In My Garden

One of the things I’ll miss in my garden, with the cooler days moving in…the daily shots!

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Grape Harvest

One of the best harvests of grapes to date. Though I wasn’t able to bring my grapevines along with me 😦 to my new farm this Spring,  my farmer friend was able to relocate them all to her vineyard. 🙂 This will clearly be a jammin weekend here. Thanks so much, Rita! ❤

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Roomies

…. and best buddies 🙂

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Red Sky

Red sky at night, a sailors’ delight.  Red sky in morning, sailors take warning.

This mornings sunrise… a blaze of red, so after my walk, I hurried to the farm to pick these blaze of reds before the skies opened up, spoiling them. The contrasting colors seemed fitting for this mornings sunrise.

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Last Sunrise

Last day of summer 😦  Last summer sunrise this morn.

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Endings

     Funny how things come to an end. We have two more weeks of farmers market  but things are definitely cruising to a halt… sort of a slow coast, not unlike running out of gas.
We’re due for a light frost in the fields, and it looks like more coming in the next week or so… Three weeks ago we were farming half naked just trying to deal with the humidity… and now, now the squash is all pulled up, the heirloom tomatoes are now stored in their winter jars, the gorgeous basils–Genovese, ruby, and holy basil have all been harvested and hung to dry…  the eggplant is in the active retching process of giving up the ghost… we have more bare ground than not, just a few last hangers on, the last willing participants of the 2018 growing season. Even the girls are happily running around scratching and pecking, making my finishing garden tasks a lot easier when I get to turn on the tiller one last time for the year.

 

I love this time… the later fall harvest is a little less sexy, but nourishing in its own way.

For me the annual farm harvest is likened to the beach. In the spring it doesn’t matter whats going on, we just are excited to be going to the beach again…

 

…… the summer is the best time for the beach, its hot, we’re in the mood and brings a special level of satisfaction…

……. but the fall is magic, the crowds have thinned, there is enough time & space to breathe deeply and take the time to feed that part of ourselves that has been neglected all summer long.
As beautiful as it is here in the summer, its easy to become a prisoner to the wind… the fall brakes those binds and brings us long awaited deep soul  vegetables, a much slower pace, warming comfort foods and much needed solitude… Can you feel it too?  Thank goodness for fall.

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Lovin Leeks

I do so enjoy this time of year, and though we still have a boatload of tomatoes, hot peppers, bok choy along with the endless supply of greens still to go,  it’s the crossover time.. with the winter squash, root crops–potatoes, carrots, beets, turnips, onions, cabbage, shallots and leeks all vying to be harvested, too! Don’t even get me started on the kale crop LOL. I think I’ll still be picking kale until XMas this year! And that’s just fine with me.

It’s been a successful season at my new farm in spite of our drought conditions and weeks of oppressive humidity that I can’t ever recall occurring as it was this season. My cupboards and freezers are loaded in readiness for that gawd awful white stuff, with so much yield from a great growing season. Sausage making will begin next week for me and I can’t wait! Only four weeks left for farmers market, too! Then I begin the buttoning up process for the year 😦  but, it will also be time for me to set next year’s’ garlic in the ground… along with building my new raised beds! I bartered with a few of my farmer friends this year for many new garlic varieties to try, so it will be fun to see what I end up with next summer.

With these cooler nights, dinner around here means comfort foods, too. And while I still love grilling there’s just so much produce around here to not use up within minutes of harvesting. So, yesterday it was ‘leek day’ for lack of a better phrase 🙂 and as soon as they had a good bath, into the pot they went along with some shallots, carrots, kale, just pulled spuds, onions and some wine for one of my fave fall soups… Leeky Onion.

This morning it was like pea soup here and wet, wet, wet so I grabbed only a couple of cabbages and made two trays of galumki’s–stuffed cabbage, while I await the arrival of the sunshine that is to burn off this afternoon.. then it’s back into the fields for more clean up grunt work… and to set the spinach seed to overwinter. And then I’m done for the day! Oh wait, the lawn still needs to be mowed.. ugh sigh!

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Autumn’s Harvest

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Foggy Morn III

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September Colors

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