Farm News: Week of Saturday, September 17, 2011

Picnic
Several of our members in Adams Morgan have planned a picnic for this Saturday. We sent out a separate email, but in case you didn’t see it…

     Members Potluck Picnic this Saturday

     Want to meet other CSA members? Share recipes and neighborhood news?

     When: September 17, 1:30 pm

     Where: Kalorama Park (nearest park from the truck in Adams Morgan)

     What to bring:  A dish or salad to share that contains CSA ingredients

•       A beverage
•       A blanket or lawn chair
•       Recipes (if you wish)

Organizing CSA members Carol, Dana and Michelle will bring plates, cups, utensils, napkins and a few lawn games.  See you there! (If it rains we will re-schedule for a later date)

[photo: jalapenos in the front garden this afternoon.]

Missed box policy
We posted this several months ago, but many still seem not to know how it works. If you miss your box pickup on Saturday, we bring it back to the farm, put it in our cooler, and bring it back to DC automatically the following Saturday, unless you tell us not to. You are charged for the box the week you order it, and the charge stands whether you ever come for it or not.

Flooded by Lee
Well, as we indicated might happen last week, we got hit by Tropical Storm Lee (geez, not even a real hurricane). From Sunday night until Tuesday night we received about 9 inches of rain. Last Wednesday morning when we were opening the store for you at 7 AM, the creek was over the road and most of the fields below the house, but not as high as any of our buildings or the high tunnels. (Whew!) We could not get out, and spent the day figuring out how our week’s schedule would need to change. It was pretty crazy. (There are pictures of the flood on our non-store “Tumblr” website, starhollowfarm.com.) The water came up pretty high — though not as high as Hurricane Ivan in 2004 — but was not really a threat to our home or buildings, just our crops.

Crops
Like Ivan, Lee came in the second week of September, our biggest market week of the year and a week or two before we’re ready to harvest our fall storage crops. We grow crops in several different areas: our front garden, the back garden, the herb garden, the greenhouse, the high tunnels (all of which are on “upper” ground), and then down lower in our bottom fields is where we grow our field crops, principally potatoes, winter squash, summer squash, cucumbers and tomatoes (sometimes with some odds and ends thrown in). Most of those crops were under water for 18 - 24 hours, and most of them didn’t do very well. While the water didn’t sweep anything away, it pounded the stems or vines or fruits, and then suffocated the roots, so that the plants all wilted and died within the next few days.

Losses

• Winter Squash: we had about half an acre of winter squash planted; 1000 acorn squash, 1000 butternut, 500 red kabocha, 500 gray kabocha, 500 buttercup, and about 200 delicata. It was all about 2 weeks away from being ripe enough to harvest. Unlike tomatoes, winter squash doesn’t ripen off the vine; it needs continued photosynthesis for ripening. Once the plants are dead, that’s it. We might try selling some of the pretty ones as decoratives at the market stand.
• Summer squash & cucumbers: these were just about done anyway, the flood just put a definitive end to them about a week early.
• Potatoes: this was what hurts the most, as potatoes are our biggest crop, in terms of sales, because they last so long and are eaten by so many people so regularly. We had about 8 varieties planted in 4 patches, a little under an acre. We had hand-harvested from several rows each week for the new potatoes you’ve been getting. But really we hadn’t taken even 10% of the total out there. Most of the plants were still growing, with green tops, which means the skins on the tubers haven’t “set” yet, the real definition of new potatoes. It seems that at least half of the potatoes rotted from being under water by the weekend. So far this week we have dug around by hand and today (Tuesday) with the tractor and found several rows that seem mostly okay, but here and there are rotten potatoes, and so we’re not sure that even the ones we picked up will last til the end of the week. And then there’s the fact that they’re still new potatoes, meaning that they won’t last in storage, so we’ll probably only be able to sell them for 2 or 3 weeks.
• Odds and ends: We had our field tomatoes, chile peppers, some bell peppers, and tomatillos down in the bottom fields this year also. We were able to harvest from them on Monday, but the plants were dying (ironically suffocating plants appear to be wilting, as they can’t get any air through their roots, when the reason was too much water) and this is manifest by the fruits getting soft prematurely. So what we harvested as okay Monday may be limp by Saturday when you get your orders.
• Celeriac: Our main planting was also down in the bottom fields and has drowned. We have a hundred or so plants in the front garden that are alive, but even plants there seem to be suffering from all the water (9 inches is a lot!)

We marked all of the items picked from out of the flooded fields as “Flood” in the store, so you’ll know they suffered, and maybe will make some allowances if they don’t hold up like you would normally expect.

What it means
I’m pretty devastated by this, but I’m also really tired from the year’s work and half glad it’s come to an early close. The hardest part is that we invested so much time and money to get those crops to within two weeks of being ready, only to lose them. Kind of makes me nauseous to think about. I’m only going into it this far here so that you can get a glimpse of how tenuous farming is! I feel like a big-time gambler that just lost. Does this mean you’ll all go hungry this winter? Doubtful. I have friends that didn’t lose crops to the flood, and so I imagine I’ll get potatoes and winter squash (we’re already getting butternuts from the Showalters) and celeriac from them, as it would just hurt us further if we abstained from doing that. We’re not the only ones that got hurt though. The Macks lost all their canteloupe and most of their broccoli. Other growers lost too. I’ve heard of one nearby farmer that lost 30 acres of tomatoes that were just ready to pick. Ouch. Maybe we were actually lucky!

[Photo: The tomato patch under water last Wednesday. The blue in the background is our irrigation line.]

Produce list. (As so much has changed, we are again getting some of the bagged greenhouse greens from the Martin’s greenhouse.)

• Fruit: peaches (possibly the last week), prune plums (the last week) and apples (Gala, Honey Crisp, Jonathan and McIntosh).
• Greens: rainbow chard, cress, dandelion, lettuce, microgreens mix, salad mix.
• Veggies: beans (green & Lima), carrots, sweet corn (almost over), cucumbers (the last salad/slicers, and English hothouse), eggplant, garlic, okra (almost over also), onions, peppers (green, red, Jalapeno, mixed chiles), new potatoes, shallots (seconds), tomatillos, tomatoes (heirlooms, standards, green fryers, plum & cherry), butternut squash.
• Mushrooms: No mushrooms until October.
• Herbs: basil, chives, cilantro, lovage, parsley, peppermint, rosemary, sage, savory (summer, winter), sorrel, spearmint, stevia, thyme. I didn’t have thyme (heh, heh, heh) to figure out the Herb Sampler pack this week… maybe next week.  We changed the basic herb portion to a small bunch for half the price of the regular, which we just left parsley as, as it usually sells well in that quantity. Also, we left the small size basil as it had been. We are now limited in basil so there’s no more big bags.
• Other food items: eggs (our hens are not able to keep up with demand these days, so we’re also going to get some free-range eggs from some other folks we know), cheese, preserves. Back are sweet garlic / dill pickles made by Mrs. Brechbill with their own ingredients. She also makes the fruit jams and decided it was time to raise the price.

Harvest Box contents
This week’s box contents are planned to be Five-Star lettuce, 2 white corn, Romano beans, red bell peppers, half-pint chile peppers, 2# mixed potatoes, a green and a red tomato, sprig of sage, one white nectarine, 2 peaches, 2 Daybreak Fuji apples.

CSA volunteers
Many thanks to Mike, Karen and Steve for their help handing out orders at the truck last week. We really appreciate it!

Thanks much for your support!
Randy, Chris & all at Star Hollow Farm

General farm info: starhollowfarm.com.
CSA-specific info: starhollowfarm.com/csa.
Online CSA store: store.starhollowfarm.com.

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