Fall's My Favorite

There is something especially enjoyable about the early fall season from the perspective of this type of farmer in this general climate zone, when sunshine returns after five days of hurricane-remnant rain quenches the land's thirst and the first frost descends. The farmscape is particularly appealing this time of year, with crops of varying colors, shapes, and sizes sharing the space with oats and buckwheat cover crop against a background of trees beginning their foliar transition. Perhaps it's also, or mostly, having more time to notice the beauty now that the pace and quantity of work is less demanding.

That said, most of our days are still filled with a lot of farm work. The aforementioned rain out last weekend and early this week gave me time to begin reflections and analysis of this season's successes and failures while simultaneously updating some of our crop plans for next year. Fortunately, most of that work can be accomplished near the wood stove. After a full day of that, though, I felt it was a bit premature to fully mentally embrace and plan for 2023 and decided to shelve this work for a later date.

Thankfully the rain was intermittent enough to work outside when necessary. We still battle summer weeds with the weed-whacker in the aisles and by pulling them out of the beds. Monday was a rough day since we had to harvest and wash in windy rainy cold conditions that seemed to catch us all by surprise. On Tuesday the farm crew was able to finish processing the hanging garlic and get caught up on leek clean up under the protection of the barn. On Wednesday we transplanted another round of crops in the tunnels, including arugula, lettuce mix, and spinach. The greenhouse was emptied out of all seeding supplies and infrastructure to make way for planting in the ground. Fabric had to be pulled up and the ground was forked to loosen it and help dry it out for before being manually hoed and raked into beds. Thursday was another harvest day but most importantly sunshine returned. Friday we harvested some storage crops and removed the 10-year-old greenhouse film that has an advertised life of four years.

Regarding the weather, this coming week looks mostly fantastic. Our goal is to harvest the hopefully 5,000 pounds of sweet potatoes from 3,000 feet of beds. Workshifts are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday for members to help with this fun task.

Hope you are having a nice weekend outside!