Meanwhile, we've been harvesting from our garden in Glendale Springs and going to the farmers' market when we have time. Below is one of Kristen's beautiful displays of fingerling potatoes at the market, which is the main thing we've sold this year.
Many of our potatoes were hit very hard by the blight. But some varieties that were hit the hardest still yielded well. Among the best producers this year was the "Red Thumb" -- those are the bright pink ones in that basket -- which were very colorful, high-yielding, and had great flavor and consistency. The "Banana" and "La Ratte" varieties also did well.
Above is a basket of "Rose Crescent" fingerlings, tomatoes, basil, flowers, and broccoli from the garden. Our house is a kind of bottomless pit for tomato sauce and it is impossible for us to can enough, with or without late blight, which finally took our tomato plants last week after creeping up on us all season.
Occasional garden-helpers (and badminton pros) Mitch and Josh demonstrate the great variety in potato sizes. The Guinness Book of World Records does not have an entry for world's smallest potato... yet.
This picture gives you a better idea of some of the color varieties of our fingerlings. The red ones are "Red Thumbs", the yellow ones are most likely "Bananas", and the black ones are "Peruvian Purples". Although they add a lot of color, the purples were among the least productive we had this year.
Experiments at the Bell household show that fresh fingerling potatoes go very well with wine-poached scallops. We'll have to reproduce our findings several times to be sure!
We've also had a good yield of Delicata squash, which are so sweet and buttery when baked that they hardly need any sugar or butter. It's difficult to get enough of them.
Green beans have been a huge success - pest-free and producing all season long. The winner for taste, tenderness, and productivity is definitely "Rattlesnake," green with purple streaking. We've been getting watermelons and muskmelons, but it's hard for us to tell when these are ripe.
Anyway, that's the news from Glendale Springs.
