Veggie Spotlight: Sweet Potatoes

Farm Update

We're back into carrots for the fall!
Look at these gorgeous tricolor
baby carrots!

Hello everyone! It's been a cool and rainy week at the farm, and it looks like more of the same for next week.  It's been nice to have cooler weather in which to work, but keeping the veggies clean has taken a lot more effort in all this mud.  There is less work to do in general at the farm; we're doing a lot less planting, a lot less weeding, and a lot less irrigating.  It's part of the seasonal ebb and flow at the farm, and the timing actually works out, because for the last few weeks, we've been down to just our three-person crew (Fred, Phal, and me), with a contract crew coming in every once in a while to help out with a huge harvest when we're in a time crunch.  We'll be having less of some things (tomatoes) and more of some other things (lettuce), and some new fall things in this week's shares (sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts!).  As the season shifts from summer to fall, people are reminded that the growing season can't last forever, and I often get asked how much longer the CSA will last.  So in case you were wondering, the final week is the week of October 24.  In the meantime, we still have four weeks of wonderful veggies ahead!

What to Expect in Your Share

If you are at the regular drop-offs, here are your options for this week.  If you have a full share, choose two, and if you have a half share, choose one in each category.

Sweet potatoes
Carrots or butternut squash
Delicata squash, cilantro, or bok choy
Surprise veggie
Bunched greens or cooking greens mix
Lettuce or Brussels sprouts
Sweet pepper or onion

If you get one of the prebagged shares, here are the A and B options for this week:

Share A:                       Share B:

Sweet potatoes             Sweet potatoes
Carrots                         Butternut squash
Delicata squash            Bok choy
Surprise veggie            Surprise veggie
Kale                             Cooking greens mix
Lettuce                         Brussels sprouts
Sweet pepper               Onion

Veggie Spotlight: Sweet Potatoes

The first sweet potatoes of the year, harvested and about
to get washed.

Oh, sweet potatoes!  Beloved by pretty much everyone, and greatly anticipated as soon as the weather starts to get chilly and damp.  Well, now is that time, so in celebration of this lovely vegetable, here is everything you ever wanted to know about sweet potatoes!

Sweet potatoes are thought to have originated long ago in Central America, spreading throughout the centuries to most of the world's warm climates.  It is recorded as existing in Polynesia around 1000 AD, which leads historians to believe that there must have been some contact between those two distant parts of the world even back then.  Sweet potatoes flourish wherever there is heat and humidity, and their sweet flavor, nutrient density, and ability to thrive in marginal soils has made them a very valuable food source for many populations.  Around here, they are primarily considered a fall food because they require the whole summer to grow to maturity before we can harvest them.  But in many tropical parts of the world, they are available year-round because the vines can just keep growing for years, making newly-formed tubers as needed.

The sweet potatoes we grow at the farm actually start their time with us as bunched stems that arrive in the mail.  We usually order 1000 stems, but the number that arrives is more like 1200-1500.  We plant these stems in raised beds topped with black plastic.  The black plastic insulates the ground, helping the sweet potato plant to get the heat it needs, and it also keeps the soil loose for the developing tubers.  We water these stems with our drip irrigation system, which runs underneath the black plastic.  Then the stems form roots, some of which actually become sweet potatoes, and over the next few weeks, the plant will shoot up a stem that will run about seven feet in either direction.  Just before the first frost, we harvest all of the sweet potatoes and put them in the greenhouse to cure.  This allows them to last much longer in storage than they would otherwise.

This year, we're growing a new variety called Orleans.  We chose it because it has larger sized tubers and a really gorgeous color.  And in a warm year like this, our sweet potatoes seem to have done really well!  We just ate the first one in our own kitchen, and it was fantastic.  We hope you enjoy them as much as we have!

Recipes

Fred made this Sweet Potato Pie for the first time last year, and it was amazing!  I can't wait to make it again this year!  Or try out these Barbecue Chicken Sweet Potatoes (think baked potato, but it's a sweet potato, stuffed with barbecue chicken and other goodies).  Or here's something I did not know you could do:  Sweet Potato Toast.  Apparently, you can toast sweet potatoes in the toaster like you would do with bread, and top it with whatever you want!  Who knew?