As a chill sets into the air, we’ve closed our farmstand for the season, but we still look forward to sharing our sustainable harvest with you. We’ve been busy storing the last of our fall crops for our winter Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. Lots of warmth and just enough rain made for huge harvests of flavorful tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, corn, and melons this summer, and those same conditions favored our root vegetables later in the season. We tested some new crops, and are thrilled with the yield.
We added three new varieties of storage potatoes to our crop plan this year: Kerr’s Pink (beige pink skin, light yellow flesh), Desiree (rose red skin, yellow flesh) and Strawberry Paw (bright red skin, white flesh). Combined with returning varieties such as the Purple Viking, Kennebec, and Adirondack Red potatoes, our rainbow harvest of storage potatoes totals over four thousand pounds!
The sweet and tender Gilfeather turnip is also a new crop for us in 2013. It’s called a turnip but is actually a rutabaga with creamy white flesh instead of the yellow flesh of a traditional rutabaga. Did you know that rutabagas are the result of crossing turnips with cabbage?
Hearty squash are a staple of the season, and we are excited to add Winter Sweet squash to our mix. It’s shaped like a turban with light blue skin and bright orange flesh, and is a delicious all-purpose variety. Of course we still grow and harvest the ever-popular butternut, as well as buttercup, acorn and delicata squash.
We also have a bumper crop of Long Island cheese baking pumpkins. These are excellent in pies and custards because of the large quantity of sweet flesh–no need to scrape away at several small sugar pumpkins in order to make your Thanksgiving treats.
We’ve already harvested and stored over a thousand pounds of big, beautiful beets, and over two thousand pounds of Bolero storage carrots. Other late crops include watermelon radish, storage kohlrabi, parsnips, sweet potatoes, celeriac, onions, and garlic.
Over the next two weeks, we’ll continue harvesting some storage crops into our energy-efficient root cellar (just a small fan and cold night air keeps all those roots cool and fresh!) and we’ll keep some field greens under cover to add variety to the first two CSA distributions.
From November through February, CSA members will enjoy eight distributions (link to the registration listing) of the best of our harvest, while supporting locally and responsibly grown produce. We still have shares available if you’re looking to eat locally this winter. It’s a great way to try new foods, and we think you’ll enjoy sharing the diverse harvest with your friends and family.