This Week’s Harvest

Farm News

The main news from the farm the past few weeks has been the complete lack of rain. The entire month of September brought only a half inch of rain (including yesterday’s rain). The main takeaways of this are that Ben continues to spend large chunks of his day setting up irrigation and our cover crop plans for the farm have largely failed. I have mentioned before on the blog that we seeded 6 acres of land to oats and crimson clover (it is actually more like 10 acres). We have found over the years that good cover cropping management is key to successful and productive fields so having the seed not germinate is very disappointing. We did get a quarter inch of rain yesterday so we’ll see if any more seeds sprout but we aren’t holding our breath!

Yesterday’s rain was quite good for our sweet potato harvest. We have been digging all last week and the bone dry soil has been less than ideal. The potatoes have gotten scuffed up in the process and we are a little nervous the broken skin will affect their storage. With a little moisture we won’t have the same dry clumps of soil crashing against the potatoes while we dig. We had a bit of a scare this morning when our tractor, which undercuts the beds so we can lift the potatoes out, wouldn’t start! But it was just an electrical issue that Ben was able to fix this morning. So the digging can continue on!

Recipes

Roasted Potatoes, Cauliflower, chickpeas, with kalamata olive vinagerette

Apple and Kohlrabi Salad (this recipe was highly recommended on the MCF Facebook group page

Butternut Squash Soup (use Honeynut squash)

Green Eggs and Tomato Scramble (use parsley in place of cilantro)

Coming Up Next Week (our best guess….) cilantro, tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, potatoes, kohlrabi, salad mix, salad turnips, hot peppers and more!