Another big season milestone has passed this week...sigh of relief...we harvested the onions! You wouldn't know it if you've never dealt with an onion crop, but there's a fair amount of preparation and heavy lifting involved. We needed several hands over the course of several days to get every single onion pulled, kinked, collected, transported and set out for curing. The tell tale sign that it's time to harvest is when the tops start to "tip", meaning that the green succulent leaves suddenly bend down to say that the time of growth is over. Some onions tip sooner than others, so when we go out to the field to pull them, we have to kink all of the tops to ensure that the juices stop flowing to the bulbs. This begins the curing process. If conditions allow, the bulbs sit out in the sun for 24 hours before we go back to load them all into crates and then haul them to racks where they get spread out to dry along with the help of several fans. To give you a sense of how many onions we're talking about, this year we planted 1200 shallots, 1200 red onions, 1200 Italian red onions, 1800 sweet onions, and 2400 yellow onions. That's a grand total of 5,600 onions! You can't go wrong with onions though, as they are foundational to many dishes. If you haven't tried any of the fresh onions yet, I suggest you go for one of the big white sweets or a bunch of the lovely Italian reds. It won't be long and the storage onions will come out to play. They are the onions of tomorrow and they await with the promise of many dinners to come.
And now for an important note to our Oshkosh members who pick up at the NDC location. We just got word that NDC Main is closing, so we had to switch to a new drop site. NDC people will have a separate message from me with details about the new site and the logistics (which will be nearly identical). Please check that out and let me know if you have any questions. We're sorry for the change, but grateful that we have a solution already in place.
Mat and the boys and I will be feeling grateful this coming week while we take a break along the shores of Lake Michigan. It's time for our annual and much-needed camping trip to the tip of Door County where we will hike, bike, eat and sleep without having to do much more than think about what's going on at the farm. Our amazing crew is taking charge in our absence, and we are confident that they will do a fine job of managing the work load while we are away. Here's to good help and good food!
Cheers,
Danielle
