Care of the Earth

We are a community-supported agriculture farm (CSA) serving Knoxville and East Tennessee

Layout E1
  • Home
  • Our Story
  • Our Farm
  • CSA Program
    • Member Application Forms
    • Seed Saving and Our Sustaining Members Program
  • FAQs
  • Directions
  • Blog
  • Contact Us

Our largest sweet potato harvest, Weekly Share for October 7, 2015

October 7, 2015 By Megan Allen

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!

sweet-potatos
Our largest harvest of sweet potatos
turnips-for-winter-storage
Turnips for winter storage
hand-cranked-corn-hulling-machine
Hand cranked corn hulling machine
san-jose-mountain-club-squash
San Jose Mountain Club Squash
swallowtail-butterfly-in-caterpilla-stage
Swallowtail butterfly in caterpillar stage

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 7 other subscribers

“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is
our only hope.”

-Wendell Berry

Connect With Us

4314 Varnard Lane
Corryton, Tennessee 37721
(865) 978-0561
Contact Us
Directions

Copyright © 2022 · Site development by Kurt Zinser Design