The Weblog

We send out cool articles and farmer highlights using a different email program. You can see the archives of those emails here and through our facebook page! We use this “weblog” every Friday evening to let you know the market page is accepting orders (look for the little add to cart buttons next to products). Northeast Georgia Locally Grown was officially OPENED on Monday, April 26th, 2010 and we are so thankful that you are helping support fresh local foods each week.



 
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Locally Grown Availability for October 30th, 2013


This post expired on October 28, 2023.

Hey Local Food Lovers,

The first announcement is we’re staring our winter hours at Locally Grown this week. That’s where we shorten our pickup times to 5-6:30 instead of 7pm. The reason we do this is simple. It gets very cold and dark this time of year after 6:30. With the time change coming up a week from today we thought we’d go ahead and get folks in the habit this week so by next week when it really will be cold and dark we’ll already be on our new schedule. Thanks for helping us with that transition and we move the time back to 7pm usually sometime in April.

Even though frost has come there’s no shortage of local food this week and throughout the fall and winter. Sometimes I wish we could take a look back in time to see how the total number of products has changed at Locally Grown over the years and through the seasons.

For instance, I know that we haven’t had many more than 300 items at any one time (maybe around 320 or something during the height of summer). Here it is a cold week in October and were still at 253. That’s a lot of local food options as we head off into the cold months.

One of the biggest reasons for this is there are lots and lots of folks using greenhouses. About a dozen new greenhouses have been built in the last 3 years alone.

Another thing worthy of mention is the growing array of fresh made processed foods. There’s 6 jams and jellies, 10 baked goods, one vegetarian burger, a whopping 27 gluten free products (that’s a whole lot of choices), 10 milled grains, and for the first time ever this week on NE GA Locally Grown fresh made PASTA. That’s an exciting addition to a growing list of talented food makers. We really appreciate the creativity and passion of these food producers because its as important a role as having local farmers.

But just in case you’re worried that the winter months will have nothing but processed foods, there are 100 vegetable items this month and I’d be surprised if during any given month this winter we ever had less than at least 50-60 items (unless Brooks takes a week off of course).

This week I had the great personal joy of pulling in my sweet potato crop. I didn’t grow a whole lot this year due to other distractions, but the little bit I did grow (things like garlic and onions that keep for months) has really lifted my spirits by having my own food to draw on for months and months.

Pulling up the plants and finding impressively large roots (cause you never know until you dig what you got in the ground) then mounding them up and taking them home.

Here’s a few things you may not know about sweet potatoes. Unlike most other vegetables, sweet potatoes don’t taste best after harvest. They actually require a curing period during which enzymes are produced that convert starch in the potato to sugars. This curing is also what allows sweet potatoes to keep for so long (up to 10-12 months if done right).

Now this is where my expertise ends b/c proper curing of sweet potatoes takes some work, and I’ve never done it the way it should be done, but I’ll describe what I’ve heard all the same.

Immediately after harvest you’re supposed to store sweet potatoes at quite warm temps (preferably between 85-90 Fahrenheit) and high humidity (greater than 80%) for at least a week. This helps sweet potatoes to induce healing (as the thin skins are inevitably scraped during harvest) allowing them to retain their moisture, and keep out rot. This process is very important, and I really need to inquire from my farm cohorts how they accomplish it. It’s the heat with humidity that makes it challenging. I don’t have a humidifier or I suppose you could put them in a small room or bathroom with a little foot heater or something.

Ok, that’s a very brief farming 101 for the week. It is quite fun to slowly over time learn the natural history of the foods we eat. We just made sweet potato fries (from someone else’s cured potatoes) for the weekend, so I’m very much in the mode. It’s just such a fantastic vegetable. It’s one of the highest sources of vitamin A (just one cup contains 438% of the RDA). Another cool note on nutrition is that our bodies absorb Vitamin A better when we take it with at least 3.5 grams of Fat. That’s why sweet potatoes taste so good with steak! But just in case you’re a vegetarian, no worries, 3.5 grams of fat can be obtained in just one tablespoon of olive oil. So don’t forget to sprinkle that on top next time (as we do everytime we bake our sweet potato fries…and we also add paprika).

Thanks for EATING LOCAL and

EAT WELL,
Justin in Habersham
and
Chuck in Tiger