Goodbye lovely summer weather! Hello
gorgeous fall! It really looks and feels like fall right now, the
table at market is full to the brim with leafy fennel, savory leeks,
staple celeriac, potatoes, parsnips and all the grand tastes and
textures that will take us through the fall and winter and right up
to the new leafy greens of next spring! Here in our part of the
world, we are eating right now much as localvores will eat for the
next 5 months. Does it sound glum? It shouldn't- there are so many
flavors, and shapes, and tastes to take us through the dark months
ahead!
I know for some 9-5 working people
where those work hours shape their days, the fall and winter can be
sad or hard with interminable hours of darkness and the same work as
the summer but no time for fun in the sun after the work day. But
for farmers where the amount of light in a day shapes the work hours
and jobs to be done, the fall is a glorious season! Days shorten,
the work becomes less each day and there are so many hours left after
dark for cooking decadent meals- roasting and souping and stewing and
baking and then time left for reading, and talking, and planning for
next year (not quite yet but soon). There are definitely emotional
seasons to the farm year, and the calm easy pace of the fall and
winter have a place that helps to stabilize the constant, crazy pace
of the spring and summer. We are on the down slide into the sleepy
winter and a definite sigh of contentment can be heard around here.
Not that there is nothing left to do,
but the amount of work behind us so greatly eclipses the amount of
work ahead that it seems just a trifle. One of the main task on our
plate still is to plant next years garlic, we plant 10 one hundred
foot long beds of garlic each fall and when the last clove is pushed
into the soil, we know the season is about buttoned up. Want to help
us cross of the last major to do on the list? Come on out on
Saturday around 2 and we'll get a start on it!
The other main task is to harvest the
fall storage crops once they are fully grown and endangered by very
cold weather. It was so dry back when we planted them, that they
didn't take off growing with great vigor, but instead just held on,
until it started to rain and then things grew very well, but are not
quite to the size we had hoped for. So now we do a dance- the fall
and winter crops can take a freeze, and even quite a bit of cold
weather, but we don't want them to lose their quality, yet we want to
see them size up a little more before they are harvested and stored
in the walk in cooler for the winter CSA. The time that we harvest
them will be a blend of when we have time, when they seem full grown,
and when the nights are going to get terribly cold. I imagine we
will be harvesting them in a few weeks.
I would be remiss not to mention the
fall and winter CSA, an email went out yesterday, but if you didn't
get it, here are the basics. The CSA will run from November until
February, you can choose 7 items each week, the cost is $306, no
markets on November 23 and December 28, no pickup on January 25, but
the market will be there. The pickup is in at Saint James Episcopal
Church parish hall in Watkins Glen from 3-6 on Friday nights.
Hope you have a great week!
Liz
and Matthew
ps wooly bears are crossing the country roads right now, watch out for wooly bears!
