First Frost

Last night Clagett Farm was hit by its first significant frost of the season. It was not uniform throughout the farm. Some fields obviously didn't get any frost, while others did. The sweet potatoes, winter squash and pumpkins were hit hard. The share of sweet potatoes will not be affected, but this means that we should speed up the harvesting of the rest of our sweet potatoes. And we did some of it today.

<a href="http://kolya.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/size_12_sweet_potatoes.jpg"><img alt="Size_12_sweet_potatoes" title="Size_12_sweet_potatoes" src="http://kolya.typepad.com/clagettfarm/images/size_12_sweet_potatoes.jpg" width="160" height="136" border="0" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px;" /></a>

We dug out some White Haymans, an heirloom variety of white sweet potatoes, as well as some Beauregards, a common variety with the more familiar red-orange color. That is a size 12 work boot to your right, next to to some Beauregards that were just dug out.

Because of the frost, today we harvested all the winter squash and pumpkins that we could salvage. It is a pity, but over half of our pumpkins and butternut squash did not ripen in time. They had ample time to mature, but for some reason they were taking their sweet time doing it, and now they've been zapped by a killer frost. Shareholders will be getting pumpkins, just not as many nor as large and we would have liked.

Comments

[Kolya]

It was a Jarrahdale pumpkin, a variety from Australia. Ecology Action's Bountiful Gardens catalog describes it as "a superb eating pumpkin. ... Has orange-yellow sweet dry stringless flesh, that is excellent for eating, but is good baked or in pies." During yesterday's Fall Festival, Pat Burke, shareholder and worksharer, told me that she found it delicious.

[Rebecca]

What was the large blue squash (looks a big blue pumpkin) that came home in my Saturday share?