CSA Newsletter for August 8, 2015

Farm Update

Fred and Jessamine survey some
red romaine growing in the field.

Hello everyone!  Last week’s rain helped us out a lot, and fortunately we did not get hail at the farm, even though we had it at our house.  Even with the rain, things did grow more slowly this week as the temperatures have been fairly low for this time of year.  However, it made working out in the fields much more enjoyable and pleasant. This week we are starting our large harvests on several crops including onions, shallots, and potatoes for storage.  Cherry tomatoes will finally start making an appearance in the shares, and it will be interesting to see what amount we get with these lower temperatures.  The tomato plants are loaded with green fruit right now, so we will probably hit an overwhelming harvest at some point this month when it does warm up a little more. Also there have been a ton of flowers on the tomato plants over the last two weeks, so we are hopeful for our September harvest as well.  The blueberries have wound down for the year, and Fred had to chase a flock of turkeys out of the blueberry patch last week.  There have also been a couple of nocturnal deer that have made themselves more of a nuisance lately so we are hoping we can scare them out of our field soon as well.  They seem to have a taste for the centers of romaine and frisee in particular.  Although we are into August already, the weather just doesn’t seem to have that high summer feel that makes you crave tomatoes and basil (at least that’s what it does to me!).  Hopefully that will change soon, and we’ll have at least a few weeks of real summer before it starts feeling like fall, and we all start thinking about sweaters, leaves, winter squash and root vegetables. J

What to Expect in Your Share This Week

We harvested so many cabbages for
the Wednesday drop-off last week,
Fred had to load them up on the
tractor to transport them up to the
wash station!

At the regular drop-offs:

• Choice of spring mix or Bibb lettuce heads
• Choice of carrots or broccoli
• Choice of potatoes or cherry tomatoes
• Choice of cabbage or chard
• Choice of kale or beets
• Choice of onions or shallots
• Choice of zucchini or basil

For home/workplace delivery:

A Share:                    B Share:
Bibb lettuce              Spring mix
Carrots                      Broccoli
Cabbage                    Chard
Cherry tomatoes       Potatoes
Kale                          Beets
Onions                      Shallots
Basil                         Zucchini                

Veggie Spotlight:  Potatoes

Keegan picks up potatoes after the
potato digger has gone through
the planting.

Potatoes are an important crop each season for our farm, and the vast majority of the potatoes we produce go into the CSA shares.  We love the taste of our potatoes and keep a fair amount for ourselves into the winter.

The potato is not just an important food for our family, but it is the fourth largest crop in the world.  Potatoes originated near the border of modern day Bolivia and Peru, but from there most early breeding work occurred in modern day Chile, as well as separately in its place of origin.  Early breeders started developing better varieties many thousands of years ago (probably 7000-10000 years ago) and today’s varieties are mostly taken from the potatoes grown in the lowlands of Southern Chile.  The potato was one of the major food crops in much of South America for thousands of years, and it is said to have played a major role in the rise of the great Hauri civilization and the subsequent rise of the Incas shortly after the former’s collapse.  The rest of the world was introduced to the potato when Spanish explorers brought them back to Europe around 1570 AD. 

We've all heard of what a huge effect the potato had on the history of Ireland in particular.  There is some speculation as to its introduction to said locale; it is widely thought that Sir Walter Raleigh first introduced the potato to Ireland, but is also possible that the potato first washed up on Ireland’s shores from the wreckage of ships from the Spanish Armada. Its adoption to widespread production was not immediate, but it took off in a big way when a large number of Ireland’s farmers were reduced to very small acreages where only potatoes could yield enough caloric value to support a family.  In this monocrop system, farmers were usually only growing one genetic type of potato (in the Americas most farmers had at least several varieties).  For this reason, the potatoes were more susceptible to the Late Blight disease that quickly took off, wiping out the potato crop and the seed stock that farmers would need for the next year.  This led to a massive humanitarian crises of widespread starvation, evictions, mass emigration, and ultimately a drastically reduced Irish population in the years of 1845-1850AD.  As a result of this tragedy, there has been a lot more focus on greater diversity of potato genetics in subsequent breeding work.

Our good old potato digger makes the work of harvesting
large quantities of potatoes so much easier!

At our farm we buy in our seed potatoes (this year we have 5 varieties), and then we cut these seed potatoes into smaller pieces that have several “eyes” (places where the seed potato will send out its shoots and roots).  We then lay plastic mulch with drip irrigation line underneath on raised beds.  Then we use our homemade transplanter to make holes in the plastic, where we have two people on the back of the transplanter who put the seed potatoes as deep into each hole as possible.  This usually occurs in mid-April.  Then we wait as the potatoes send up their shoots and leaves a couple weeks later.  As the plants grow larger and start forming potatoes under the ground, we water them a lot because the process of developing potatoes takes an enormous amount of water from the soil.  Then the leafy part of the plants begins dying back around the end of July and are completely dead now in mid-August.  At this point, we take up the plastic and pull our old potato digger through the soil. The potato digger lifts the soil and potatoes out of the ground and then shakes the soil out through some ground driven chains leaving the potatoes on the top of the soil for us to pick up and box for storage.  This process is a lot easier than digging up all those potatoes by hand, which is what we used to do before we got our good old potato digger.

The potatoes we just recently harvested are our favorites, and they usually keep their fresh taste for about a month or two, though the potatoes themselves stay in great condition for much longer.  Our favorite way to make potatoes is too fry bite-sized chunks in olive oil until the skin is a little crisp, and then flavor them with some rosemary and garlic.  We are really excited to have our own potatoes back in our kitchen, and hope you enjoy them this week as well!

Recipes

There are so many great ways to prepare potatoes, from mashed to roasted, to sauteed, to baked, to fried.  Here are a few ideas for how to prepare one of our favorite veggies!

Roasted New Red Potatoes:  This is such a simple way to make potatoes, and it's a classic for a reason!

Mini Loaded Red Potatoes:  I'm not going to lie, these look awesome and I can't wait to make them this week!

Cookhacker's Smashed Baby Red Potatoes: Crunchy on the outside but moist and creamy inside, these smashed baby red potatoes are perfect for topping with sour cream and whatever kind of herbs you love best!