We just finished harvesting all of the sweet potatoes. We think there are about 1600 pounds of sweet potatoes…by far our largest harvest and definitely the most consistent as well. We will let cure and start handing out in 2 weeks. We have about 40 pouns of broken or damaged sweet potatoes. We will eat some of them but not all. If I have room in the car to bring them to pickups, I will bring for distribution. They need to be eaten quickly!This week’s share will include: Long Island Cheese pumpkin (on the Ark of Taste list…slightly smaller this year, a combination of purposeful seed purchasing – I’d like them to be on the slightly smaller side – and the hot, dry August/September that we had), scallions, radishes, turnips with greens (I will bring extra turnip greens for those that want them), arugula, mesclun mix, choice of green (Sustaining Members receive two), fennel (definitely the most beautiful fall fennel that we have ever grown (most likely weather related, also we have irrigated more this season), eggplant, red/green/purple/yellow peppers, hot peppers, and an herb.
We will probably start handing out lettuce next week. It looks like we will also have green beans (a self-seeded succession)! The beets are really inconsistent in size (likely because of warm fall we are having). We can’t decide whether to start harvesting them or not.
We typically have our first frost around October 15 – much earlier than the city. It doesn’t look like cold weather is anywhere in sight. That is good for some things and bad for others.
A couple of reminders: we will do signups for winter shares next week and last farm open house/potluck of the season is Sat., Nov. 7 from 5-7.
The turnips that we are handing this week are a rare, Portuguese heirloom variety (Nabo Roxo) that was used both as animal fodder and the table. It seems very dependable and produces large turnips and large amounts of turnip greens, so I can see why families may have counted on it during winters past.
There are several turnip recipes here that are based on traditional Italian turnip recipes that use both the greens and the turnips. All of them seem good for cold, rainy weather!
