Dear Friends,

A lot of what we do on the farm in the early fall requires stretches of dry weather.  Lately we've found ourselves looking up in the sky and wondering when those are going to come.  When it's raining we can't harvest potatoes, sweet potatoes, or winter squash (our 3 big harvests of the fall), we can't seed cover crops or prep land we are finished with for seeding, and we can't tackle our short list of remaining weeding projects.  So in the last couple of weeks we've spent some of our time harvesting crops that we can pick in the rain and some of our time working on inside projects such as cleaning up in the barns, cutting down the rest of the garlic that has been hanging to dry since August,  and repairing equipment.  All the while, we've been keeping an antsy eye to the horizon waiting for the opportunity to get back out in the field and get back on those pressing fall projects.  Last Wednesday that opportunity came so we spent much of Tuesday taking care what we normally would do on Wednesday in order to clear our schedule and devote all of Wednesday to harvesting sweet potatoes. 

     The sweet potato harvest for us is a 5 step process.  Sweet potatoes are in a whole different crop family from potatoes and they act like it.  Sweet potato vines, unlike potato vines, do not begin to die back when the crop has matured.  The vines would just keep growing with no "end point" so in order to harvest we must first contend with the thick mat of foliage that is covering the field.  We mow the vines with a tractor mounted mower and then go through each bed with a tractor mounted disc set up that cuts the vines in between the rows of sweet potatoes.  These two steps of the process make it possible to then go through each bed with our potato digger without getting bound up on any of the foliage. 

     The digger is a simple yet awesome machine.  It has an undercutter bar followed by an inclined "bed chain" that is powered by the tractor.  The chain moves in a elliptical motion around a number of sprockets lifting up all the dirt and crop that the undercutter bar loosed.  Most of the dirt falls through the chain so when the sweet potatoes come off the back of the digger they are dropped back onto the surface of the soil.  The fourth step of the harvest is going through and picking up the crop into 5 gallon buckets.  When we've picked a bed we transfer the harvest into grain sacks... two buckets per sack and leave the empty buckets back on the ground at the correct spacing for harvesting the next bed.  The final step in the process (this is looking like a few more than 5 steps!) is picking up the bags and stacking them on pallets 5 bags per layer.  We fit 20 bags per pallet meaning that each pallet is a nice and tidy 1000#. 

     Six of us spent all of Wednesday harvesting just over 6000# (that's 1000#'s each!) of gorgeous sweet potatoes.  We still have about 4000# remaining to harvest but we left the field feeling a little tired yet very satisfied.  The sweet potatoes are now in our greenhouse curing (turning their starches into sugars and sweetening up).  They cure best at 90 degrees and 90% humidity which we can get close to achieving in the greenhouse.  You'll begin to see some cured sweet potatoes make their way into the share next week.

     Other than making it difficult to harvest the rain has had some negative effects on some of our crops that are still growing.  You've likely noticed that we've been a little light in the salad greens department for the last few weeks.  This has been due to entire sections of greens that have been drowned by standing rain water in the field.  We have more greens on the way but we will continue to be a little light for the next couple of weeks.  One final bit of tough news that we felt the reality of yesterday came from our pumpkins and hubbard squash.  You may remember that I wrote about having a disease present in our squash field.  2 weeks ago we ran around harvesting all of our winter squash getting it out of the field before we got more rain.  We left behind many rotten pumpkins and hubbard squash and took only what seemed sound.  For the last two weeks these pumpkins and squash have been stored in our barn.  Yesterday we pulled them all out with the intention of giving them out in the share this week.  To our dismay we sorted through bin after bin of rotten squash and pumpkins.  We did come up with some that are still good but it is far less than the bounty we had planned for.  At this point we don't have enough pumpkins for everyone to get one but we are hoping to come up with enough total units (we still have some to sort through) between pumpkins, hubbards, and cheese pumpkins that we'll have enough for each share to get 1 of their choice.  On the bright side of things our butternut squash hasn't been affected and continues to store well.  So while we may be short on the decorative squash we aren't short on the edible.   

     Overall we do feel fortunate after commiserating with many farmer friends that are either in the same position with crop losses or much worse.  If this is your first season at the farm we hope that  you realize that this is not the norm.  If you are a veteran member of the farm we hope your past experiences with us will shine through what has been a challenging season on many fronts.  Thanks for your support!

On behalf of the farm crew (Max, Olivia, Jason, and Sarah)

Your farmers,

Rob and Meghan (and Cayden!)