Post-harvest aftermath

After sorting carrots

Sorting and packing after harvest—post-harvest processing!—is in good part a wet job, made a lot messier in rainy weather when root crops come in with a load of mud attached. Once again this season, the main work surface for sorting is a 4’x8′ sheet of plywood set on sawhorses. Actually, we added a second table, so now there are…two. Here, we’ve just finished sorting and bundling carrots, which then went for a rinse on the screen table. Sometimes, rinsing is done first, depending mostly on who’s doing what and what else is going on. In the closed blue bins, which hold a little over a bushel each, are carrots already bundled, rinsed and ready to go. This week, there are four bins of carrots, around 160 lbs (73kg). The residue is sorted out: here, damaged carrots will probably be topped and kept for house use, and the greens (there are some beet greens as well at the end of the table) are fed to the goats, some to the chickens, and the rest onto the compost pile. Then the table is hosed off. Couldn’t be simpler or wetter!

2 thoughts on “Post-harvest aftermath”

  1. We’ve been following your blog for a while now and I have to say that I wish we were there right next to you all getting muddy sorting through the root veggies.  What an amazing life you live there.  Thank you for being an inspiration to those of us who are growing as much as possible in our own small spaces and for giving us hope that maybe… someday… we might be able to do the same as you.

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  2. Mike,
    Still the best small grower blog!! Keep those photos coming cause I learn something every time I log on.

    Julie

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