THE BEET: Volume 14, Issue 18

In This Week's BEET:

  • Your Share
  • Letter from Ted
  • Cacao Tonight!

Pick up today: 5:00-7:30 at PS 56 on the corner of Gates and Downing

FULL SHARE & GREEN HALF SHARE PICK UP TONIGHT

Your Share This Week:

  • Tomatoes
  • Peppers
  • Chilies
  • Onions
  • Cilantro or Basil
  • Potatoes
  • Eggplants
  • Radishes
  • Lettuces
  • Kale
  • Arugula
  • Spinach

Letter From Ted & Windflower Farm

The moon – a harvest moon - is full and bright tonight, and the sky is clear. A chill is in the air and our first frost may occur later this week, according to forecasts. It’s time for us to harvest anything that is not cold hardy. We are now in the middle of our harvest of the vegetables that will make up your final six shares.The time has flown by.

Harvesting potatoes and sweet potatoes by hand is a pretty straightforward proposition. Grab a garden fork, place it just outside the potato row, stomp down - if you have rocks you might stomp down two or three times – and then, with a simple prying motion, turn the soil over. Potatoes will come spilling out. Keep moving down the row in that way and soon you’ll have a crateful of spuds. And if all you need to harvest is a crate or two you don’t really need to think any more about it. If, however, you have 30 crates to harvest just for Tuesday’s delivery (and 30 more for Thursday), you’ll want to think about mechanical harvesting.   

We found a sturdy one-row harvester several years ago and keep it in good running order with copious amounts of gear oil and chain lubricant and the occasional weld. It does nothing more than lift the tubers out of the soil and then redeposit them on top of the ground, from which we pick them up by hand and place them into crates. It’s leaps and bounds better than the garden fork. Mechanical harvesting of sweet potatoes is a little less straightforward. They are tender-skinned and bruised by the mechanical action of the potato harvester. Nevertheless, because we have too many to harvest by hand, we have been experimenting with sweet potato harvest aids of various kinds this week. We haven’t found the ideal tool, but we’re making headway. And, more importantly, we are happy with the quality of this year’s crop. And we think you will be, too. Our first 70 bushels have been curing in a greenhouse and will be in your shares next week.

Other fall crops are also on the way soon, including leeks and turnips, which are cold hardy and remain in the field, and butternut and Delicata squashes, which are tender and were harvested a couple of weeks ago.

Don't forget: Cacao on site Tonight & next week!

Fresh Cacao direct from a partner farm in Costa Rica will be for sale on site during distribution.

The time for hot chocolate has come!  Treat yourself and your friends :) 

Cash only: $12 per 1/2 pound

Veronica