It has been another busy week here. We planted tomatoes on Memorial Day and cucumbers and cantaloupe on Wednesday. Until now, we've been nurturing the seedlings in the greenhouse so the day they go into the ground is always sort of exciting.  Liam has come up with a way of doing it solo but planting by hand is really a 2 person job with one person using the transplanter and the other carrying the plants and placing them inside. I'm getting used to the transplanter which is actually fun to use and is a little bit of a work out. Even in the heat, a farmer is usually happy at their task and may even be heard whistling while they work.

Construction on the deer fence has been completed and not a moment too soon. Now our attention is really on planting and preparing for share distribution. Next on the planting list are watermelons glorious watermelons, pac choi and lettuce. The work week is winding down for most of you but Saturdays tend to be our busiest day of the week this time of year. On the list for the weekend is weeding, seeding and preping the garden beds in the new herb garden. We also need to finish enclosing the fields with a new, mesh deer fence on our one open side.

We've reached our goal of 60 members and are just about FULL! We're looking forward to seeing our returning members and meeting the new ones. We're aiming to have our first pick-up the week of June 10th. It seems our member preferences are divided fairly evenly between Tuesday and Friday which makes share distribution easier. Our first items will be radishes, greens and green onions.

There's much to do! 

1. Buy small canopy tent for pick-up table (picking up from local Farmers Market vendor on Saturday)
2. Test well water.
3. Purchase food grade chlorine/test paper strips for rinsing greens.
4. Need 2 black boards or dry erase boards for listing weekly share quantities and posting weekly harvesting schedule for team members.
5. Wash new picking and storage baskets in preparation of first harvests.
6. Establish new wash stations for rinsing produce.
7. Temporary signage for those coming to our farm for the first time (still need to work on getting a permanent sign).
8. Need reusable, washable plastic table cloths for pick-up table.
9. Misc. supplies including rubber bands for bunching radishes, green onions, etc., plastic bags for produce, paper towels, what else am I forgetting?
10. Would love to find 2 picnic tables with separate benches for shareholders and farm team members! 

+ about 90 other things but this is a good start.

CALL FOR MEMBER INTRODUCTIONS! One way we will be introducing new members is through our blog. All members (returning as well as new) are invited to submit a brief, one paragraph introduction about themselves. This is a great place to mention professional fields, interests and hobbies, your favorite jersey fresh foods and the reason you joined a CSA. Please submit via email or our Contact Us page.

Announcing Appelget Farm Book Club
This is a book club in the most informal sense as there are no scheduled meetings. Instead, I will be announcing a few titles over the course of the growing season and encouraging anyone who is interested to read along. You will be invited to share comments but not required! Our first book is Organic Manifesto, How Organic Farming Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe by Maria Rodale. The paperback Edition is just $6 from Amazon. Who plans to read along with me?

This has been a big week for us. Work on our new deer fence has begun and not a moment too soon. We have a 2 member team working 12 hour days even through the pouring rain. Every day that passes without a fence, our fields are open to deer who would very much like to feast on our young plants. In a single night, a small herd of deer in our fields could do an unthinkable amount of damage so we are very eager to have the fence completed.  For those of you who pass by the farm often, the fence may seem strange at first - a formerly wide open expanse now enclosed. But without a fence, there can be no crops given the deer population in our area. A special thank-you to our team from J-Mar Fence in Lancaster County, PA for all their hard work!

Another special thank you to Sam and Roger for lending us both their team member and their tractor to till our new herb garden! This space was formerly the family's kitchen garden and it will always be my favorite little field. New this year - Members will be invited to pick their own herbs.

We are a couple weeks away from our first pick-up and hope to have radishes, green onions and lettuce to distribute. As we near our goal of 60 members, we are amazed at the response from the community! Almost all of our new members have come to us via recommendations from existing members, mentions in the local newspapers or word of mouth. Now it's time to start preparing for the share distributions that will begin next month. New this year - instead of boxed shares, we are going to invite members to select their own items. A list of available items will be posted along with quantities for both full and half shares. There will be plastic bags available for your produce, however, you will want to bring something larger to carry your bounty home.

One of our new members recently asked about recipe sharing. All members are encouraged to share their favorite recipes and methods for preparing farm produce. This sharing is a wonderful component of a CSA! Please forward recipes to our farm email and I will post on our blog. Moving forward, I'll work to organize by item and season in an easy index. Speaking of recipes, here's our favorite recipe for broccoli salad in time for Memorial Day Weekend!

Broccoli Salad for a crowd

Dressing (Mix well and refrigerate a couple of hours before it will be served so the flavor of the dressing mixes well with the vegetables.)

1 cup sugar
1 large jar of mayonnaise - about 4 cups (Not Light)
4 tablespoons cider vinegar
salt and pepper to taste (optional)

Salad
6 heads broccoli (cleaned and cut up in bite size pieces with harder part of stem removed)
2 large onions, chopped
2 cups golden raisins
2 cups bacon crumbles

Mix all ingredients together and refrigerate.  Pour over the salad and mix thoroughly before serving.

[Just a side note:  If you like the flavor and texture of nuts in your salad, (and if no one is allergic to nuts), you can add either peanuts, sunflower nuts or even cashews to taste.  The nuts do tend to soften and get mushy if you have leftovers to save.]

Have a Great Weekend!

This is not just a salad. This is a plate of hand-picked microgreens. While thinning the lettuces and beets recently, Kevin set aside each perfect little leaf for me. Then triple washed and bagged! I am still thinking about this fresh, slightly bitter delicacy. The average crop-time for most microgreens is 7–10 days from seeding to harvest. Despite their small size, microgreens can have very strong flavors, though not as much so as full-sized greens. These are not easy to find. One might try fine restaurants, a rare purveyor at a local market or marrying a farmer.

Happy Mother's Day to our Mothers and all the mamas who read our little blog. Hope you all had a nice weekend. Over the past few days, we distributed approx. 30 pounds of fresh asparagus to "early bird" members, first registrants of the 2013 season. We apologize for the short notice given regarding availability - the lovely stalks seem to arrive overnight! Many thanks to Charlie, Kevin and Liam for harvesting. I am happy eating asparagus morning, noon and night and particularly enjoy roasted asparagus with eggs. Add toast with raspberry jam and you have the best Spring breakfast imaginable. 

The recent rain was much needed, but it did a little bit of damage in the field. Water carved a tiny river through our peas and flooded the onions. It looks like we only lost a couple of pea plants and the onions have already begun to dry out so hopefully there is no real loss there. To avoid similar damage in the future, we need to come up with a short-term solution to help slow the flow of water such as placing hay bales between the rows. Longer term, we plan to plant grasses between the rows which should help considerably.

If you've driven by the farm recently, you may have noticed the rows of black plastic that now line our fields. In our early years, we weeded mostly by hand and hoe but with our production increasing we have transitioned to plastic mulch.  Plastic mulch isn't mulch at all - think instead of a thin sheet of plastic running down over a row of dirt or a "bed". The idea is to starve the would-be weeds of sunlight while allowing the crops to poke up out of the layer of plastic and thrive. We don't use round-up or other chemical week killer but if left to grow unchecked, weeds would overtake the fields and strangle the crops. One of the main benefits of plastic mulch is the savings in labor costs for hand weeding. Plastic mulch also helps to conserve water and improve yields overall.

The big news is that we had a well drilled! Up until now, we've been using municipal or city water to irrigate our fields which was expensive. As we look to ramp up our production, we quickly realized that we needed another source of water. Initially, we considered using the pond across the street but soon saw that digging a well was the optimal solution. (The pond likely contains run off of variable suburban sources including lawn care chemicals, etc.) Unfortunately, while once a mainstay of farm irrigation, ponds are now often contaminated with chemicals and bacteria. Thank you to the team from Pickwick Drillers who did a great job. Kevin and Liam are working to hook up our irrigation using a drip tape system. So, we cast our shiny penny down 65 feet and wish to make this farm a success! An eyes closed, hand holding, feet planted firmly in the dirt kind of wish. Here goes nothing. Or everything. Depending on how you look at it. 

And lastly, a special thank you to Gravity Hill Farm for recently hosting us at their Spring Farmers Dinner. Pam Flory served up delicious pizzas from their brick-oven and the girls are still talking about getting to hold the baby chicks in the barn! A great evening spent with outstanding NJ farmers. It always amazes me how dedicated and generous farmers are. From lending equipment to words of advice, we are incredibly thankful to those who have welcomed us into the farming community.

NPR recently celebrated National Coffee Week, during which they invited listeners to comment via social media on where they like to pick up their morning joe. I didn't have a chance to submit my entry but the project made me smile. My favorite place to enjoy my coffee is in my sun-filled kitchen. I brew my coffee using my french press and if Liam has time, he'll grab a cup before starting in on the day's project list. He has an hour commute through Princeton at rush hour - this guy deserves a good cup of coffee!

It's been a fun and busy few weeks here. Onions, potatoes and peas have been planted in the fields. As have rows of broccoli and cauliflower. Our greenhouse is packed with thriving seedlings and Kevin and Liam are busy preparing new beds today.

Last month, Kevin attended a course on Managing the Nitrogen Cycle for Organic Vegetables at Duke Farms. He learned about nitrogen soil amendments that are approved for use in organic operations and reviewed our soil test results with Rutgers Extension Soil Fertility Expert Joe Heckman. I recently attended a one-day course titled On-Farm Food Safety presented by NOFA NJ. I learned about Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) and how to implement them into our farm practices. Food Safety is an important part of any farm and I am in the process of drafting a new Food Safety Plan.

Lucky for me and the other Food Safety class attendees, Mercer County Rutgers Cooperative Extension is located just steps away from the Trenton Farmers Market. Luckier still, I stumbled upon Buttons Creperie where I had the most delicious lunch! If you haven't had the good fortune of visiting Buttons, I highly recommend stopping by for their vegetable crepe with goat cheese - worth the wait!

Kevin recently drove out to Nolt's in Lancaster to pick up supplies. His truck was loading high with new picking baskets, storage containers, row cover, wire hoops and irrigation hose among other things. This day trip has become an annual pilgrimage to replenish supplies. While he was out that way, he took the opportunity to stop in and visit Levi at J-Mar fencing. Levi's team will be installing our new deer fence around the entire property later this month. In the meantime, we are using a system of row cover, tomato twine, and prayer to keep the deer from eating our precious new plants.

Our member list is growing and we are nearing 50 shareholders!! We still have shares remaining, if you or anyone you know is interested in joining. We're about a month away from our first pick up!