Sweet Potato Harvest Complete

Fall Party Cancelled

We are cancelling our Fall Open House Party for this year.  Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are not comfortable inviting a large group of people out to the farm.  We are very sorry to have to cancel an event that we really enjoy.  We look forward to hosting our friends, customers and CSA members on the farm once it is safe to do so.

Fall Cleaning

The weather has been dry and glorious, and we’ve been hustling to get ready for winter. We have pulled up, carried out and stowed hundreds of t-posts and rebar rods.  Lugged countless sandbags, and removed fifty 16-foot fence panels.

I love getting the field cleared out.  It is refreshing and calming.  It is how I imagine many people feel about cleaning their house.  I, however, do not get this satisfaction from cleaning house.  Which helps explain why the house looks like it does….

Sweet Potato Harvest Complete

As I write this, we have just finished digging the sweet potato crop.  The new implement has been amazing, and a big reason we were able to get it all done.  Overall, the sweet potato harvest looks good this year and I am happy.

I am working on getting all the potatoes into the high tunnel to cure.  During the curing process, any broken flesh heals over, the skins thicken, and the potatoes dry and sweeten.  Once cured, sweet potatoes can last 12 months in storage.

Fingers crossed for bed shaping Thursday

The dry weather never lasts long enough.   We’ve got rain on the way for Friday.  Randy has been spending as much time as possible on the tractor

preparing the soil where we plan to shape the beds we will use in the spring.  We need to make 36 beds measuring 180 feet, each.  That’s nearly a mile and a quarter of garden bed that needs shaping.  Randy has been disk harrowing and chisel plowing the soil to break it up and help dry it out.  It just needs to be disk harrowed one more time.  Then we will mark the beds with the bed shaper, spread organic fertilizer, then shape the beds.

It is a lot to do.  Before this week I was exceedingly anxious as to whether we would get it done at all.  Now it is looking like a reality.  Fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong with the tractor in the next two days.  This will be a huge load off my mind.  We have to have beds shaped before the temperature cools, fall rains start, and the soil stays damp until April.