July 19: Week 8

Sorry for the delay -- but I'm thinking there's only two people that actually read this on a weekly basis, so it's a easy forgiveness to get... It was a good work shift but a busy week to get the notes written down here.

I definitely like working Sundays rather than Saturdays. A Saturday shift is mostly weeding but since Sunday is a pickup day, Sunday's shift is HARVESTING. First, I harvested kale. Erin hands out a special harvest knife, small like a pen knife, but is it sharp! Usually I come home with knife prick or two because of a jab. So I learned to harvest kale by cutting the branches at the plant's base and then inspecting the leaves for color and holes. Next we pulled up some onions. She has about 3 rows of big white onions, and we were choosing the ones that were close to the size of a softball. They were all big and really beautiful. The allocation would be 1 per share, and she probably has enough to last through September. The next vegetable we would harvest was potatoes. Now because of the late blight, the potatoes were to be harvested earlier than normally to avoid losing the whole crop. [Concerning the blighted tomatoes, Erin was spraying another natural fungicide spray (potassium bicarbonate) to slow down the decay process and save some of the fruit.] Harvesting the potatoes was fun. The plant was pulled directly out of the ground and some potatoes (golden with delicate skin) would fall down to the soil. There would also be a few appearing in the soil by the unearthing of the plant. Then she used a pitchfork to turn over more of the soil to find more. There I was on my hands and knees in this potato alley, searching for these buried treasure. I found a "rotten" brown one and I asked her about it. "Disease, or moles, or water damage..?" "Er, no," she said. "That was the starter potato that created all the other smaller potatoes". I smiled sheepishly. Sometimes I think I have a potato for a brain.