After putting a massive number of onions onto the curing racks a month ago, I mostly forgot about them. Well, I did bring in dozens of the largest specimens for soup-making during that time period, packing away perhaps as much as a quarter of the harvest into frozen winter dinners.

Soon, though, the curing racks will need to be emptied out for the sake of butternut squash and sweet potatoes. So I took an hour to cut off dried roots and leaves, shucking outer skins and sorting the onion bulbs.

The weather was crazy wet during harvest and early curing season, so I wasn't surprise to have quite a bit of rot to deal with. On the other hand, I was surprised to realize I had so many onions available that I could simply give the worst half bushel away.

All told, post-souping and rehoming, we ended up with about 63 pounds of onions, or around a bushel and a half. This is definitely the most we've ever managed to sock away. Perhaps this will be the second year that we won't buy any onions (our former Achilles heel) in the store?

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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