We harvested this year’s potato crop under dark, heavy clouds last Saturday. Thanks to the all-star team of potato pickers we worked in record time, finishing up hours before any rain started to fall. The fields are slowing being emptied, row upon row being replaced by freshly disced and cover-cropped rectangles. The storage areas are slowly filling in unison. Our summer kitchen/office/guest room has been converted now to a curing room—the walls lined with onions, potatoes and nine different varieties of winter squash—all enjoying the warm home to harden their skins in before going into cooler, winter storage.
The onion and potato crops have been a little lighter than hoped for, most likely a result of such dry weather for much of the season. The potatoes, while not many, are the largest we’ve grown–we were pulling tubers out of the soil that filled your whole, open palm. Happily the winter squash crop has been wonderful. Lots of big, beautiful and tasty squash to choose from. Potatoes and squash will appear in the share soon, after they’ve harden a bit and the sugar-sweet summer crops have retreated.
Diversity in dry common beans (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There are a few more big harvests yet to come, most notably the dry beans—red, white and black beans are drying now on the vines and will be ready for picking in the next few weeks. We’ll be looking for more help at that time. Perhaps more than any job on the farm, bean picking loves company.
Stir Fry Season
This early fall weather is the perfect season for stir-fry. The big, beautiful pac choi heads, spicy mustards, young kale and broccoli all thrive in the cooler weather, yet we still enjoy healthy harvests of eggplant and peppers to sweeten the mix. Fresh pork is a great addition—consider tenderizing and marinating a ham steak to throw on the grill or pan fry, then slice thinly to add to your cooked veggies.
For a vegetarian option marinate a thick slab of puff ball mushroom, we drenched ours in roughly chopped garlic and ginger, oil and a little tamari, then pan fried it until golden brown. It was a delight to eat. I harvested some celeriac (aka celery root) early, slice it into matchsticks and add in.
The Farm Shares
In the veggie share: Pac choi,braising mix, broccoli, kale, chard, eggplant, hot and sweet peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, carrots, beets, mesclun mix, lettuce mix, cabbage, garlic and onions. U-pick flowers and sungolds are still doing well in the field.
In the meat share: Fresh, whole chickens this week! Pork, ground beef and half chickens are in the freezers. Also available: freshly rendered lard for cooking and baking, chicken organs and three kinds of bouillon.
Sara Kurak is one of the owners and operators of Full and By Farm in Essex, NY. She shares updates from the farm with her CSA members and also contributes those letters to the Essex on Lake Champlain Blog to share the news with a wider audience. Learn about farm life week-to-week through her reports!
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