Late Fall Harvest #5 (Week A) should include potatoes, cabbage, onions, garlic, bok choy, kale, lettuce mix, beets, and rutabaga.

Looks like we're in for a nice midweek wallop of blustery snow followed by some serious cold. By then our crop footprint will have shrunk to two tunnels so it will be a bit easier to provide extra protection where needed. We'll probably throw on an extra sheet of our thickest row cover then wait with our fingers crossed until moderate temperatures return next week. Cold nights that follow cloudy days are the most challenging. We have the heat turned on in our greenhouse to keep temperatures just about the freezing mark so that space should be all good as long as we don't lose power. Even with the extra work/stress, I am pretty excited to see some snow once again. It is unfortunate that it coincides with a scheduled pick up (which has been rescheduled for Tuesday) and during the same week our tractor is due for its annual tune up (which has also been rescheduled).

We're blazin' through the 2021 Crop Plan and soon we'll embark on the always fun space and time puzzle that is the Crop Rotation. Our goal is to keep crops in the same family off a piece of ground for 3-5 years to break any pest and disease cycles as well as manage nutrient uptake. For some families, like nightshade/solanaceae/tomato/potato and brassica/cole/cabbage/kale/arugula it's a bit more difficult because we grow a lot of those crops, and they may only have a 3 year gap. For others, like the apiaceae/carrot/fennel or amaranth/chenopod/chard/beet, it's a bit easier because their footprint is smaller. Besides organizing our farm space with these parameters we also try to plant fields temporally so that field work and irrigation infrastructure is more efficient.

In anticipation of a major snowstorm and cold weather, yesterday Pat and I harvested all the greens needed for this week, a total of 530lbs harvested over 4 hours. That's a lot of greens. Late Fall stalwarts kale and lettuce mix plus a newcomer to this time of year for us, bok choy, were cut. Bok choy seems to be about 99% water, which makes it much heavier. We're excited to share them with you!

Winter weather is about to descend on us, but our eating has already turned to hearty and warming dishes. Here are a few things we have enjoyed with our veggies recently:

Sweet potatoes, onion, potatoes, watermelon radish, carrots, turnip, rosemary - made a large sheet tray of roasted veggies. Cooked at 375 until they were pretty tender. If you cut things to similar sizes they will all be soft at the same time. I just toss in a bit of olive oil and add salt and pepper. I always make more than we can eat because they reheat nicely and they are also delicious in frittatas. They can also be done ahead if you will need the oven for another part of your meal. I just pop them back in the oven to reheat them for a few minutes before serving.

Daikon radishes, turnips, greens, carrots, onions - one of the (many) great things about making stews is that you can pretty much add whatever you want to them. Most stews call for carrots, potatoes, celery, but I added a couple daikons and turnips as well, and then added a bunch of chopped mixed greens at the end, adding flavor, color and nutrients to the meal.

Potato, onion, kale - made a potato soup, my own version of potato-leek soup and added a lot of kale in the last 20 minutes. Instead of pureeing the soup, I just used a potato masher, so it stayed very thick and rustic.