Week 18, 2019-20 Viral Changes

At Steed Farm we care about the health of our members.  That is primarily why we grow using organic methods.  We care about our community and the general welfare of our community. 

During this Coronavirus pandemic we are taking greater measures to safeguard our member's health.

We always wash our produce and then disinfect it with a peroxide wash.  All our hard surfaces (tables and trays) holding our produce get a bleach wash and rinse every Saturday pick up. 

One thing we will do is start bagging our member's produce at the farm instead of allowing everyone to pick their own produce.   This will minimize potential for cross-contamination from accidental handling.  We will also be doing curb-side service in order to minimize folks congregating at the produce tables. 

We will also implement not using recycled produce boxes immediately.  We will wash them in bleach disinfectant and then store them away for a few weeks to give any germs time to breakdown and then dip in bleach wash again before use in the future.

Our employees will be washing hands more frequently and if they are showing any symptoms refrain from showing up to work. 

As our logistic supply is being stretched at the supermarkets, I am grateful and honored that we can serve our community in one of the few things that is an absolute necessity; the production of food to sustain us.

We will get through this time with everyone doing the small things that will help us overcome. 

Week 10, Season 2019-20

The cold finally arrived and we got through it with little damage;  A few burned potato and tomato plants.  We took to the fields with frost cover and wrapped up the greenhouse to protect the crops. Thankfully the cold was just at the edge of danger.  It was however, nice to see some of the "bad-actor" weeds burned by the frost as well.  The weed scientist in me always smiles at weeds in peril, but alas, it will only be for a short while.

We have a few new crops for this season coming online: breakfast radish, butternut squash, snap peas, broccoli, Chinese cabbage, eggplant, and baby bok choy.  Mandarin tangerines and lemons are going home with our members, graciously being provided by Mike and Shelly Sweet of Sweet Dream Amaryllis.  Mike has a nice little fruit block he shares with friends and we made the list this year.  If you are ever in need of amaryllis as a gift or for landscape improvements he is your guy.  They are breeders and nursery growers of some fancy bulbs you can check out    https://sweetdreamamaryllis.com/ at their online store.  They are located in the Bloomingdale area if you want to visit them.  They are great folk and know a ton about amaryllis.

Mike Sweet (Sweet Dream Amaryllis) posing with citrus and his young crop of amaryllis

The half way point of the season is quickly approaching and we are planting the last of the cool season plants; lettuce, kale, mustards, greens, arugula, etc. We'll switch back to the warm season stuff shortly.   Looking forward to corn and beans again!

Happy New Year 2020!

We have been rapidly moving through the season at Steed Farm. We are in our sixth week of the 2019-20 season.  We had a very rocky start with the weather at the start of the season. So much rain fell that we experienced flooding when we planted our sweet potatoes and squashes.  The weather has  now calmed and the crops are responding well.  We now have greens galore and more squashes than most members like to eat in a week!

We have had good growing response from a few new crops this year.  Choctaw squash, peas shoots, and Ethiopian kale have produced well.  The choctaws grew tremendous vines producing about
30 lbs of squash per vine.  The pea shoots are crisp and sweet like fresh peas;perfect as salad toppings.  The kale  tastes a bit like mustard, broccoli, and/or kale depending upon when I've tasted it.  Its is growing well in our warm winter.  We have a few new varieties yet to ripen and I will report on them in a later post. 


Over the last summer we added four pastured cattle to our farm and hope to have beef to sell in the fall.  Nate and I spent the summer "down-time" mending the broken south fences.  I've also spent a good bit of time getting our pasture in better shape for the calves; mowing, killing weeds, seeding, and fertilizing.  The cattle are doing well with the changes and are gaining weight (a good thing for cows).  Which reminds me to wish everyone a Happy New Year!  We hope that this is your best year yet and that you and yours are happy and healthy.  We will continue to strive to produce fresh organic produce to enrich your lives and add to your healthy choices.

 

Week 24, Season 2018-19

This is the last harvest weekend for our 2018-19 season. I am happy it is wrapping up and looking forward to having a few Saturdays back in the week.  I will however,  miss seeing everyone at pickup time. 

Our season was really good this year.  We had bumper tomatoes, strawberries, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, bok choi, greens, swiss chard, and starfruit.  I was disappointed with the corn crop.  We had raccoons and poor pollination.  Last year we had tons of corn.  This year I didn't even eat one ear. I wanted a little more broccoli, squash, cucumbers and peppers.  Something to shoot for next season. 

A big winner this year was using bug screen for the greenhouse.  That paid off greatly in reducing the amount of pest pressure from stinkbugs and allowed the tomatoes to benefit.

We are planning next year's season already and I will start plowing in this season's weeds.  Cover crop will be planted in a few weeks and then we will take it easy for a few weeks.

Next blog will have a bunch of pictures from this season's hard work.

Week 21, 2108-19 Season

We are quickly approaching the end of this farming season and I can already see myself not at the farm on a Saturday morning.  However, I did realized this week two things.  My mind is already turning towards thoughts about next year's crops and methodologies; and I thought about how we probably won't eat as much produce as we do when we harvest our crops.  I miss bok choi already.  We ate some from Katie and James' garden at our house and I thought we usually don't buy that from the store.  So I will probably wait until next fall before I see it again.

Corn is slowly maturing and will be ready very soon.  The new red potatoes did very well this year and we will harvest until the end of the season.  Not sure if the leeks will finish on time this year as I planted them late.  Hopefully they will size up. 

We are picking beets this week.  I always struggle to grow good beets but this year it looks like we will get some from the field. 

The squashes are slowly gaining ground and producing more along with the eggplants.

We lost our last cucumber crops to some rodent (squirrel, rat, or mouse) that ate all our seedlings emerging from the trays.  By the time it wrecked the crop I couldn't replant a crop for the end of the season.  We will try again next year.

We planted a ton of onions this year so I hope everyone loves onions.  We are picking lots of red and white sweet onion and will do so until the last week of harvest.

Looking forward to a couple more harvest weekends!   

Week 16, 2018-19 Season

The last few weeks have been alternately warm and cool.  We are still growing lettuce; barely.  It wants to bolt but a few days of cool slow it down a bit. 

This is the last week of starfruit.  I was surprised to price the fruit at a retail store for $2.50 a piece.  We had about 6 weeks of fruit this year.  The tree yielded very well. I fertilized it this week so as to keep up production for next season. 

We are about four weeks away from harvesting potatoes.  I planted 'Reddale' and 'Dark Red Norland.'  They are looking very well so I hope the yield is as good as they look.

Corn is about 4 inches high.  I had to replant due to a lack of rain and some skips but it is starting to take off.

Onions are sizing up, leeks are small yet and green onions are growing as well.

Tomatoes are just starting to ripen.  The plants grew tremendously this year but there is some disease in the greenhouse.  Organic fungicides don't really slow down the progress of disease so I spent a good amount of time this week removing infected leaves and branches to reduce the inoculum levels.  Hope it helps.

Strawberries have produced well and are starting to slow down due to the warm weather.  I noticed that many fields are already done picking around town.

Only eight more weeks left in the season!

Week 13, 2018 -19 Season

Things are looking good in the field over the last couple weeks.  We could use another good rain.  We've been a little dry and plants always respond differently to rain compared to irrigation.

I planted leeks and green onions last week.  This week I am setting the squashes and finishing the green onions planting.  I am planting a few miscellaneous crops to fill in some gaps and then our plantings are wrapping up for the end of the season.

Strawberries are producing copious amounts of gorgeous fruit this week.  Looks like one more week of starfruit before we finish their season.

Tomatoes are still green and ripening.  I have never seen so many tomato flowers in the greenhouse.  We should be in good shape in two months.

One crop of beans is finished and another is emerging from seeds.  Onions and carrots are a few weeks out.   Red potatoes are looking good but could use some rain.

The warmer weather is causing the lettuce to bolt so we might be wrapping up the lettuce season early unless we get another cool spell.  I thought this full moon would bring rain and a cool front, but we missed out.  We'll see what this week brings us.



 

'Bout Time

Well, it IS about time to write a post.  It is also about time that I haven't posted in a while.  Running around with six athletic kids is very tiring.  Sitting down to write a blog post seems like an extra homework assignment.  Finally thought I would summarize what's been going on at the farm.

This season has been one of the hardest seasons of our ten we have been growing.  We have had very wet, very hot, very cool, and very damp- making for another typical, atypical fall/winter in the Bay area.

Ants are a real problem this year.  They have been chewing the stems of transplants and killing them.  We lost two crops of broccoli, one crop of kale, and a collard crop due to their behavior.  This is the first time they bothered  cole crops.  Thankfully, we are finally getting things under control (even if half of the season is behind us).

This season we are growing on the eastern side of the property that borders Hwy 39.  The soil has doubled in organic matter.  This means our soil fertility has increased with additions of cover crops and organic soil amendments.  Our annual soil test reported we only needed to input nitrogen this year.  Looks like things are working out in building up our soil.

There are some growing changes this year.  We are growing strawberry 'Sensation' instead of 'Camino' with much success.  This variety produces berries earlier in the season and they are much larger than Camino.  We added pole beans, baby bok choy, downy mildew resistant cucumbers, and screened our greenhouse so bugs can't enter.   We have been late with tomatoes but they are growing with reckless abandon.  We should soon be picking them.  Pole beans did well for a few weeks but seem to have slowed down.  They are very tasty and extra long and I can grow them in the greenhouse during the winter.

Snow peas are just starting to yield.  Beets, beans, carrots, mustard greens, scallions, lettuce, and sweet corn are being planted this week.

Hope to keep you updated from time to time... 

Season 2018-19 Start

The summer rest goes by too fast, and again the new farming season is upon us.  This will be our tenth anniversary of growing produce for our community.  We had a great produce season last year.  We added a few crops to the mix such as spinach, 'Kickoff' sweet corn, and mulberries.  We struggled a bit with kale, eggplants, and beets.  But over all I would rate our season as an "A".  When I rate our crops, I generally mean how much did I plant and what did I harvest versus the expectation.  We always have room for improvement to attain the coveted "A+".  Maybe this year...

We already started the new journey by breaking ground in the eastern-most plot on the farm.  The ground has rested for a few years with replenishing cover crops and shredded tree trimmings added to increase the organic mater and the biological activity in the soil.

The first crop that leads off our 10th season of vegetable farming is the sweet potato.  We were a little late last year getting the plants in the ground, but this year we should be on time.  We had early season drama of losing a box of plants in the mail.  Then we received a replacement second shipment on the day before we left for a two week family vacation.  Despite all that, I was able to hold the slips under a mist bed and plant them upon my return.

Next in line are the tomato, cabbage, pepper, and collard greens.  These were planted in trays and should be placed in the field in about 30 days as seedlings.   

We are looking forward to seeing all our old friends,and the new ones, in a few months.  Here's to a great tenth season.

 

Week 21, Season 2017-18; Peak Tomato

We celebrated Earth Day this last week with a farm clean up.  We gathered about 60 lbs of trash from the road and fields, mostly plastic trash.  Thank you to the boundless energy of the Steed family.  

While picking tomatoes this week the thought of peak tomato occurred to me.  Similar to the concept of peak oil.  We have reached peak tomato! The season is winding down and the crops are starting to show it.  We have reached the point in the tomato crop where maximum yield has occurred and now we are on the decline.  We have had a great tomato season with the varieties, ‘Celebrity,’ ‘Juliet,’ and ‘Charger.’  My peppers are doing very well and we have not reached “peak pepper” yet.

We are picking our potatoes and have had extremely tasty strawberry onions this year. 

Our corn plants are looking beautiful and I hope they can finish out strong.  They look like they will pick on our last week of the season. I am trying a new variety this year and it looks like we might get two ears per plant.  I can’t wait!

Around our house I have been watching collard greens in the crisper getting less and less crisp over a few weeks.  Jenn is reluctant to cook them as I am usually the only one who eats them.  So they hang out in the crisper until they are ready for composting.  This time I rescued them and tried something completely different.  Here is a recipe that I came up with.

In a deep frying pan, sauté a couple cloves in olive oil and then chop about a cup and a half of tomatoes and let them saute with the garlic.  While the garlic and tomatoes sauté, chop the collard greens and add them to the pan.  I add a little water at this point and create a steam with the lid.    You can add some pepper and salt or your favorite spices.  After the collards start to turn dark green turn the pan to a simmer and let it cook with lid on for about twenty or thirty minutes until tender.  Enjoy!  I even had some of the kids saying how good this was.  Now I look forward to seeing more collards in our crisper.

Here are a few pictures from the farm.

Collards, tomatoes, garlic, yum!

Tassels emerging

Guardian of the Corn

Week 18, Season 2017-18

We have managed our way through a rather challenging season.  High and low temperatures in the area were pretty dramatic and crops haven't liked it.  We are nearing the end of harvesting lettuce crops. Strawberries are also on the decline as night and day temperatures have increased.  We still have squash, beans, corn, melons, and cantaloupe in the ground.  Our leeks look good and I believe that we will have our first harvest of sweet onions this weekend.  Corn is about a foot high and beans are  2-4 inches tall.  The sweet potatoes are finished, and the red potatoes will be harvested soon. Cucumbers were burnt out by the frost for the third time this season.  I am thinking, unfortunately, that we will have to pass on cukes this year.  This period is difficult between cool and warm season veggies.  Cool weather ends abruptly and the heat takes off like a rocket.  Plants just can't react that quickly, so we usually have a few meager weeks around this time.

We managed to pick quite a few mulberries from a tree I planted about five years ago.  This was a nice surprise and the tree is still loaded.  I expect we will harvest for a few more weeks.  The first pick made its way into my mulberry and strawberry jam.  Sometimes I add blueberries and call it multi-berry jam.  I believe we might have enough for another week's pickup.  I really love the taste of mulberries right off the tree, in jam, used in smoothies, or as toppings.  I could do without the hitch hiking thrips, but that kind of goes with the season and  the fruit.  If you wash the mulberries or blow on them, thrips usually find other retreats.  I will propagate a few more mulberry plants this year and plant them in the fruit block after they root.     

Week 9, 2017-18 Season

"It is a hard year to be a grower of produce," one of our members said last week.  I heartily agree with that statement.  We survived another blast of cold.  The weather station at the UF Gulf Coast Research and Education Center had 25 F for their low.  They are a little south and west of us and are probably just slightly warmer.  When I checked on the plants the morning of the freeze there was ice on the plastic in the top of the greenhouse.  The min/max thermometer had 28 degrees inside where the tomatoes were.  Surprisingly, only the tops of the tomatoes got burned. The cucumbers didn't fair well either.  I had to replant them.  But all in all, we made out pretty well.  This time things turned out as I would have expected.  Cole crops survived, and the tropical trees at my work (mango, starfruit) were frozen and burned.  Interesting how each freeze is a new learning event. 

We are still waiting on strawberries and I will finally start to dig sweet potatoes this week.  We are planting lots of lettuce, cole crops, and the second half of potatoes left from last week's planting.  Next week we will begin getting the warm season crops in the ground; corn, beans, squash, melons, etc.  I am enjoying working in this cool weather and am not excited for the inevitable warm up to come.

Surviving the Arctic Blasts

We seem to have grown somewhat complacent with our balmy winter weather over the last few years.  Previously, we had a couple of light frosts do deal with.  This year we have had a different scenario, and it's only mid-January.  A few days of hard freezes have had an impact. 
We diligently protected the greenhouse and field with an all-hands-on-deck approach by Jenn, myself, and the kids.  We covered the warm weather crops including the zucchini, eggplants, and sweet potato with frost cloth that provides a few degrees of protection.  Think of this as a "snuggie"  for the veggies.  I assumed the cool season crops like cabbage, kale, bok choi, peas, etc. would be able to make it through unprotected.  Most of the veggies were fine; we did get some freeze damage on the tops.  The eggplant were winter pruned about three inches, any strawberry fruit turned black, and the cole crops sustained frost damage. Even the cabbage burned and I lost a new planting of them.  Next time I will cover everything.  It is always a mystery how the weather is going to affect our crops.  There are several tropical trees at my office (mango, lychee, starfruit)  that were not affected at all. 
We will need a little time to grow out of the damage.   When we have a week like the previous one, crops are either negatively affected or just sit idle until it gets warmer.  It's like hitting pause for a week.   Growth resumes later.  My hope is that we will have warmer temperatures, but the forecast suggests another cold blast is on its way.
The good news is that we still have sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers growing when neighboring crops froze.  Last week I picked the first ripe cherry tomato.  This week I picked four.  A few weeks from now we should be picking for all our farm members. 

Week 3, 2017-18

A bit chilly at Steed Farm this week.  We started the week with lows in the mid-30's.  On Monday morning, as I was taking the kids to school, we looked at frosty ice on the windshield and roofs of houses. I knew that we would have some damage at the farm. You can imagine that green beans, roselle, squash, sweet potato, and eggplants don't favor this kind of weather.  They all wound up with moderate frost damage to the plants.  Not killed to the ground, but wounded.  The beans, yellow squash and roselle were the most affected.  Thankfully, I was able to close up the greenhouse to protect the tomato and pepper plants and nothing bad happened there.  So a minor set back but, God willing, things will be progressing again soon.  The other crops really responded well; cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower look better.  This weekend I hope to plant more peppers, cabbage, mustard greens, diakon, red onions, and turnips.

Frost damaged squash and sweet potato plants.

Week 2, 2017-18

Our first pick up went very well.  It is always great to catch up with our members who we haven't seen since May and greet our new members.  Jenn made zucchini muffins as a sweet add-on for everyone. 
It is always a little hard for me to shift back into harvest mode from production mode, as the work is under a time crunch.  I thank our volunteer friend Issy and the rest of the Steed family who made things much easier this time.
One thing that always happens at our first pick up is the question "What is that and what do I do with it?"  It is always fun to talk about the fresh produce we bring to the pick up tables and our favorite recipes that we use to eat them.  I never considered us to be "foodies" but since we have all this unique produce it sort of happens over time and I am now warming up to that definition.
Daikon radish is one of those vegetables we had at our first pickup. 
For all the folks who have no idea what to do with a diakon radish I have included some links with  recipes...

Here are a bunch of yummy recipes from Saveur Mag  https://www.saveur.com/article/collection/daikon-recipes

daikon fries - http://cookingontheweekends.com/2014/01/spicy-roasted-daikon-french-fry-recipe/

and these from New Hampshire NPR - http://nhpr.org/post/what-do-daikon-radishes#stream/0

We like to eat them roasted, fried, and in salads.

I hope this helps!

Week 1, 2017-18 Season

Harvest is set for this Saturday.  Looks like we will have loads of zucchini and yellow squash.  The green beans surprised with a good harvest of beautiful pods for this weekend.  Broccoli raab looks like it might have been a week early.  We will see if we can harvest enough for everyone.  Strawberries are starting to flower.  This is about a month earlier than last year.  To round out the baskets are diakon, turnips (which look excellent), roselle, patty pan squash, oregano, and garlic chives.  Things are looking good and doing well as the season starts.

We will be planting cabbage, broccoli, scallions, more bok choi, lettuce, and cauliflower grown from our own transplants for future harvests.   

Season Start 2017-2018

I've taken a bit of a blogging hiatus since our last post way back in April.  I have been somewhat overwhelmed with work, fixing up a mobile home, caring for six kids, and making sure that the household and vehicles are up to par as well as preparing for the next season.  Usually the summer is a slack time from our busy pace;  not this year!  We lost a well pressure tank, an AC unit went out, someone ran over our farm mailboxes, hurricane preparations and clean up, and a work-cation.  I am running just to keep up with things lately and the idea of sitting at a computer late at night hasn't seemed that attractive.  Blogger has however, been calling to me and finally I have a free moment and will catch up from the last post.

Our 2016-17 season was one of the best seasons we have had in terms of vegetable/fruit production so far.  The weather was mild and cooperative and plantings performed well.  We added edible pod peas, spaghetti and acorn squash to our veggie line-up.  Strawberries exceeded our expectations.  All-in-all we had a "A-" season.  The biggest downer was not having kale for an entire season.  I just couldn't get it to germinate and stay alive to transplanting size.

This new season has started off with much difficulty.  Our farm received over eight inches of rain at field preparation time.  This greatly hampered our transplant starts and the formation of beds in the field as I wasn't able to get a tractor in to form our planting beds.  So we started off two weeks behind schedule.  Next we had some very cold weather during our warm-season cycle and that further delayed some plants another two weeks.  Usually we are harvesting mid-Nov, this season will probably start mid-December.  Other farmers I have talked with are in a similar situation.   Fortunately, we grow many crops over the season, we have been spared major damage from storms, and will recover.  So many growers in Florida have had a much worse time and have lost much of their crops for the year. 

Our sweet potatoes are looking good, squash, zucchini, diakon, broccoli raab look fine.  Our strawberries were direct planted to the field.  This uses a bunch of water.  For the better part of ten days, overhead water needs to run on bare-root transplants to keep them alive so they can grow new roots.  I used low-volume sprinklers to keep the plants alive until the roots formed.  This has saved me planting twice though.  Usually I plant them into trays, mist them in the greenhouse, and form little starter plants, then transplant the rooted plants into the field.   So I wind up planting twice to save water.  Since time has been my limiting factor lately, I tried the standard method that strawberry farmers use to grow plants.  I did notice some negative factors such as earthworms that recovered in the field (by using cover crops for a few years) were drowning in puddles trying to evade the saturated field and swamping other nearby crops.  Maybe I will look for rooted strawberry plugs for next year. 
That is a good start at catching up on things and I will continue in fill in details in future posts.  Looking forward to a few hours of sleep and a great 2018 season!

Week 22, Season 2016-2017

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel as the season winds down.  Just a few weeks to go this season.  I have been doing the final activities to help the crops finish strong; a little fertilizer here, some weeding there, a broken drip tube, etc.
We still have corn and beans to finish and they are looking nice.  Cantaloupe and some new squash types are a few weeks away from finishing along with the new cucumbers in the greenhouse.
Strawberries are still doing well but the size is getting smaller with the heat.  I checked the sugar level and they are at 10% which is still very high for this late in the season.  I would love to do a sugar test with berries being sold in the store to see what you could get commercially.  It would be great to see how we compare.
The seed bugs are beginning to take over.  These guys live in the plants and eat the surface of the fruit and cause a bronzing to the surface.  It doesn't seem to alter the taste but makes the berries look like they are bad.  I've sprayed them with pyrethrins in the past but it just seems to slow the bugs down for a week before they are back.  Since we are so late in the season, I am going to leave them alone.  Having a week off allowed the Steed household to produce six quarts of jam and two and a half quarts of jelly (of which I will not be making again in the future due to the low yields and extra fruit and work that is needed). I have also tried making dried fruit and fruit leather.  The fruit leather came out good and is super easy.  Just blend up the strawberries after stemming them.  Add a little lemon juice and sugar if you want.  Then pour over a plastic lined baking sheet and put the oven on low at 140 degrees.  It took all night for it to set but it tasted great and the kids liked it. I sent it to school with them for a snack.
The potatoes are yielding great and will pick for about four weeks.  Leeks will pick for the first time this year.
Hopefully a good finish to a great year.

Week 19, 2016-17 Season

We had an amazing reversal of heat this week with temperatures going from high 60's to mid -30's at night.  All of our warm season crops are in the ground and a few of them, like the beans and squash plants, got a bit of frost damage.  The last crops were planted out this week including lettuce, green onion, basil, and cantaloupe.  I covered some of them with one gallon pots just to keep a bit of warmth near the plant and reduce radiation heat loss.

The strawberries have been picking well but slowed down a tad after the cool snap.  The cool weather should keep the sugars high.  They have been picking great this year.

The potatoes are just over the half way mark and I missed my St. Pat's Day timing again.  Maybe next year.  Corn is about 6 inches high and so are the squash.

I am happy that the season is winding down and hope production can stay up with this cyclical weather.

Week 16, Season 2016-2017

We have reached the two thirds point of the season and the growing is going well.  Cabbage, snow peas, red beets, cauliflower, and komatsuna will be picking this weekend for the first time this season.  I just planted corn, beans, and a few different squash this week.  I will be transplanting peppers, lettuce, cabbage, bok choi, kale (finally) and a few different items this week.  I also hope to plant cantaloupe and melon transplants and Seminole pumpkin seeds to finish out all this year's plantings.  Cucumbers were planted in the greenhouse this week.  Potatoes are up and running and looking fine.  The cauliflower was doing amazing and we had some that were about 10-12 inch heads.  I came back after the rainy days and they had hideous black spots all over the heads and I had to cut and toss them over the fence to the cattle.  It was a trial as we have done poorly in the past, so I was relieved that I actually could grow them.  We will be able to harvest about half of the trial section and I now will add that to our list of plants to pursue.
This is probably our last week of sweet potato harvests and am happy that we got about 13 weeks out of our planting.  I found a great recipe for you to try to say farewell to the sweet potatoes.  I serendipitously ran across a sweet potato soup recipe that was delicious and extremely easy.  It was in Cook's Illustrated magazine.  Did you know that if you have a Hillsborough County library card you can download tons of magazines to your reading device for free!  I happened to figure this out two weeks ago and was pursuing the magazine rack and saw Cook's Ill. and low and behold there was a great recipe for this soup.  All you need is sweet potatoes, shallots (I used onions), butter, thyme, and water.  That is it. I made it for a bunch of friends along with smoked ribs and everyone commented on how great the soup was.  Here is a link to the recipe.  https://www.cooksillustrated.com/videos/3101-sweet-potato-soup  Enjoy!