Don't forget to swing by your pick up location to grab your produce box for this week! We'll see you at either the Farmers Market at Libby on Thursday, 3-7 or on Farm on Friday, 2-5.
The pic above is just a teaser to let you know that...WINTER (squash) IS COMING! We have grand plans for the week ahead and it includes making some major headway on harvesting our 'keepers'. Produce like onions, potatoes, winter squash and garlic are sometimes called keepers, because depending on the variety, they are a vegetable that you can harvest (or sell) and they can be kept for quite some time without losing their flavor and nutritional value. Garlic is the first of those items to be harvested for us, and it's already been cured, and we've set aside our planting cloves for this fall. Next comes the onion harvest, we've accomplished that too, and now our onions are drying out under cover and shade in one of our hoop houses - expect to see them soon. We're very happy with our onion crop this year, it seems like our 'high maintenance' while planting method really led to some improved results at harvest time, so totally worth it!
We're planning to harvest the potatoes this Friday. We're not sure how it's going to go, because this year we have a 'potato digger' implement for our walk-behind tractor that we plan to try. Up to now, we have always harvested taters the hard way, and I do mean the HARD way! It's a pretty rough day (or two) spent on your hands and knees digging with...sometimes a shovel or fork, but often just your hands. This new implement simply forces it's way down to a depth under the potatoes while the momentum from the tractor keeps it moving forward. It loosens the ground as it goes, and 'should' direct the potatoes to move towards the surface rolling over it's inclined fins. Well needless to say, we're skeptical yet hopeful. We'll let you know how it goes!
The potato harvest will be done all in one go, while the winter squash is all at varying levels of ripeness. So that harvest will take place in batches over the next few weeks. Both winter squash and potatoes need some time to dry out and reach their optimum storage conditions. We hope you enjoy your produce this week, and are looking forward to the new Fall/Winter crops coming up...we are! Have a great weekend, and good luck beating this heat we're experiencing!
Cheers, Bonnie & Rudy
