Woodbridge Farm is Changing Hands

There's a big change coming for the Grand Street CSA in 2012 that you should be aware of: our farmers for the past four years, Julia and David (and Heather), are moving on from Woodbridge Farm and handing the farm over to another couple.

It was a difficult year for Julia and David -- he took a job in Delaware to help with the family finances, and she gave birth to their second son in March. The result, in Julia's own words, was that she was "not able to fulfill my obligations on any level." So she's moving to join her husband and bring the family back together. She wrote to us earlier this month, saying, "while this was probably the most difficult decision a farmer can be asked to make, our departure from Woodbridge Farm should be for the good of both the farm and ourselves."

(And Heather, it should be noted, who was managing the farm this year and delivering our shares every Tuesday, is also moving on -- getting married, in fact.)

Woodbridge Farm will be handed over to Max and Kerry Taylor, experienced farmers from CSA farms in Massachusetts. Their expectation is to continue working the farm for our CSA, but before we make that commitment there are a few steps we need to take. First, Just Food will be talking to Max and Kerry to make sure they fit into the CSA in NYC program. Second, the core group from our CSA will meet with Max and Kerry to make sure that they are aware of the issues we have had the past two seasons, and to make sure we all get along. Third, we will want to schedule a meet-the-farmer earlier than usual to make sure our members are fully involved before making the decision to join again in 2012.

So there will be lots more details about all of this as we move forward, hopefully with a clear path set before the end of the year. In the meantime, we hope you're keeping your CSA herbs watered and sunned, and we hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Oh, one more thing -- if anyone is interested in joining the CORE GROUP, please write back and let us know. With these changes coming up, we would welcome some help keeping the CSA running.

Thanks!

Notes from Woodbridge, After Irene

I'm quoting in full from Woodbridge Farm's Facebook page, because there have been a lot of questions about how they weathered last week's storm:

Hope everyone has made it through last week's storm okay... We are receiving emails and notes from fellow farmers who have lost almost everything, and the stories and pictures of the devastation to crops and livestock in some areas are shocking. We are thankful here that we sustained no serious damage, and that all animals and people are safe.

We have been out of power for almost a week, and are just getting back online. Luckily, here at the farm, we have a generator that enables us to keep our meat frozen and cheese properly stored so that a storm like this doesn't take out an entire season's worth of work. It does, of course, put a large and unexpected dent in our budget, but we are thankful that the year's work of hay stacking, milking, pasture set-up, cheese making, and especially, the sacred lives of our valuable animals have not gone to waste.

Our entire farm staff has been working incredibly hard, coming to work for harvests, especially last Tuesday, from dark homes, without showers, flushing toilets, hot meals, or laundry. Despite living in powerless homes all week, our apprentices, harvest helpers, and staff have showed up every morning, still ready to go.

Here at the farm, most damage has been relatively minimal. We have many large trees down on the pastures, knocking down fences and making areas unsafe for cattle, but all of our animals survived unscathed, and buildings and infrastructure sustained relatively little damage. Despite being so close to local rivers and streams, we had no flood damage in the fields and most of our crops just looked a little wind-worn.

The crop sustaining the most damage in the field were the tomatoes, so expect that their season will be ending very soon. We were already seeing blight on the plants, although they looked as if some healthy new growth might have continued for a few more weeks. But the already weakened plants did not survive the harsh winds very well and seem to be loosing their steam.

Luckily, we also managed to get many other fruit crops out of the field in an early harvest to prevent more serious damage, including a great-looking winter squash crop. Judging by the looks of the winter squash field after the storm, we are lucky we did.

We were glad to hear that NYC also survived relatively unscathed, and hope the same is true for all of you.

Thanks for your patience and well-wishes as we weathered the power and internet loss and started to clean up the farm.

From Woodbridge: Share Discrepancies and First Fruits!

A nice, long answer from Heather::

Hi CSA Members!

It seems that there are some grumbles and frustrations going around about some of these delicious tempting first fruits only going full share members so I wanted to send out some communication to help the whole community understand what's going on with this.

As a technical 'half share' member myself I can say that my eyes too have been longingly following the red globes gracing the baskets of full share members as they collect their vegetables here at the farm. That wonderful season of color and diversity and juicy fruit is almost upon us and we are all wishing we had more and more!

Right now, we are just starting to see fruit ripen on our zucchini plants in the field and on our tomatoes in the greenhouse. There are two reasons why there is not very much right now.

The first reason is that when the plants first start to develop, there is never much fruit. The first fruiting is oh-so-exciting, but is usually just 1-2 at at time from each plant. Once they get their juices flowing and the sun starts heating up, things start to progress much more rapidly and we hope to see much more ripening together at the same time. They're just practicing right now, gearing up for the height of the season.

Secondly, we plant these things in succession. So only half of our zucchinis are actually producing ripe fruit now. The other half are flowering and tiny fruits are just starting to fill in. Also, some varieties come in faster than others. So of the half that are actually producing ripe fruit, two of those varieties (out of six) are still not quite there yet. Soon they will catch up, and by the time they do, the other half of plants will be fruiting as well. This is when we start to have enough for everyone to have some (and hopefully plenty!).

Similarly, we are just getting tomatoes now from the greenhouse. We have about 200 plants in there now that are producing fruit, while we have over 500 tomato plants in the field. These too are beginning to flower, and shape fruit, but it hasn't quite ripened yet. Once we are able to harvest from these plants (over 12 varieties all together!) the harvest will be much more substantial.

When we just have a very little amount, like the last two weeks, there is sometimes not even enough to give one tomato or zucchini to each half share, especially since there are so many more half shares than full. We have also heard from you in the past that 1 tomato or 1 zucchini is not too helpful in making a meal. So we're trying to give what we do have to the CSA somehow, and right now that means just sending to full shares. We always try to make up for that extra vegetable by sending an even amount of something else (note that this week for example everyone got the same amount of lettuce.... last week, peas).

I know it hurts! I am jealous of those full shares too! But please be patient, as we are working with the inflexible mysteries of nature and they are just gearing up to give us all some love.

Thanks,
Heather

News from Woodbridge, Week 7

Woodbridge Farm is expecting to send us:

Lettuce (or possibly salad greens)
Swiss Chard
Cabbage
Peas
Fresh Garlic
Herbs (dill or basil)
and probably some extras for full shares from our fruiting crops that are just starting to produce: zucchinis or tomatoes.
Don't worry, there will be much fruit to come for all shares soon, farm blessings willing!

Heather notes on Facebook that the tomatoes are from the greenhouse, just a small prelude to what should be coming later this month from the field. She also writes about the nutrient density course that she and Julia have been following this summer and what that means for our kale, and about the importance of a living soil cover, like rye and clover, in keeping the crops healthy.

Notes from Woodbridge: Fruits and Flowers

Farmer Heather writes on Woodbridge Farm's Facebook page:

Our fields are now full of bright flowers: the snowy white dusting of pea flowers, tiny yellow stars on dark green tomato vines, and brilliant splaying orange on the zucchini and summer squash. The sunset-orange-colored zucchini blossoms are bigger than my hand!

And flowers... mean fruit! We have an abundant crop of peas flowing in, tomatoes and peppers just beginning to form, and zucchinis stretching out from the base of those fantastic blossoms.

Today's shares should include:

lettuce
salad greens
peas
kale
swiss chard
basil
scallions

and possibly:
garlic scapes
salad turnips


There's also a scary story about a pesky groundhog.

See you later!

Week 4: Notes from Woodbridge Farm

Here's what Woodbridge Farm's Facebook page tells us today:

Shares this week will include:
lettuce
salad greens
garlic scapes
napa cabbage
sugar snap peas
and herbs (dill and oregano most likely)

There was a request to share more about what varieties we grow of different crops, what you're looking at in your shares. Since there is sometimes a mix, we'll just share some information here you can maybe match to what you're seeing at home!

The peas are sugar snap peas, they can be eaten raw or cooked in a stir fry, they are sweet and juicy.

Salad greens are a mix of a dozen or so lettuce and mustard green varieties, including things like romaine, red leaf lettuce, kale, tatsoi, mizuna, and many others.

We grow German White and German Red garlic, so that's where our scapes are coming from.

We'll have napa cabbage this week from two different varieties (though they are quite similar): Rubicon and Bilko, the Bilko is a slightly darker green, while the Rubicon is supposed to have a slightly sharper tang. Napa cabbage is what is traditionally used to make kimchi, and will store just above freezing with high humidity for a month or two.

Find out more about lettuce varieties on Facebook.

News from Woodbridge Farm

Everyone came together this weekend to put all of our tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, summer squash, cucumbers, winter squash, and basil into the ground! We had several volunteers, and everyone had an important piece of the puzzle! Making deep holes over and over again crouched down with a trowel or planting cosmos and zinnias to mark the borders of each different variety of crops. Someone was pounding 8 foot stakes into the ground to support the trellising (not an easy task for some shorties like us! but we're ambitious about how big those crops will be this year!) and others following a dirt-smudged map to sort our 19 different varieties of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant into their places. We trellised tomatoes, laid big black blankets of tarping down for winter squash, watered watered watered, breathed in the sweet summer smell of basil in our hands, and tenderly untangled eager cucumbers from each other as we put them in the ground. We are ready for summer!!

Read more on Woodbridge Farm's Facebook Notes.

Farm Update: Busy Farmers

We are very busy these days trying to get the field ready for planting! It is that early spring dance between wet and dry, where we check the weather report 7 times a day and change our to-do list as often as the weather report changes (which for the last week has been about every 1/2 hour).

But tomorrow we will start planting!!

Read more at Woodbridge Farm's Facebook notes.

Notes from Woodbridge Farm

We have germination!

This week we have onions, scallions, and tomatoes sprouting up in the greenhouse! It feels like the season has really begun now, even if the work has never stopped. Walking down the hill at midday when the door to the greenhouse is open, you can see this glimmer of green across the table tops! The onions were the first to come up and are finally popping straight up. We had some worries over the weekend as the onions began showing signs of dampening-off disease, a mold that can grow and suffocate the new plants when there is too much moisture and not enough sunny days to air out the soil. Since we had so much rain and clouds over the weekend, the first hints of that white fuzz began to appear. But with the sun these last few days, they have dried up and are doing great.

Read more on Woodbridge Farm's Facebook Notes.

(And if you're into it, friend them ... and friend us too.)

Winter Greetings from Woodbridge Farm

We got this email from Woodbridge Farm and wanted to make sure we passed it along:

Dear CSA Members,

We hope you all enjoyed a happy holiday season.

We are writing to you this winter full of appreciation for your loyalty and support during the past season, filled with immense challenges and sparse yields.

As you can imagine, we are in the middle of an exciting planning season, inspired, as always, by experience and new books. Given the experience of last summer, we have been working out major adjustments for the upcoming season, starting already late last summer. We are confident that we have developed solid solutions to prevent major issues such as the water shortage from happening again. We are going to go into more detail below on how we are going to grow our vegetables this coming season, and what decisions we have made to secure the quality and quantity of delicious, farm fresh, organic produce.

In this newsletter, we are going to give you a general update of what is happening at Woodbridge Farm, then recap the challenges we found ourselves confronted with in the 2010 growing season. And finally, we will go into the details of the upcoming season: how we are going to grow our vegetables and which crops you can expect in 2011.

What is new at Woodbridge Farm?

As we are entering our 6th year here at Woodbridge Farm, there are a lot of exciting changes happening. I am expecting to give birth to our family’s 2nd child in early March. We are excited to have brought on board Heather DeWolf as our new field manager.

After helping to get this farm on its feet for the past five years, David now left his job as one of Woodbridge Farm’s managers to further his career in the banking world and to provide more financial security to our growing family.

In our annual meeting with the owners and directors of Woodbridge Farm - Anne Bingham and her family - we decided that it will make most sense for the next few years to focus our efforts on our two most financially and farm-systemically relevant operations: the vegetable production and the dairy and cheese production. This will mean that we won’t raise any chickens or pigs in 2011. We apologize to the pork and egg lovers, but it makes a lot of sense financially as well as labor-wise, especially this year with a newborn and the need to restructure all the work that David used to do.

Review of the 2010 Growing Season

While agriculture is always hard work and always a confrontation with unexpected challenges, such as floods or droughts, pests and broken equipment, the past year brought us an extraordinary accumulation of such. Because Southeastern Connecticut experienced an unusually dry year with minimal rainfall, there was hardly sufficient water to keep the grass on our pastures alive, and our irrigation pond at the Gadbois Field dried up. At the same time, we had problems with our overhead irrigation system (a traveling sprinkler system design to roll itself up – but failed to do so) in our Bailey Field location and had thus moved most summer crops to the Gadbois location. Now we had two fields with minimal water supply. In addition to this we encountered a severe crab grass infestation at Gadbois Field, which was swallowing our crops alive until we finally got financing for the appropriate piece of equipment to take care of it. Growing intensive crops in two different locations added logistical problems and transportation challenges.

Adding to all of this, we were lacking a strong work force. We found ourselves with a group of apprentices with very questionable motives to farm and even less motivation to learn how to perform tasks efficiently. One aspect of large scale vegetable production is that timing is absolutely crucial –in other words if you don’t get a bed of carrots hoed today, next week it will take you at least twice as long, and meanwhile the carrots will not be able to grow.

Everybody who was a member of our farm last year knows all too well what the consequences of all this were: very low yields, small, often misshaped vegetables, as well as off-flavors in some crops.

The 2011 Vegetable CSA

So, we are off into a new season, and I can say that we are truly optimistic, excited and confident.

We have learned a lot of lessons from the past season, and have been able to make clear decisions that will help us prevent similar scenarios in the future and continuously improve both yield and quality.

As the whole farm centralizes our production, we are also embracing a more focused vegetable growing operation. We have come to believe that a more consolidated field plan will allow us to focus intently on plant care and maintenance, producing higher quality, more abundant vegetables, rather than spreading our operation out where it is harder to provide needed attention. So first of all, we are moving all of our vegetable production back to the Bailey Fields. This will allow us to utilize a deep and secure well, which is deep enough to be unaffected by seasonal climate changes. This decision will also alleviate the need to travel back and forth to a far away field.

We are going to focus on the staple crops and slightly reduce the variety we offer . The crops that we are discontinuing either yield unsubstantial amounts (hot peppers, shallots, edible flowers), or are extremely costly and labor-intensive to grow (celery) or to harvest (beans). We hope that eliminating these crops will allow us to grow more delicious favorite staples in greater abundance. Please see below for a complete list of crops offered in 2011.

We are going to use an integrated system of drip irrigation and plastic mulch with grass strips in between the beds. This system will allow us to:

• supply adequate water at all times, without wasting water lost through evaporation, common in overhead irrigation systems
• mulch instead of continuously hoeing or tractor cultivating the soil. This will leave the soil life undisturbed and highly functional
• use grass strips in between the beds to allow for a permanent vegetative cover, which builds soil rather than allowing for erosion
• reduce the use of tractors and thus the use of diesel fuel
• use different colors of mulching material. Black plastic  adds heat to the soil and thus benefits heat loving crops, while white plastic can be used in summer lettuce production to keep the soil cool.

And last but not least, we are implementing the Nutrient Density approach to growing organic produce, in addition to our organic and biodynamic certification. There is a wonderful website featuring great short educational videos highlighting some key aspects of this scientifically thorough, inspiring, and supportive approach to farming (www.realfoodcampaign.org). Visit the website to see for yourselves how excited we are by this philosophy to produce the best produce for both taste and nutrition, support the natural life cycle of plants to give farmers less disease and pest problems, and conserve the earth’s precious resources of vital and alive soil.

The goal of the Nutrient Density approach is to ensure the highest quality of organically produced crops that are loaded with nutrients, and to provide the consumer with tools to verify the presence of those nutrients themselves.

At the same time, by addressing underlying nutrient deficiencies, particularly of micro nutrients such as zinc, copper or manganese, the health of the plant will improve and allow resistance to diseases and pests, producing more fruit for a longer period of time.

Thus we will be able to ensure adequate quantity of vegetables to our CSA members while simultaneously and continuously improving the quality, taste and appearance of the produce. In particular, we are hoping to successfully resolve the issues that we have encountered in the past by producing:

• properly shaped cucumbers
• larger broccoli heads
• larger peppers and eggplants
• higher yields of all fruiting crops
• better tasting radishes, turnips and summer salad greens.

This is an exciting season for us, loaded with new inspiration and supported by excellent consultation from Dan Kittredge and the Real Food Campaign.

Finally, we are striving this season to develop and sustain closer connections to you, our CSA members. In order to foster a more intimate understanding of the farm that feeds you, we will be writing weekly updates throughout the season. We hope to share events and news from the farm, as well as information about that week’s harvest. During more relaxed times in the season, we hope to share more detailed stories and discussions, while the super busy summer months might just provide a quick hello! Look for this update on our Facebook page: facebook.com/woodbridgefarm. Feel free to send us questions and comments!

Crops, we are growing in 2011:

Basil, beets, boc choy, broccoli, cabbage, carrots,  chinese cabbage (napa), cucumbers, dill, eggplant, garlic, kale, leeks, lettuce heads, onions, parsley, parsnips,  peas, peppers (sweet/bell), potatoes, radishes, salad greens, scallions, swiss chard, tomatoes, turnips, winter squash, zucchini.

Have a wonderful, cozy winter!

Julia and Heather
Your farmers at Woodbridge Farm

"Know Your Food!"
Julia and David Smagorinsky
Woodbridge Farm LLC
30 Woodbridge Road
Salem, CT 06420
phone: (860) 531-8090
e-mail: woodbridgefarm@sbcglobal.net
www.woodbridgefarmonline.com

Core Meeting with the Farmers

Several of the CSA Core members — those of us who help to organize the CSA — were able to meet with Farmer Julia earlier this month to go over our survey responses and to start making plans for 2011.

Farmers Heather and Julia from Woodbridge Farm.

Farmer Heather also joined us — she's been working at Woodbridge Farm for two years and will be taking on a greater role next year growing the vegetables while Julia hopes to spend more time overseeing the general health of the farm and problem solving specific issues.

They'll be working with a program this year called the Real Food Campaign which will provide scientific analysis of their soil and veggies to help the farmers produce high vitamin and mineral content food. The analysis will tell them what nutrients they need to add to the soil, with the goal of improving the quality of their crops.

Last year's irrigation problem put on a strain on their entire crop. Julia and Dave rented a field from a nearby farmer, who told them that when he used to farm those fields, he used the pond on his land for irrigation. Unknown to all, the pond had filled in with sediment quite a lot since then, so they found themselves to be basically pumping mud at some point, and had already done quite a lot of damage to the crop by the time the problem was discovered. They tried to salvage what they could, but as we know, results were poor. The difficulty of managing this second farm impacted their ability to keep their own land maintained, and the overall crop suffered greatly.

The solution for 2011 is quite simple: they will not be renting the extra field this year. In addition to the water problem, it stretched their labor resources too far to have to go off site on a regular basis. Their own land has a very deep well with which they have had no problems, and they are adding a drip tape irrigation system to their fields. Overall, their hope is that refocusing on less land will bring a better yield overall and bigger and more nutritious vegetables.

The other major problem from 2010 that we were able to discuss was the many late deliveries. Julia acknowledged that some staffing issues on the farm made for their Tuesdays inefficient, and expressed confidence that this year's hires would be better at simply getting the truck packed in time for Dave to make the long trip to New York. We made it clear that we are very reluctant to start distribution any later than 5:00 since there are several CSA members for whom even 5:00 is already too late.

We did agree to create a better system for informing all members when traffic unavoidably delays Dave's arrival, including a way to get shares to members who are unable to come back to distribution. And Julia agreed that she could get someone at the farm to email us the share breakdown before Dave shows up so that the whiteboard and labels for the veg bins can be setup in advance, allowing distribution to start much faster once Dave does arrive.

Finally, we agreed that there needs to be a better effort all around to communicate farm issues to the CSA members. Julia's emails are often very informative, but we get too few of them during the season. But also, when Julia sent the core an email last summer about their irrigation problem, the Core members did not do a good enough job getting that information out to our members. We'll be using the website more, sending more emails to members, and the farm will get more information to us (possibly with their own Facebook page).

We'll have an update from Julia in January about what crops they plan on growing in 2011 — they are already planting in the greenhouse.

Finally, a bit of cheese news: cheese will continue to be a similar (small) number of varieties, that's just all they're set up for right now. We'll make sure to get better descriptions of those cheeses, though, so everyone knows exactly what they're eating.

Woodbrige Pork Coming this Fall

Woodbridge Farm has let us know that their pork shares will soon be available again, a little earlier than the past two years.

Woodbridge Farm also raises heritage pigs. These animals are fed certified organic grain, supplemented by vegetables from our garden and whey from our cheese making process. They enjoy 2 acres of woods as their home and root and sleep as they are naturally meant to.

Their "Mini Pork Share" for $150 will be made up approximately of the following cuts and weights:

• Pork Chops - 3 lbs
• Country Style Ribs - 2 lbs
• Sausage (hot, mild or breakfast) - 2 lbs
• Shoulder Roast - 3.5 lb
• Ham Steaks - 3 lbs
• Bacon - 3 lbs

Please let Dave and Julia know directly if you want a share by emailing them at woodbridgefarm@sbcglobal.net. Payment can be made at the time the pork is delivered.

Distribution dates should be Oct. 5 and Oct. 26.

And remember, there are also Woodbridge Farm beef shares available. Sign up here.

Update from the Farm

David and Julia just sent us this update:

Dear CSA Members,

Thank you so much for your support and patience and your words of encouragement throughout the past weeks of slim harvests. It is time to give you an update on how things developed since our last e-mail in which we had shared with you our trouble with the irrigation.

We have good news in that we have been able to supply an abundance of water to our fall crops including: lettuce, pac choy, chinese cabbage, kale and swiss chard, tatsoi and broccoli, turnips, salad greens, radishes, carrots and beets.

We did have to abandon a good third of one of our fields on which we were growing all the cucurbits (squash, cucumbers, winter squash and pumpkins) in order to be able to supply enough water to the fall crops and the remaining summer crops with the small well we are now using - this decision was relatively easy since the plants had been heavily impacted by the lack of water over the summer. As a consequence of this drought, the winter squash yield this year is not very good. Equally impacted is the potato yield - which is probably going to come to an end soon.

The recent cold nights took a toll on the field tomatoes which have slowed down production to almost nothing. We have a beautiful second succession of beans that is yielding abundantly at the moment and should continue to do so for the next three weeks if the weather holds up and we don't get any early night frosts.

So you should expect to see more cooking and salad greens as well as root crops going into fall - but keep in mind that the usual basics of potatoes and winter squash might be missing this fall.

Thank you again for your continued support!

"Know Your Food!"

Julia and David Smagorinsky
Woodbridge Farm LLC
30 Woodbridge Road
Salem, CT 06420
phone: (860) 531-8090
e-mail: woodbridgefarm@sbcglobal.net
www.woodbridgefarmonline.com

About the low yield at our CSA

Email to members 9/4/10:

The last few weeks have seen a decreasing yield in our CSA shares, culminating last week in what was probably our smallest take-home in three years. Farmer Julia provided us with a detailed explanation of their challenges this year with irrigation and water supply, problems highlighted by the general lack of rain this summer. You can read her full letter on our web site, but the gist of it is not good news -- the pond that Woodbridge Farm has relied on for irrigation has practically dried up, and they expect sparse pick-ups for at least another few weeks.

Julia is hoping for better results for their fall crops, as they've been given permission to tap into a neighbor's well. We've asked for an update on their progress, and will post that to the web site also as soon as we receive it.

It's worth noting that CSAs were invented precisely to help growers withstand the natural unpredictability of a small farm, as well as to provide amazingly fresh produce with no chemicals to consumers. That is, we ask that you patiently take the bad with the good. Our CSA provides Julia and Dave with the kind of economic security family farmers have never had; CSAs in NYC and around the region have helped re-energize family farms across New England; in particular, the movement has encouraged more small farmers to grow organically, which leaves their crops more susceptible to the vagaries of weather and disease. In other words, we hope there's more to your CSA membership than the desire for tasty tomatoes.

We try not to get too mission-preachy here at the Grand Street CSA, but when all you get to take home is a pile of purslane, maybe a big-picture pep-talk is in order.

(Speaking of purslane ... we posted some information about what you can do with the stuff to our web site, and thought it was a good time to remind you of all the veggie tip sheets from Just Food. There's even one for purslane.)

Please feel free, as always, to email us your comments and complaints, or to talk to the core member at distribution on Tuesday. And if you have time in your busy day for a quick rain dance, Julia and Dave and the salad greens will appreciate it.

CSA Yields

Important news from the farm:

We hope all of you are enjoying the vegetables we have been providing so far this year. For those of you who have been members from the beginning or if this is your second season with us you may have noticed a decline in yield of some of our crops like salad greens, lettuce heads and cooking greens as well as the size of our peppers and cucumbers. We have been been facing some different challenges this year especially with irrigation and water supply. We wanted to update you as to what we have been encountering and share our concern for potentially lower yields in the weeks to come.

This year we had implemented a new system on a new field we call,"Gadbois Field". The system is drip irrigation which utilizes drip tape the runs the length of each bed that we grow in and as the word implies water drips out of the tape to irrigate our plants. The drip tape and bed is covered with plastic mulch to stop weed growth and the paths in between each bed is mowed to keep everything accessible for harvest and a healthy environment for growth. The water source is a pond adjacent the field that is pumped to the drip tape that runs up and down 60 beds (about 4 acres). We noticed about 2 months ago that our veggies were not growing as expected and started a comprehensive fertility program using fish emulsion and calcium, and irrigated more often. Still something was not right and as we were planting our fall crops last week we discovered the answer when the pond went dry during an irrigation attempt. It became apparent that we had been irrigating less water then needed by clogging up the pumps filtration lines with sludge from the "near" bottom of the pond. This is not good news as what has not received enough water during this period are a good amount of the vegetables we had planned for the next 4 weeks. So expect some sparse pick ups in the near future.
For the fall crops we have hope that a well the neighboring farmer agreed to let us use will pull us through the remainder of the season. It has only been 3 days since our discovery and that we have been using the well. It is not a deep enough well to irrigate all 60 beds at once so we have started with 3 at a time and will be adding a bed at a time until we find the wells "breaking point" and irrigate as often as we must to save as many crops as we can.

Rain...Rain...Rain!!! We need rain. We have had only a few rain falls since May which plays into our struggle greatly. Both the pond and the well is dependent on rain fall.

As all of you are part of our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program we do greatly appreciate your understanding and continued commitment through all the good and challenging times the farm has had in the past and the struggle we are encountering currently. Thank You!



"Know Your Food!"

Julia and David Smagorinsky
Woodbridge Farm LLC
30 Woodbridge Road
Salem, CT 06420
phone: (860) 531-8090
e-mail: woodbridgefarm@sbcglobal.net
www.woodbridgefarmonline.com

More Chances for Beef Shares this Year

If you missed our grass-fed beef sign-up this spring, you'll have a few more chances to participate. Woodbridge Farm will be providing us with beef over the next three or four months, and you can sign up whenever you have the urge. The order form below has the details:

First Cheese Coming with Veggies Tuesday

From Farmer/Cheesemaker Dave:

The first cheese will be our "Udderly Delicious," a washed rind cheese that is based on a French Tomme recipe. It's the softer of the two you tried during our last visit. We will then alternate between it and the "Cosmic Cow" which is based on a Gruyer recipe.

We will mix in other cheeses as they become available. We plan to make a camembert and a chaurce which are both classified as bloomy rind soft cheeses. Feta possibly down the road and Yogurt if you think folks wouldn't mind a non-cheese dairy item in the mix.

Update from the Farm

Julia from Woodbridge Farm writes:

The vegetables are looking beautiful, lush and green, and it appears that this spring a lot of leaf crops are exactly 10 days early. This means I am going to send a lot of lettuce and boc choys your way next week. There will also be some herbs and a mild salad greens mix with spinach, as well as kale and swiss chard.

On the dairy side of our operation, things are looking fabulous as well. The pastures are lush, cows and calves are happy and healthy, and we now finally have our official raw milk license.

See you all Tuesday!

Notes from Woodbridge Farm

Julia, from Woodbridge Farm, wrote in to give us some feedback on our feedback -- her response to our end-of-year survey:

"I would say, for us this has been the best season so far. There were certain issues with specific crops (see below) but overall we always had a good amount and variety of food available. There is of course always room for improvement, but with respect to the rainy season and the tomato-blight problem, we were not effected by either. A lot of other things happened on the farm: we finished the construction of the creamery, started to milk our cows and to make cheese. This is the other major component of our farm to enable us to become long term financially sustainable."

She was also able to respond, vegetable by vegetable, to the items we indicated we would like to see more of:

Sweet Potatoes
Although we planted them again this year, they unfortunately for the first time did not grow at all. I figure it was simply too cold. Also, we get a lot of damage through voles, who seem to love sweet potatoes, and through harvesting without adequate harvesting equipment. I can put that question out to the membership: do you care if the sweet potatoes are sometimes cut in half?

The other problem is that sweet potatoes want to be cured in 85F for 2 weeks, to enhance sweetness and storability. I have very limited capacities to do this.

Brussel Sprouts
Brussel sprouts are a late fall crop. They come in in late November and taste best after they experienced a first hard frost. This is really after the CSA has finished. The other problem is that the aphid pressure gets so strong in late fall, that I haven't been able to grow brussel sprouts successfully thus far.

Broccoli
I am very aware that broccoli is a favorite and considered a staple vegetable. For our situation it is actually very expensive to grow broccoli. It takes a lot of care, space, timely management, fertilizer, etc etc. And it only yields one proper head once. It is also a seasonal crop that grows in spring or in fall and gives you a harvest season of about 2 to 4 weeks each time. I have been working hard on improving the quality and quantity of our broccoli crop, and was actually extremely pleased with the results this year. I am not sure if I can substantially increase the supply in the future -- if we were to increase the quantity, it would increase the amount offered at those pickup weeks in which we already offer broccoli, but it would not increase the number of times when broccoli is offered (it simply does not produce anything for most part of the season). Please let me know if that is of any interest to you, and I can see what I can do.

Cauliflower
This is a crop that is even trickier to grow than broccoli, and after trying it for a couple of seasons I stepped back from it.

Cucumbers
Cucumbers (along with eggplants) were one of the crops severely impacted this year by the cool weather, as well as an abundance of pests of all kinds: beetles, voles, groundhogs etc etc - we are changing management practices next year, moving to a black plastic mulch system for all the heat loving crops (cucumbers, zucchinis, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, squash, this new system will also allow us to grow melons for the first time, which I am really excited about) - so hopefully this will solve most of the problems at once.

Spinach
For some reason, spinach is having an unusually difficult time in our fields. There appears to be a soil-borne fungus which wilts the leave before they can grow to any harvestable size. I have been trying every year, trying different varieties, supplementing with seaweed, etc etc but so far there has not been any reliable success - sorry, we'll keep trying, and hopefully we will find a solution

Scallions
We will have scallions again next year. We did plant them, but 80% never took, never started to grow. The only explanation I have for this phenomena is a crop rotation issue.

Eggplant
(see cucumbers above) - they will really love the added heat they get from the black plastic

Peas
Peas are very seasonal and are usually grown in spring. We grow a lot of peas for the amount of people we have available to harvest them all. It takes four people more than six hours to get through them all, and we have to do this twice a week. Considering the little market value peas have, it is actually quite unreasonable for us to grow them, but we do it anyhow, because everybody loves them so much. (This is the same for beans, the amount of time it takes to handpick peas and beans makes us completely incompatible with larger and more specialized farms that have mechanized harvesting systems.)

Onions
Both onions and leeks I am hoping to improve the quantity that we will be able to harvest in the coming year. So far we had very little turnout (the percentage of harvestable sized crops compared to the amount we planted has been very low.) I ran some trials on the leeks late in the season and was able to observe a very great response to foliar feeding with a seaweed extract. I will include these sprays in our management practices from now on and hopefully have much better results.

Leeks
(see above)

Tomatoes
We had a very good harvest of tomatoes this year (especially compared to all the problems the farms north and west of us had, who ended up with no tomatoes at all) - if you are looking for an earlier crop, I won't be able to supply that. Tomatoes grown in the field come in in mid August, Greenhouse tomatoes are 4 weeks earlier but we have very limited Greenhouse space. Unfortunately, the town doesn't really seem to support farming too much, so the second Greenhouse we build, we were never able to take into productive use, since the town did not allow us to put the plastic cover on it.

Beets
Beets are a riddle to me. Some germinate, some don't, some grow nice and large while the next one over stays really small. Why? I am not sure. I have a few hints to work with, namely application of lime at seeding, deeper seeding depth, earlier thinning (this is a real time constraint issue - maybe your CSA members can afford to come out to a volunteer beet thinning party?), possibly also seaweed extract application. Hopefully I will be able to solve this in the near future. I believe in addition to the normal riddle I experience growing beets, there was a problem of seed quality this year, the beets had extremely low germination rates.

Woodbridge Farm Wants YOU!

David and Julia are looking for volunteers to help mulch tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, and peppers during the weekend of June 6. If you'd like to get your hands dirty, email them for more details: woodbridgefarm at sbcglobal.net.