Big Harvests

Late summer and early fall is the time for big harvests. Even though we harvest all season (and sometimes even all year), August, September and October are the months to bring in crops for winter storage. We squeeze in big harvests whenever we can, amid all the regular harvesting and other work.

First up was onions. (Garlic was really the first one, but that happened in July, so I don’t count it here.) We started a bit late, the second week of September, with pulling the remaining Walla Walla sweet onions out of the field. The next week, we tackled our New York Early yellow storage onions. Finally, this week, we finished off with the Rosa di Milano red storage onions and Ed’s Red Shallots. They are all safely in the hoop house, finishing curing/drying down for winter storage. This has been a great onions year for us, with our biggest harvest ever. We dug up more than 850 lbs of New York Early onions alone. I think we’ll have enough for the winter.

In between the onions, we started in on the dry beans. This year, we got them in the ground earlier than in the past, so they have been ready to pick sooner. Our niece and her friends helped us out with the Rockwell beans a few weeks ago. They are no longer OSU students, but now OSU alumni. Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the crew. Last weekend, we worked on the Rosso di Lucca beans, before the rain. It was such a productive crop, we couldn’t finish it. We planted the same amount as the Rockwells, and even without finishing, we had harvested more than twice as much. That same weekend, we harvested a new variety, that we had just a little bit of. We’ll sample this variety and will save  a good portion of it for next year’s seed. Yesterday, Steven and I knocked out another new-to-us variety, Kenearly Yellow Eye. We were a little disappointed with the yield on this one, so we’ll have to see if the taste is worth it.

We still have winter squash, potatoes, carrots and assorted other crops, some of which are not ready to bring in yet. Time/manpower and storage space are limiting factors for us. By next year, the storage issue should be resolved with our new pole barn. It is getting closer to completion. The roof and two walls are up now. The concrete floor is scheduled for Thursday this week. Even though we  won’t have the storage rooms built out, we’ll still use the dry, insulated space for winter squash, potatoes and onions. Once the storage rooms are built, we’ll only have to solve the time problem…