Fall came knocking while we were gone
I'm always astonished by
how much the farm can change in just a few days.
The year
of the cucurbit is
suddenly at an end, with the butternuts nearly mature, the cucumbers
blighted, and the summer squash I'd let go to seed turned orange and
warty.
The chickens broke out
of their pasture while we were gone (with some help from Lucy, whose
boredom prompted her to gnaw a hole in their fence). They didn't
do much irrepairable damage, but did scratch half of our mulch into the
aisles and pecked holes in lots of tomatoes. Good thing I don't
mind eating after chickens, once I cut out the damaged portion and boil
the rest into soup for a good long time.
Speaking of soup,
despite the turn of seasons, we're still cooking up winter dinners like
mad. I cut into the last spring cabbage after peeling back four
outer leaves gone thin and mildewed. The inside was still crisp
and delicious, and I wish I'd grown more. Good thing the fall
cabbages are already getting some size on them.
I can feel the pendulum
begin to swing over to the fall garden. We ate our first lettuce
in months and the winter cooking greens now have true leaves.
Fall carrots have filled out enough to shade most of their beds, and
oilseed radishes are coating fallow garden spots. In the woods,
dog-day cicadas are dropping to the ground while katydids take their
place. Here's hoping we'll enjoy this early fall for a long time
rather than seeing a premature killing frost.
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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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