If you told me in June when I was itching for a real tomato that I'd soon be sick of them, I wouldn't believe you.  But by the end of September, I'm actually glad to see the harvest dwindle from two, to one, then finally down to half a basketful.

Instead, I'm enjoying the return of the salad.  Fall is the best time for salads, when the lettuces are back, tender and sweet, and can share the dish with sugar snap peas, bright red bell peppers, tomatoes, and the last few cucumbers.

The fall greens are vivid in the mule garden, but I'm mostly saving those to enjoy after the frosts sweeten their foliage.  Instead, the highlight of the weekend is when I pick the first broccoli, looking forward to a full month of one of our favorite vegetables.  Oh, and stumbling across some shiitakes poking up out of mushroom rafts I'd given up on.

There are rodent-gnawed sweet potatoes to be eaten up, butternut squash to turn into pies, and onions and garlic on the shelf.  The white potatoes' tops are finally dying back (although I've been rooting out immature tubers for a while anyway) and the carrot beds are yielding up thinnings that become more and more carrot-like very week.

I'll probably put a few more containers of produce in the freezer, but mostly we're just eating now.  The goal is not to take any food back out of the freezer until at least November, if not December, and the fall garden seems happy to oblige.

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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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