This week has been a great week for growing crops! Warm days, cool nights, and plenty of rain to get things growing. It's an interesting phenomenon that no amount of irrigation makes crops grow in quite the same way as a deep rain. I've never heard a good explanation of this, but it's a widely recognized observation among growers.
Meanwhile, we've started the great Sweet Potato Harvest! There are 12 beds of sweet potatoes, and the boys harvested two of them today, I'd guess approximately 600 lbs of potatoes. They will lay on the ground, letting their skins toughen up a bit, for the next thee days(we've got perfect weather for this right now), and then we'll move them to the greenhouse, where they will cure at 80-90 degrees for 10 days, before being moved to the 60 degree storage with winter squash, garlic, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Sweet potatoes are one of the best storage crops; if cured well, they will hold for 8 months! Getting them into the storage cooler always brings a great sense of satisfaction and well-being... it's a hallmark of readiness for winter. We've added a Sweet Potato/ onion planting workday to the Signup.com schedule on Saturday the 21st of October, when we'll get the potatoes dug, and plant onions and garlic, and share a big pot of curry for lunch. So if you haven't finished your workshare for the season, or if you'd just like to get your hands dirty getting the harvest in, we'd love to have you join us. You can sign up here: https://signup.com/go/OsZdXUO
Finally, due to a bountiful looking fall crop, we plan to extend the CSA season until the last week of November, with a final pickup on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. This will add three weeks to the season, full of spinach, kale, apples, sweet potatoes, beets carrots, and lots of other delicious veggies. We will autorenew for this season, so you will get an email letting you know if your are set to autorenew or not, and you'll have an opportunity to adjust that before we sign you up or leave you out.
Thank you for trusting us to be your farmers.
Curtis
