Week 14 Newsletter

The potato digger is fixed again and Johnny, Wouter, Mike, Jody and I picked up about 6,000 pounds on Saturday, while Cara and Luke tended the farmers market stand. The yield looks adequate (we are expecting about 30,000 pounds in total yield this year), with the early varieties greatly reducing our average yield. While the Adirondack Red potato has a pretty interior, its susceptibility to scab makes it a poor choice for our farm. The later potatoes like Keuka Gold and NY 129 (a new variety that has not been given a real name) have good resistance against scab and potato leafhopper. We also like Eva and NY 79 for a white potato. Next year we will be introducing another red potato named NorDonna which will replace Adirondack Red and we will try to get our hands on a supply of All Blue seed potatoes.
The winter squash harvest is completed (partly due to the great efforts of our member volunteers) and is stored in the barn. We set a record yield of 50,000 pounds. The onions, on the other hand, suffered from a bad infestation of thrips. The little bugs ate the leaves and reduced the yield dramatically. After giving out onions for a consecutive seven weeks, we only have about 3,000 pounds left. We gave out most of our onions because we do not have a good place to store them this year. In the past we have stored them with apples at a nearby orchard. Our neighbors don’t expect to turn their coolers on at all this year, as most apples will go directly from the field to the apple sauce factory.

The sweet corn has been very good this year. Some sections outyielded our conventional neighbors – who average about 300 bags per acre; now we are faced with a potentially heavy pressure from CEW (Corn Ear Worm). The CEW moth flies in with fall storms from the South. They do not overwinter in New York, although the line below which they can overwinter keeps moving north. Please inspect the tips of the ears in your share this week for a worm and remove it; fortunately they do not affect the rest of the ear like the ECB – European Corn Borer – (which is currently absent in our traps). We always scout for insects and we have seen a greatly reduced number of insects this fall. We wonder if the excessively wet conditions created poor conditions for reproduction. The birds and the raccoons have also been less active than any other year.

All our subtropical vegetables were delayed from the cooler than normal spring and summer conditions. All farmers in the Northeast experienced a much later than usual harvest of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. Some later plantings are loaded with fruit that refuse to ripen. By the time the tomatoes turn color, many plants succumb to disease pressure from Alternaria to Septoria and bacterial Canker. On a good note: We have an abundant crop of eggplant and this is the first year we did not lose it to Verticillium wilt. Verticillium is one of the many diseases we inherited from the previous farmer and it survives in the soil. This new variety of eggplant has some resistance to the disease, and between our cultural practices of using compost and biodynamic preparations, we nurse the plants through the initial infestation. This year the plants simply outgrew the early signs of infestation. Also, the low levels of ECB allow us to harvest plenty of peppers. The moth lays its eggs on the top of the pepper and the larvae create a little hole that allows water to run into the pepper, which causes the pepper to rot from the inside out. The sweet potatoes look healthy but they could use another two months of dry and hot weather; as there will be little chance of that, we will be expecting a much lower yield than usual.

The fall crop of broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower looks promising although they were all planted later than usual. The wet weather delayed the planting time and this will affect harvest date and possibly total yield. The Brussels sprouts are affected by Alternaria leafspot and it is too early to tell if it will affect the quality of the sprouts. Don’t have high expectations for this crop, but we aim to have at least one or two stalks ready by Thanksgiving.
The parsnips, beets, and carrots look great; this took a valiant effort on the part of the crew, as they spend many hours weeding on their hands and knees. The weed pressure was very high this season – the wet soil conditions allowed every weed seed to germinate. We lost many plantings of greens and salad because we simply could not keep them free from weeds. As the ground dries up, we have a much greater control of the weeds and you can expect a regular supply of greens and salad to be part of your share again. The pigs have been very healthy this season, taking advantage of the space we have given them. The boys live segregated from the girls in different woods. None of the boys have been castrated this year. We are told that castration is a largely unnecessary procedure. We will find out if this procedure actually affects the flavor of the meat. We also separated the male and female sheep as those boys were not castrated either. The turkeys have been a success – though we were expecting large losses while they were young, we only lost a few birds. The only problem was that they could fly over our five-foot-tall fence, so we had to clip the feathers on one of their wings (this doesn’t hurt them, it is just like getting a haircut). The three steers are very happy and love the fertile pastures we provide them with.

Making hay was a challenge, but we only lost about 40 bales out of the 750 round bales we pressed this year. The remainder is of very high quality. We sold about 450 round bales at a reasonable return. One round bale weighs about 600 pounds, so we baled about 250 tons of hay and straw. We pressed about 60 rye straw bales, which were all used for mulch between the rows of eggplant, tomatoes, summer squash, peppers, and cucumbers. Some of our hay bales are also used for mulching between the crops. It is important that we only take the very early cutting of hay to prevent the mulch from containing any weed seed. Due to the use of hay over straw mulch – which depletes the soil of nitrogen – we find that the yield of our garlic was higher this year. This is greatly due to the increased fertility of the soil, as the hay acts both as mulch, soil conditioner, and fertilizer.

Many fields are, as usual, covered with a green manure crop. This year we are experimenting with Sudex, a plant closely related to Sorghum, as a means to combat the many soil-borne diseases on this farm. Some of the Sudex is more than six feet tall and will be worked under in the next few weeks. According to the Soil Health Team at Cornell, Sorghum may harbor greenbug (Schizaphis graminum), which in turn attracts lady beetles, lacewings, and other beneficial predatory insects. The green matter of the Sudex can also create a compound that kills off pathogens and harmful nematodes in the soil. At the least, we will be incorporating a massive amount of organic matter. After I succeed in mowing it down we will need the help of our neighbor’s chopper to hack the Sudex in little pieces so that we can work it into the soil. If we don’t chop it into tiny pieces, the eight-foot-tall stalks will quickly clog up our chisel plow that we use to plow the soil.As we review this year’s crops, our mind is starting to focus on next year’s as we are preparing the fields for next year’s production. Our next few weeks will be spent spreading compost, spraying the horn manure preparation, spreading lime, and seeding the fall cover crops on the many fields where the harvest has been completed.
~ Jean-Paul