Potato harvest 2020 is a success! That's our helper for the day, Joe in the pic and boy were we glad to have him! There was a lot of digging and heavy lifting and to have a 3rd person to divvy that out amongst was welcome. This did not quite go off without a hitch though. We were pretty set on doing the potato harvest today as it's tough to fit in the time for these bigger jobs. But a day or two prior, we realized that we'd forgotten figure out some wheel weights for our tractor earlier in the Spring. That's a big problem, because with tasks that involve a lot of pushing or pulling, a walk-behind tractor really needs a lot of traction and the best way to do that is by adding weight right to the axles that the wheels are on. It might seem like a small thing, but without enough traction to pull our potato digging implement, the 'plow' would ride higher in the ground effectively cutting into all our our hard-grown taters (rather that riding below them and 'floating' them to the surface).
Well, Bonnie tends to be a little more doom and gloom in scenarios such as this, while Rudy typically just decides to make it work anyway. And he did! He was able to macgyver together a very heavy and funny looking weight onto the tractor and it worked like a charm, giving the tractor the traction it needed. Whew! So expect to start seeing those taters in your boxes soon if not this week.
We want to give everyone a heads up about the Harvest Festival this year. We typically attend this festival on a Saturday in September at Riverfront Park. BUT, this year it's going to be a little bit different due to the covid-issues that we're all still dealing with. Instead, the Festival will be celebrated with an expanded Farmers Market on September 10th. It's still on a Thursday and the hours will be the same, 3-7. What'll be different? There should be more vendors, and thus a different layout with more space. There will be some music. And best of all, the Harvest Dinner that is such a highlight of the Harvest Festival will still go on. This year it will be a 'take-home' dinner, but it will still be made with locally grown and sourced ingredients, and skillfully created by the Gracious Table. We will still be doing CSA pick up at the market/Harvest Festival, and we will still also have on Farm pickups available on Friday of that week. The only difference for picking up your produce boxes would be our market tent spot were changed, but we believe it will be the same. So mark your calendars, should be fun!
Remember to jump into Harvie and customize your share this week (if you want to!). You'll have the same window to do so, right up until 10:00am on Monday. Have a great weekend,
Cheers, Bonnie & Rudy
