the first time ever had time to plant the winter squash while the calendar still read May.  Why you ask have things gone so smoothly?  Two reasons…. The dry weather has enabled

us to be in the field and working with our equipment pretty much every day without exception and more importantly we have a stellar farm crew this year made up of 5 wonderfully capable and enthusiastic people!  We were a force to be reckoned with this Spring as we took the farm by the tail and stuffed it into our pockets.

              March, April, and May on the farm as always provide diverse and ever changing work.  From the start up of the greenhouse in early March, to equipment tune-ups, infrastructure repair, clean up, organization, field preparation, share sales, transplanting, weeding, seeding, and cultivation each day is a smorgasbord of tasks all working toward the same goal.  FOOD... that first harvest, when all of our scrambling around starts to take shape and make sense. It’s an exciting time for us as we get to pull our heads out of the dirt, pull our vegetables out of the field and reconnect with the wonderful community that supports our work.  So without further ado... welcome back to the farm returning members and welcome here to the new members!  We are looking forward to a great year! Enjoy the harvest.

On behalf of the farm crew Max, Mike, Margot, Jason, and Sue….
Your Farmers,

Rob and Meghan

Shout-Outs!!

A huge thank you to farm members Jacob Miller-Mack and Aaron Rubin for the amazing set of stairs they built leading from the share room to the bridge. We are all very grateful!

What’s in your share this week???

Broccoli, Kohlrabi, Turnips, Radishes, Bok Choy, Head Lettuce, Salad Greens, Cooking Greens.

What’s on the horizon???

Scallions, Fennel, Chinese Cabbage

What’s for u-pick???

There will be no u-pick this week with the exception of some herbs in the perennial bed by the share room.  The strawberries are so close!!! And we expect they’ll be ready for next week

Share Pick up times

Tuesday 2-7

Thursday 2-7

Saturday 10-2

U-pick is open everyday from dawn ‘til dusk (the board is changed weekly on Sundays to set the limits for the coming week)

check out our recipe page at www.riverlandfarm.com