Monday, October 04, 2010

THE LOCAL HARVEST

The Newsletter of Honey Brook Organic Farm CSA, October, 2010

someone knocks at your door to ask you if you’ve seen their baby llama! That’s what happened to me in early September and, frankly, I have to have to admit I was glad I hadn’t, or I really would have thought I was going nuts! But I do hope the baby llama was reunited with its mother.

Temperatures have finally dropped but we’re still not getting enough rain, so irrigation water is still being pumped at three of the five farms we manage. Toward the end of September we did get more precipitation, but not enough to close our deficit. We’re concerned that the beaver in Chesterfield may find the water level in the irrigation pond too low and look for wetter digs. We have not seen the beaver in weeks.

Now that it’s fall, we are having more interesting wildlife sitings in and around this pond. A lone cormorant spent a few days fishing in the pond and we often see a great blue heron and a kingfisher. There are also many raptors migrating through the farm, and I’ve observed at least one nighthawk. But our barn swallows have left for warmer climes, and monarch butterflies are also migrating.

Also at this farm, our two pawpaw trees began producing an enormous amount of fruit in late August and early September. Pawpaw trees are native to North America, being an understory tree in forests. The fruit is oblong and green and the flesh is usually the color of banana custard and has a flavor that’s a cross between mango and banana. I even made a pie with the flesh, but it was absolutely horrid!

Jim and I purchased rye seed from Tom Zang, an organic grain grower in Hunterdon County, for our fall cover crop planting. Farmer Jim and Tom, who had never met before, got to talking and it turned out they went to high school together for a year!

Farmer Jim sowed this seed with an overseed of vetch in mid-September, in order for the crops to fully establish and help prevent winter soil erosion.

We’ve also completed the deer fence project on the Chowdhury farm with the help of a Mennonite fence company. This will take care of the deer problem there. The Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space and the Watershed Association make their own hunting arrangements on the lands we farm for them, and that helps alleviate the regional deer pressure. Our next projects at the Chowdhury farm include composting municipal leaves received this fall, drilling a new irrigation well, installing waterways to minimize erosion and planning for the PYO crops to be grown there next year.

In other news, we donated grape and slicing tomatoes gleaned by Princeton University students to Womanspace, Eden Institute and Fisherman’s Mark. We also donated two CSA shares to the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association and lettuce mix seed to the school garden project at Seth Boyden Demonstration School in Maplewood, NJ. Interestingly, in the last years of his life, Seth Boyden developed the Hilton hybrid strawberry.

In mid-September Farmer Jim, Chip and I picked up our seed garlic in the Finger Lakes region and stayed overnight in Ithaca, NY. Chip was well behaved, although now he seems to have developed a strong dislike for dairy cows. While we were picking up the garlic, neighbors of the garlic farm had four cows grazing and one was definitely giving Chip the “hairy eyeball”. Chip was beside himself and gave that cow an earful for a good half-hour!

The next day, we visited Cornell Orchards, a farm store operated by Cornell’s horticulture department. It was loaded with their fruit including pears, plums, table grapes and heirloom apples (we sampled Greensleeves, Chenango Strawberry and Maiden’s Blush, a NJ variety developed prior to 1817). Jim just had to buy their pawpaws in order to compare their flavor to ours, and found theirs had a “fruitier” flavor.

Later in the day, Jim and I were looking for a hiking trail on the outskirts of Ithaca, when we were pulled over by a police officer. We were in one of our delivery trucks and it turns out that if you are engaged in farm commerce over state lines, a whole host of motor vehicle regulations need to be followed. Since we had a truck full of garlic seed recently purchased in NY, Farmer Jim was in violation of several motor vehicle regulations. Who knew? Luckily, the police officer was very informative and wrote the tickets out in a way that, so long as Farmer Jim corrects the violations within 60 days, he won’t have to pay fines. One of the violations was for not having the farm name on the truck, so now Susan has been busy designing and ordering adhesive signs for the bodies of all our delivery trucks (we now have a fleet of four).

At least we didn’t end our excursion on that sour note. We had a really satisfying, filling lunch at Moosewood Restaurant, famous for its innovative vegetarian cuisine and cookbooks. Lots of local produce and dairy products were on the menu and I opted for Broccoli Rarebit, an open-faced hot sandwich made with whole wheat bread and perfectly steamed broccoli, with a ladle of sauce made from cheddar, mustard and ale over it. Yum! I need to recreate that recipe at the farm this fall, as our broccoli will be really abundant.

Jim and I also attended the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival in late September, to see what other garlic varieties were available (we grow German white) and tap into other growers’ experiences producing the “stinking rose”. There were about thirty garlic growers and most were from New York, but some came from Vermont, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Many growers had raw garlic to sample, and I gave myself a stomachache by overdoing it a bit! After my sampling was done, Jim bought organic Spanish Roja garlic bulbs for seed from Freebird Farm. This is a fairly pungent variety, so if it does well next summer and we harvest it, we will clearly label it for members’ discernment.

We ended that day with a superb dinner at our favorite restaurant, Miss Lucy’s Kitchen in Saugerties, NY. After sampling the local field greens salad, we both enjoyed the turkey pot pie, capped with a cheddar biscuit. But the dessert of mission fig tart with concord grape sorbet and orange blossom honey mousse was swoon-worthy!

Sunday is a day off for Jim and me, and we usually go for a hike somewhere fairly local. We really like to visit some of the farmers’ markets, and particularly enjoy the Sunday Flemington and Red Bank Farmers’ Markets. A few weeks ago, while visiting the Red Bank Market, we discovered a vegan mobile lunch truck called the Cinnamon Snail. I ordered a freshly squeezed watermelon juice and it turned out to be made from Farmer Ed Lidzbarski’s red watermelons. As some of you know, Farmer Ed was one of Jim’s mentors. We visited him at his produce stand, where he and Farmer Jim whiled away the time complaining about the weather. Some things never change!

WHAT’S UP IN THE FARM FIELDS THIS FALL - by Sherry Dudas

The continued dry and unseasonably warm weather has allowed the early fall to be just as productive as the summer. We continue to harvest summer favorites, including slicing tomatoes, parsley, cilantro, basil, chard and peppers. Summer squash is nearly harvested out, and most other summer crops will come to an end at the slightest hint of frost.

PYO herbs are still abundant and members should think about setting aside some time to harvest herbs for drying. One December Farmer Jim and I, along with our nieces Samantha and Sarah, crushed and bagged a variety of our Italian herbs into zip lock bags. Dried at the beginning of the fall, the bags of oregano, parsley and thyme made thoughtful holiday gifts. And we had so much fun, cozy in the farmhouse kitchen, with the aroma of crushed herbs all around us.

Also in the PYO fields are the last of our snap beans, paste tomatoes and flowers. The fall-bearing red raspberries are coming to an end, after a summer of temperatures that were a bit too high for them.

We had a record yield of pumpkins (now done for the season), and they came in a bit earlier than normal. We are now in the midst of distributing a phenomenal amount of winter squash, all grown at the Chesterfield farm, so they’re labeled as transitional.

David our field manager is proud of our carrot crop this fall. This is the earliest it’s been harvested, and the yield is the highest ever! We’ve just begun our fall spinach, lettuce, arugula, radicchio, Chinese cabbage, kale, collards and scallion harvest. Fall crops still to be harvested include green cabbage, cauliflower, turnips, daikon, radish, beets, fennel, celeriac, rutabaga and sweet potatoes.

We currently believe the last days for distribution will be sometime in mid November, but keep checking the Veggie Hotline and website for updates, as weather may affect the end of the season plan. Please continue picking up your produce throughout the fall, even though it gets wet and cold, as our fall produce is extraordinarily tasty and diverse. There’s something to please every palate!

NEWS FROM THE FARMHOUSE OFFICE by Sherry Dudas

We are pleased to announce our new website launch. It is still a work in progress, and some of the links are not working, but we feel it may be a bit easier to navigate. Please remember we have two distribution centers now -- one in Pennington and one in Chesterfield -- so be sure you visit the appropriate pages. Also, the Delivered Boxed Share Program has its own page as well.

In other news, Farmer Jim is putting the finishing touches on the 2011 membership applications. They should be available by the second week in October. We no longer mail applications, so please look for the application in the distribution centers or on the Delivered Boxed Share clip boards. They are posted on our website in January, but returning members (who have priority in membership sign-up) are strongly encouraged to complete their applications and mail them to our PO box ASAP.

To current members thinking about joining other CSAs or taking a break from our CSA next year, please know that in the future you will not have first priority in membership, but will have second priority (after current members but before never before members). I’m bringing this up because this summer several former members contacted us literally begging to be able to get membership in our 2011 season. Keep in mind, however, that it is easier to get a membership at our Chesterfield distribution center.

On a final word, Pennington members please do not switch your pick-up day on account of inclement weather. On Saturday, October 2nd, the distribution center was full of members who switched their pick up days due to rain a few days prior. It is hard on our staff to manage the volume of members day switching and inclement weather is an inconvenience, not an emergency, and therefore not a good reason for day switching. Thanks for understanding.

REMINDERS
- Please remember to bring your own bags to reuse at the farm, including the little produce bags.
- Please, no pets at our farms, including leaving them in your car while you get your produce. (Please read your Handbook for more information.)
- In Pennington, please do not park at the farm if you are recreating in the Watershed’s reserve or on the Hopewell Lawrence Trail. Instead, park in their ample parking areas.