Howdy Folks, 

These days have been incredible!  Cold in the morning and sunny and warm all afternoon.  There is no better weather from my point of view…especially when we need to get stuff done outside.

If you’re sweet potato fans, I’m so happy for you.  Mostly because the sweet potatoes we grow are sooooo good AND we’ll have them for you for this week and the next week. Read a little about sweet potatoes and you’ll find that they are very nutritious and they taste perfect right now.

When we first started growing sweet potatoes I couldn’t believe how productive they were.  Pounds of these roots are produced per plant! On top of that they are nutritious and delicious.  Better yet, they store as good as winter radishes!  They can be stored literally all winter in a coat closet in a room set for standard comfort.  

Before harvest, it’s advised to cut off the vine to the roots and leave them in the ground for a week.  This makes the sweet potato skin firm and, so, won’t suffer too much damage during harvest.  After harvest, which we mostly do with shovels to reduce damage to the root, we cure the sweet potatoes in the greenhouse for approximately 2 weeks.  The sweet potatoes go from bland to very sweet during this time.  

Keep this in mind if you really like them that you can purchase them in bulk from us and you’ll have no problems storing them and enjoying the throughout the winter.  I won’t be surprised to see them as an item in the spring CSA in April!  

We bake our sweet potatoes for approximately 1-1.5 hours at 350 degrees until the sugary syrup starts to bleed out of them.  Then we bathe them in butter and add a touch of salt.  

The celeriac you have in your box this week is small.  It was planted at the spacing necessary for parsley not celeriac.  Celeriac being a root vegetable these plants need more space than the leaf crop of parsley.  The tags were missing, and this tends to happen with our late summer plantings, simple steps are skipped and then opps happens.  The crew saw the leaves as parsley, when they were small and transplanted them out to the field.  Well we got more length in the stalks of the celeriac than normal and the plants naturally focused producing more green than root due to the constrictive root area.  So enjoy the baby roots and the verdant tall greens!  Celery and Celeriac are great for soups, sauces and stuffings.

Please be in touch if you have any questions about the fall CSA.  Simply reply to this email with your questions or give us a call at 814-221-7177.

Heads UP Thursday Fall Deliveries, the week of Thanksgiving we will be delivering your shares on Wednesday the 23rd, so none of us have to do any veggie schlepping on Thanksgiving day, just veggie eating!  

Thank You so much!!

Your Farmers,

Chris, Aeros and The Who Crew