We dug the sweet potatoes

We dug the sweet potatoes!  We have been enjoying a stretch of warm and sunny days.  The soil was finally dry enough to harvest all the sweet potatoes.  What a relief to have that big job done for the year.   The sweet potatoes have been gracing our table in an abundance of dishes.  We’ve had them roasted as a side, of course, and I’ve made sweet potato and peanut soup, and sweet potato and black bean chili.

It wasn’t our biggest sweet potato harvest, but it wasn’t bad either.  With the relatively short summer we had this year – cool June, cooler than average July, and cool September – we weren’t expecting this vine heralding from the tropics to have a banner year.  Right now the sweet potatoes are curing in the high tunnel.  The sweet potatoes we are putting in the shares now are sort of half-cured.  I would recommend storing them somewhere with airflow, like on the counter or a hanging basket, for example, rather than tucked away in a drawer.

The dry weather means work is beginning on our new greenhouse and high tunnels, too.  Today and yesterday, the construction crew is putting the posts in the ground.  More big tools!  Randy got a massive tractor-driven auger to dig the holes and we have rented a cement mixer for the week.

While the rain has cleared out for the moment, the wet weather did cause some damage.  Some of the cabbage, napa and kohlrabi is just rotting in the field.  All the rain has also made it extra hard to control pests.  And this has been an especially pest-heavy year.  Some of the crops in the CSA have more pest damage than we would like, and we really have been doing our best to control it!  So please bear with the imperfect vegetables.

The nice thing about being in year ten of farming, and not year one or two, is that I am learning to take these hiccups in production less personally.   Every crop failure doesn’t call my ability as a farmer into question.  We can still learn from these circumstances and try to do better, but sometimes you do things right and it still goes wrong.  We are working in a natural system with all its complexities.

Small Shares

• mini napa
• green or savoy cabbage
• arugula
• sweet potatoes
• eggplant
• mustard greens

Full Shares

• arugula
• sweet potatoes
• mustard greens
• sweet peppers
• red radish
• cauliflower or broccoli
• beets