Two Feet in the Dirt

One of the wonderful things about shopping at farmers markets is the availability of items that you wouldn’t be able to find at a typical grocery stores. Purple heirloom pole beans and Brazilian broccoli, for instance, are two of my favorite crops both for their productivity and taste, but you’d be hard pressed to find either at the store. This week, we’ll have two other items that fall outside of the typical.

Potatoes come in many varieties and this year we grew three- one early, one mid-, and one later season variety allowing us to extend the harvest for as long as possible. We are coming to the end of the red-skinned potatoes that we’ve had for several months, so this week we will have a new variety that has won our family over. These purple-skinned, gold-fleshed potatoes have an excellent waxy texture and outstanding flavor. While purple potatoes may be unfamiliar to many, we definitely encourage you to give them a try. We’re sure you’ll fall in love with them just like we have!

We’ll also be bringing, for the second week, a rainbow of carrot colors. Carrots used to be grown in a variety of colors, but when mechanized harvesting became the norm, orange carrots were deemed to show the least damage if nicked by the machine harvester and therefore became ubiquitous. The multi-colored carrots we grow are a combination of older, heirloom carrots and newer hybrid varieties that have been bred from the older types. They taste just like typical carrots but offer a wonderful addition of colors to any dish!

Check out below for our full harvest list, including the first of the fall crops, and we’ll see you this weekend.

Farmers Katie & Mike

This week at the market:

• Tomatoes
• Cherry tomatoes
• Arugula
• String beans
• Eggplant
• Kale
• Collard greens
• Rainbow chard
• Onions
• Garlic
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Salad mix
• Peppers