Digging purple potatoes before (or actually during) a slight rain
Harvesting! In this picture we are harvesting a small percentage of our potato crop on Saturday morning. The soil is a little too wet to do it efficiently, but with the forecast for rain in the afternoon, we needed to take every opportunity to get crops out of the ground whenever at all possible. (Last year, as some of you may recall, because of the wet fall, we never could get all of our potatoes harvested before winter set in, and we are determined to not have a repeat of that this year!) And that is the reason for the tardiness of this coming week's e-mail of proposed contents in your box; all hands needed to be on-board for potato harvesting!
Reminder of remaining deliveries: We will deliver weekly through November 11th! Then comes the optional Thanksgiving share (for November 18th), and then 3 weeks later the final December storage share. (You can still sign up for the Thanksgiving and storage shares from our website.) You can always look up on your account on Harvie what shares you can expect for the remainder of the season as well!
Local apples available: In the past we have helped to distribute apples from our neighbor Dave Bohnhoff, who has a small orchard that he manages organically. Unfortunately, he has only an extremely limited number of apples available this year, though he will be pressing a fair amount of cider that we may deliver to you in a few weeks. Since we love to assist other local farmers, and also contribute towards building a reliable and local food system, this fall we will also be helping Brightonwoods Orchard find a home for some of their apples. Bill Stoneman, the owner of Brightonwood, (close to Burlington, Wisconsin) has long been a neighboring vendor of ours at the Milwaukee domes indoor winter markets, and we have always been amazed at the wide selection of varieties of apples that he grows, and although his apples are not organically grown, he does follow an IPM program in which sprays are kept to an absolute minimum. Brightonwoods Orchard has been around since the 1950's, and, as Bill likes to put it, was a 'hobby gone awry', with now close to 200 varieties of apples in his orchard. We are offering two varieties for you, for delivery on 10/9 and 10/14,: Cortland and Tolman Sweet. Head to our online store link: https://app.barn2door.com/e/32GNQ for the details. In another couple weeks we will likely try a couple of other varieties from his orchard.
Please note: the apples are only available at the above link: they will not be listed under the Harvie extras. Deadlines: Oct. 7th for delivery on the 9th, and Oct. 12th for delivery on the 14th, or until supplies run out! Apples only delivered on those days, so if you are an every other week produce share, you would still have to pick up your apples on those days regardless of when your vegetable pick-up was scheduled.
Feedback, and looking towards next year: keep an eye out for an upcoming email in which we share what we are thinking as we develop plans for the farm for 2021!
Have a good week!
Peter & Bernadette
