As you probably are aware, the garlic planting party was postponed due to wet soil. We need a few days for it to dry out before we can prep it and plant it. Our next attempt will be Saturday October 22 from 2:00 until 5:00 with potluck and bonfire to follow. Please let me know if you can help out. I’d like to get a sense as to the interest in planting garlic. If there isn’t much interest the crew (that would be Rebecca and I) will plant it as the weather and time allows. If we have significant interest — which would be my preference since many hands make light work when it comes to planting garlic — we’ll plan on spreading the fun to everyone who comes out on the 22nd. So please let me know if you are interested in helping plant garlic!
Besides garlic planting we have several other large projects still to be done this season. The largest is potato digging. We still have almost half the potatoes still in the ground! There is likely to be literally a ton of potatoes and by literally I mean the literal definition of literally. Obviously this is more potatoes than we need but it would be nice to harvest them and send them off to a food shelf. So if anyone is interested in helping out please let me know; we typically dig potatoes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If we don’t get them harvested by the end of the season we will have a gleaning for the food shelf event sometime early November, probably November 5th.
Speaking of the end of the season, we only have two weeks left. The final day is Monday October 24th.
In other news, we dug our outdoor sweet potatoes last week and they did surprisingly well. I don’t know what the final weight is but I suspect it is at least enough for everyone to get a couple pounds or more. We still need to dig the indoor sweet potatoes, which is another one of our larger projects. We plan to send out the sweet potatoes the last week of the season. When you receive your sweet potatoes do not eat them right away. Sweet potatoes are not sweet when they are first harvested; they need a few weeks to sweeten up. I would suggest storing them until Thanksgiving.
We harvested the popcorn today! Looks pretty good. I haven’t tested it so I don’t know if it will be dry enough to pop yet; as of last week it was still too wet. I suggest you leave it in a dry place for a few weeks then try popping a few kernels before you commit to popping the whole batch. There is nothing worse than a bowl full of unpopped popcorn.
We still have two more rows of carrots to dig. Our plan is to harvest them the last week of the season.
We’ve had a couple people express interest in a kids potato digging party on the afternoon of Thursday October 20th (MEA weekend). We’d need more interest to make it worthwhile. Let me know if you think this would be fun and want to bring out a few of our younger members. These potatoes will most likely go to the food shelf.
We have extra onions, shallots and garlic from WinterShare for sale. Onions are $1/lb. Shallots are $2/lb. Garlic is $10/lb. We can deliver them with our regular deliveries if you get your order in soon (just send me an email with what you want). We’ll probably have potatoes too but we just haven’t had the time to dig them all yet. Potatoes are $1/lb as well.
We are taking orders for the 2017 season! Lock in this year’s price for next season’s produce. Tell all your friends, neighbors and family members! To reserve your spot you can send in a deposit check for $100 or order from our online store.
Finally we are looking to see who is interested in Winter FruitShare! We’ve done this every winter for the last few winters. It is just like summer FruitShare but in the winter, with winter fruit and only available for pick-up at the farm and at our Cathedral Hill drop site (near 94 and Dale St.) Let me know if you are interested. Per week pricing will be similar to summer FruitShare; final price will be determined based on the number of weeks we include.
What will we have this week? Potatoes (a delicious variety called Nicola), onions, shallots, leeks, garlic, popcorn, kohlrabi, kale, Daikon radishes, some watermelon radishes, Brussels sprouts (wish they were bigger), the rest of the peppers, some salad mix and assorted odds and ends.
This week we have Fruit, Cheese, Ice Cream, Meat (for those who haven’t picked it up yet), Eggs and Bread.
FlowerShare this week is ornamental corn!
That is all for now. Let me know if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, jokes , etc. And sign-up for next season as soon as possible!