A new Farm Notes is online! Welcome to the abundance of autumn!
We told you last week about the first bed of sweet potatoes that we dug on September 13. We were testing to see if they were ready, and how many there were. They looked great, and there were lots. Just yesterday we dug up the 12th bed (there are 22 in total) and we are in serious harvest mode. We are filling giant bins that hold about 800 pounds of sweet potatoes and we are stashing them in the greenhouse to cure. We picked up over three tons yesterday and today there were probably about the same number again.
So, how does this affect you? If you are not already a sweet potato lover, it may be time to take another look. This is one of the most nutritiously dense foods you can find, and they will be here until March if they are stored correctly. They make fantastic soup (Thai, Indian, African, American Southern are easy to make) and fries and roasting them makes them even sweeter. You can bake them into pies and breads and muffins. Sweet potatoes may really be the best thing we grow, and we grow a LOT of them, it turns out.
Curing them takes at least a week in a hot space, so we have been waiting to be able to let them loose in the world. But from now on you will see sweet potatoes offered every single week of the fall. And for those who continue into the winter, they are a staple.
In other news, the carrots look really good, the cabbage is beginning to head up, and we have never seen a broccoli field looking as consistent and lush. We just seeded the spinach, and we are taking down the fields of tomatoes. There is still a lot of food between now and Thanksgiving. Keep on cooking!
