Sweater Weather! Kind of…

It’s sweater weather!  At least in the mornings. We are just thrilled that we don’t feel like we are cooking in our own skin. It seems we’ve dodged a bullet, and the fall of the year has come before the fall of man.

Yesterday we dug the sweet potatoes. This is the first year we grew our own slips, which are essentially sweet potato cuttings. The fresh, un-rooted cuttings are planted directly into the field, which feels like magic. It shouldn’t work, but it does! I severely miscalculated how many seed potatoes we would need to grow enough slips, so we only ended up with about 200 feet of sweet potatoes. The potatoes we dug were moderate in size, I expected them to be bigger after how hot the summer has been. But we did get them planted a little late, and it was incredibly dry in August and September. I am really happy that there is no scurf on them. The sweet potatoes we have grown in the past have always had scurf, which is a superficial fungal infection that discolors the skin but does not affect the eating quality of the potato.

Because our sweet potato harvest was modest, I will be going to Englert Farms in Houston Mississippi to buy a crate of Certified Organic sweet potatoes.  We will be putting these locally grown, organic sweet potatoes in the shares as we have been doing the past two years.  But next year I will ramp up our slip production and grow all our own sweet potatoes.

Vibe Check: It’s tough right now.

How are we all doing? I want to acknowledge how hard it was for me to write this newsletter today. I do pretty well as long as I am busy. To write a newsletter, I have to stop, and I have to think. And that is where I run into trouble. I am choking and sputtering and spitting out the current events I am expected swallow. If you are struggling to make it through your days, too, I am right there with you. And if you are wondering if I am talking about ICE or Nolan Wells or the Cornell 7 or the Epstein Files or Gaza or the Climate Crisis…yes. Fortunately for me, I have a place to process, and that is my art studio. I hope everyone is getting the support they need to function in these wild times.

Small Shares

• arugula
• sweet pepper
• butternut (Saturday will get sweet potato)
• kale, assorted varieties
• juliet plum tomato

Full Shares

• arugula
• tokyo bekana
• sweet pepper
• butternut (Saturday will get sweet potato)
• kale, assorted varieties
• summer squash
• okra (last time!)