Update

Whoa.

It was never my intention to abandon the blog for seven months, so you have my apologies.

We attended our fourth farmer's market today in Wichita and nearly sold out of everything.  I can't tell you what a glorious feeling it is to know that not only do we grow great food, but we are able to share it with others.  We even sold around 8 bushels of sweet corn (non-GMO, herbicide and pesticide free) that was grown by one of James' students.

Life is busy as we valiantly struggle against weeds and squash bugs in our garden.  The zucchini will be done in the next two weeks, if I'm right, as the squash bugs are multiplying quickly despite squishing and stomping.  Meanwhile, our beautiful lemon squash is apparently abhorrent to squash bugs, as it remains untouched one row over.

I'll write more later!

Produce Spotlight: All-Blue Potatoes

 Have you heard about All Blue Potatoes?  Have you wondered what all the hype was about?

These lovely gems are not the most exciting item fresh from the earth.  In fact, they tend to be so dirt colored that we sift through several times to make sure we didn't miss any of their hidden beauty.

Once scrubbed, you might begin to see their attraction.  The beautiful purple color is different from anything I've ever seen in my other potatoes!

After slicing, I'm always fascinated.  Look at the gorgeous marbling!

Some color will be lost after cooking.  Boiling tends to make them white all through, but when we grill them, they tend to retain a portion of their exotic coloring.

The Old Farmer's Almanac covered the origin of all blue potatoes in this interesting blog post.

Egyptian Tree Onions

Remember the wild abandon of these plants?

Welcome to the plant known as Egyptian tree onion, walking onion, and tree onion, as well as other names.

We planted ours several years ago, and, for the most part, have alternately weeded and ignored them.  Finally, this year, as we make plans to clean up the original potato bed, we needed to harvest the entire crop.  The entire area will be thoroughly tilled and hopefully compost added before next year's planting.

First, the lovely bulbils...

Then the onions themselves, which remind me more of shallots in size and their property of dividing every year.

Either part can be eaten.  They are a bit spicier than a regular onion.

To read more about the tree onion, check out this link.  If you are interested in purchasing some (either for eating as a spicy onion or to plant your own perennial onion crop), please leave a comment or email us!

Latest Harvest

All-Blue potatoes

Candy onions

Kennebec

Tree onion bulbils

First Harvests

There are many onions still to harvest...

...but we are making headway on the potatoes.  While I know others keep their potatoes in the ground until they are ready to consume them (or at least until fall), we discovered last year that, once the grasshoppers devour the leaves, the stems quickly rot and disappear, and soon after follow our buried potatoes.  A portion of our crop had already rotted after only an extra two weeks in the ground, so once the stem is bare, we harvest!

First, we harvested Red Norland potatoes.  Several days later, we followed with our Yukon Gold harvest.  With 165+ pounds harvested and an entire bed to go,  it's anyone's guess as to how much is left.  There will be several varieties, red and white skinned, waiting like buried treasure.

 97 pounds of onions have been pulled.  Some could have waited, but when our time is needed on so many different fronts, it is not practical to pick and choose out of a row.  Once most of the row is laying down, we harvest.  I'd refer to wait until the leaves brown, but it is not possible for us to check every day, as no one lives on Purgatory Ranch just yet.

Of the onions, we have pulled all the Red Candy, Red Burgundy, and Sweet Granex.  All that remains is the Candy.  There are PLENTY of those, and still growing!

If interested in purchasing our produce, please message us through our facebook page or contact information under our profiles!