Month: October 2008

Sweet potato harvest

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From planting back in mid-June, it’s been 3-1/2 months to the sweet potato harvest. The variety, Beauregard, is listed as 80-100 days to maturity, although, like potatoes, you can dig them up anytime, as soon as the tubers have formed. The vines are frost-sensitive, and the tubers shouldn’t be left in the ground if the tops are frost-killed, so I’ve been gambling with the first frost timing in order to let them grow for as long as possible. Today seemed like a good time to start. This has indeed been a really easy, pest- and disease-free crop, requiring only a little weeding until the vines filled in. Harvesting turned out to be equally easy. After digging up a few plants to see how the tubers grow, Lynn, Toshiko and I set up a quick hand-harvesting system: remove the vine, loosen the soil with a digging fork, scrabble around for the taters.

The soil had quite a lot of moisture from recent rains, so we had to spend a little extra time brushing off clumps of clayey earth. We left them for a couple of hours to dry in the breeze, then collected them in bins and brought them into the Milkhouse. By the book, sweet potatoes could use 10-14 days of curing at 80-85°F (25-28°C) . In part, this allows some of the starch to convert to sugar, making them…sweeter. That sort of HEAT isn’t available around here right now, but for this first time around, and too small a quantity for really long-term storage, I’m not too concerned. I baked some a couple of days ago, and they already taste good. Let’s see what a week or two indoors does for ’em!

Digging up potatoes

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There’s still about 1,000′ of potatoes to dig, a few Yukon Gold, lots of Kennebec, and maybe a bed of Chieftain. This time around, it’s a bit of an unconventional approach. Some beds were kinda…weedy, so a week back, I mowed them all down. Now, the trick is to find the rows. Once a couple of plants are located, I run twine between stakes at either end to mark the row for easier digging. Michele and Toshiko were today’s crew, with young Violet checking things out. Simple fieldwork for a pleasantly cool fall day…

Cold-weather harvest

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Some days now, the temperature is in the +/-20°C (50°F) range, and nights hover around the freezing point—not that cold, but comparatively so when other days shoot up to summery highs. I’m now keeping the row cover permanently on the eggplant and peppers, they’re no longer out there to grow—not enough sun—the field is now simply a convenient storage system. Picking from under cover, pulling back only as much as necessary, we take what we need for and leave the rest. There’s probably two more week’s worth of sweet and hot peppers, and at least another week of baby eggplant to go after today…

Bundling up a bit kinda seems to be the general choice. Libby and Lynn are in winter outerwear mode, down to insulated rubber boots, while Toshiko, who finds it colder here than at home in Japan, keeps warm with layers. Seasons change…

Bus stop

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We drove Toshiko to the bus stop in town this evening. After her two weeks on the farm, trimming garlic, digging sweet potato, slinging veggies at the farmers’ market, she’s heading out again, first to Toronto and then Montreal for a few days of sightseeing, then on to the southern US and Mexico for the winter. After that, she plans to continue studying English in Vancouver for an extended period, before heading back to Japan. With the WWOOFers of the last couple of seasons—from Japan, Germany, Spain—there’s definitely been an international flavor on this very local, tiny farm. It’s fascinating to think about how far these hands have come, to do simple tasks in a field for a while, then vanish down the road. As a non-driver, growing veggies full-time for sale very nearby, I have minimal direct involvement with travel. But its effects are all around and often on my mind. I find myself calculating the distance people drive to get to the farm or the farmers’ market. I’m alert to the increasing number of Mennonites clop-clopping by with horse-and-buggy. I think about the routes traveled by the tools and supplies I pick up at the big chain stores in town. I sometimes imagine leaving the farm, on my own and without driving, catching the once daily bus that would plug me back into the world of cities (at least two-thirds of the PLANET now lives in cities!), where travel is condensed to nothing. Standing with Toshiko at the bus stop today kicked up a lifetime of memories of big city living, the oddness of flying across an entire ocean in a few hours, sometimes with hardly a day’s notice and not a second thought, and then the last few YEARS spent tending a tiny patch of FIELD, barely moving beyond a single line of sight. Hmmm… What a wiggly world. :)

Finally, frost!

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Overnight, the first real killing frost finally hit. A couple of nights it had gotten close, touching some plants in the field, but this was the real deal. At 8am, the lower end of the garden was still in the shadow of the drive shed, and the frost still hadn’t burned off. Basil (above), the tenderest crop in the field, is the first thing I check in the morning for frost damage. Right beside, the zinnias are goners, but still holding color—as the day progresses, they’ll shrivel and turn brown…

All in all, nothing unexpected or terrible—sooner or later, frost always arrives, and this time, the eggplants and peppers under row cover did fine. Besides, frost in the early morning light is pretty…

Night work

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In the fall, post-harvest work doesn’t necessarily end when the sun goes down (it’s dark by about 7:30pm right now). Actually, this year the fall Friday harvest has gone great, with Lynn, Libby and usually Michelle knocking things off in the field by around 5pm, with only bundling and rinsing to go. But I’ve been wrapping up with the crew by 6, taking a break, and doing whatever’s left on my own…later at night. It’s something I’m used to from the first few seasons, when the mainly solo harvest usually went straight through until 11pm or midnight. Tonight was the first time I’ve hauled out the light stand this year. It’s around 10pm, the two lights specally installed on the side of the Milkhouse for this purpose are on (they’re both regular 100W bulbs, the full plan is to install floodlight fixtures), and there are twin 250W all-weather halogens on a stand. It’s not perfect lighting, but quite enough to get the job done without stumbling around. Tonight is a quick set-up to rinse carrots and beets. Full-on post harvest lighting includes a second light stand, with both set higher up and beaming down, and floodlights properly positioned, to give pretty good 360° coverage of the work area, and enough illumination to watch the mud wash off…

Middle of the day at the market

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Here’s another slice of the action at the Saturday farmers’ market: recent market posts covered the beginning and the end, this is…the middle. In the first two pics, it’s about 9am—the market’s been open for two hours, but in colder weather like today, most people start showing up about now. This is the first time we’ve extended the stand by adding a new section with four more bins, quite an occasion, since I’ve been using the same 7-tray set-up for five seasons, almost since the beginning. It’s also the last day of tender crops, with a final harvest of eggplant and peppers. Lynn, vested against the chill, in the first pic looks like she’s making up more signs: red market on light brown card stock…

The shallow trays are easy to fill, it doesn’t take much to create a nice display. As things are sold, the display is refreshed from bins kept in the shade. The trays aren’t ideal for all veggies. Winter squash are harder to sort through, but there’s also a full assortment in bushel baskets that people can look through, with the trays more for display…

Jump ahead to about 11:30. It’s warmed up considerably, into a beautiful, summer-like day. This is Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, and the traffic has been pretty good. Traffic has died down in the last half hour, some crops are sold out, but people come by till the end…

It’s now about 12:40. The market ends at 1, and we have until 1:30 before the street is opened up again. Most vendors start packing up early, around 12:30, but we always wait till the official end. Today, we’re pretty well sold out: the only veggies left in a bit of quantity compared to what we started with are some mostly very tiny eggplant, curly and flat-leaf parsley, Red Russian flat-leaf kale, and some winter squash. With things like kale, not exactly a universally popular green, sales are inexplicably random: usually low, but on some days, you can’t have enough. So, you always bring as much as you can (within reason!). Anyhow, a really satisfying and fun market day is almost done…


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