The First Harvest! [Wk7; June 12-18]

We harvested our first crop of turnips this week! Exciting stuff.  The weather was absolutely perfect for harvesting.  I was a cloudy, cool, moist day.  Very dreary for standards of play, but perfect for removing veggies from the field.

One very important task for preserving freshness, is to remove what is called the "field heat" from the product.  You want to get the product down to refrigeration temperatures (40 degrees F) as quickly as possible.  Thus, we had a cooler (which turned out to be way to small for our bounty) with ice at the ready.  However, the task was very simple for us because the air temperature was only in the mid 50's at the time we were picking the greens.

We harvested on Wednesday evening (normally you would harvest in the morning during the coolest part of the day) put them the refrigerator for the night and delivered them to the food pantry (1 1/2 blocks away) the next day.

Fresh food, worthy of being sold at Outpost Natural Foods or Whole Foods, placed in the hands of those who might not normally get access to it, is what this project is all about.  Special thanks  to our harvest team, Vala, Jackie, and Keith.

Keith, Vala, David, (Jackie, taking picture)