CROPS GROWING UP
Sue Firer seen here walking through several beds of kale in between patches of sweet corn and cauliflower. New crop week will be potatoes, as we can't put off starting to dig some potatoes any longer! (Early harvests always decrease the final yield, and also since at this time of year the skins of the potatoes are not yet cured, they will scuff very easily, and won't last as well, but it's late August already, and time for some spuds!) The reds are the first to 'dig' into. As of this moment the potatoes are still in the ground, but we expect to get the digger working immediately. (Otherwise we have egg on our face, since they are already listed in your e-mails!) Lots of potatoes out there -- should have enough for many months if we can get them out, and get them stored properly! Russets look fairly small, but decent size developing on the reds, the yellows (a Yukon Gold-type variety called Satina), and the fingerlings. We would expect to give the potatoes out every couple weeks, but once in a while we will have to change that up a little, since otherwise some of you bi-weekly shares would miss them altogether!
Lots of small cabbages available if folks want to try their hand at making sauerkraut; they should be available at the bottom of the e-mail, (along with other items that are not part of this week's shares). We will have more cabbage available in the late fall for those who might want to get some then.
WHAT'S THAT IN MY BOX?
Occasionally we have something that can go in the boxes that we didn't count on when we did our weekly estimate (on Saturday usually, though sometimes Friday), and we will sometimes give it out to everyone, even if it is unannounced. We have done that with green beans, and broccoli, for example. Sometimes only a few pick-up sites will get the vegetable; otherwise it could be everyone. We would usually only do it with vegetables that we know most everyone likes, so that we are not giving out something like eggplant that we know a good percentage of you will not want to see in your box. But it's a real trick to accurately predict what exactly will be ready, and in what quantity, even only three or four days ahead of the harvest, and it will probably continue to happen occasionally, and so we will just send those extra vegetable(s) along your way in addition to what Harvie has already decided would be the best initial guess for your share for the week. So when you get something that's not on your list, it is probably something that we didn't foresee having ready, but can be considered a little surprise for you. Hopefully the opposite won't happen -- that we say we will have something, and it will be on your list, but then ends up being not available, and we will have to explain to you what happened. Hopefully this week's potatoes will not end up being in that category!
