Harvest Monday - 4 September 2023

Happy Labor Day from Eight Gate Farm. The "first harvests" are slowing down, understandably, but we are still getting a few.

I picked the first red-ripe Hungarian Cheese peppers. While technically a stuffing pepper, their thick walls make them ideal for drying and making paprika, which is what we will do.

Hungarian Cheese peppers for paprika

 I also took the entire crops of two different onions. The first is "Talon," a hybrid yellow onion that I have had success with for several years, and stores very well. Some were very large.

Talon (F1) yellow onions

The second is "Barolo," a hybrid red onion. It's the first time I've grown it. Some are also very large. I hope it's another one that stores well.

Barolo (F1) red onions

Shown together, they make a gratifying display.

Red and yellow onions

Our wise Harvest Monday host, Dave, doesn't now spend much time or effort growing what he calls "commodity crops" like onions or potatoes. He's right, of course. They are very cheap, even in the specialty organic markets. But I still like doing it, and enjoy using them throughout the winter.

Now for "general harvests";  crops that have already been singly featured in my posts. Tuesday's harvest was something red...

Tuesday tomato harvest

...and something green:

Tuesday other harvest

Every night was a harvest of sweet corn. Sadly, I'm just unable to eat more than two ears lately. I used to devour it. So the remainder is cut from the cob and stored in the freezer.

Honey Select hybrid sweet corn

Here was Thursday's harvest. The red raspberries, which were pouting in the summer heat, are starting to get their full fall flush now.

Thursday general harvest

Here is Sunday's harvest. It's interesting that I'm still getting small harvests of broccoli side-shoots.

Sunday general harvest

Also on Sunday I picked all the remaining Honey Select corn, from the first batch I planted. The second batch should be appearing soon. This "baker's dozen" (what a strange term!) has some second ears from the stalks. Usually they suffer from poor pollination and this time was no exception.

Honey Select corn

Labor Day weekend is when the Vermont Garlic Festival in Bennington, Vermont is held. We go there to buy the seed garlic we will use for the coming year. This weekend, we took a two-night "mini vacay" to do this, and had a lovely time.

Bennington is about 2.5 hours west of us. For the last three years, it's no longer sited in the big beautiful hayfield on the outskirts of town, but has relocated right into the town itself. Hence, the festival has been renamed "Garlic Town USA." We feel the number of vendors has been reduced, but it still gives you an opportunity to interact directly with the garlic farmers, which I prefer rather than buying online. We were still able to source all the seed garlic we needed.

 That's all for this week. Thanks for reading, and thanks once again to Dave at HappyAcres.blog for hosting Harvest Monday.