Why did a duck and a chicken cross the yard?
One of the best tools for managing a garden is wandering in it. Observation is often cited as the foremost management tool in agriculture (other sectors too? Maybe.) We’ve done conferences, workshops, seminars, courses, lectures, and round-table discussions. Bar none, best way to work out challenging growing conditions or whatnot is to stroll around in the garden. Works wonders. While it doesn’t always provoke copious amounts of optimism, it does bring forth resolution and motivation, along with new ideas.
And heck, if you can’t work out problems in your own gardens, feel free to come wander in ours. 
"Do I have to smile? My hands are freezing."
Strolling around the garden yesterday wasn’t merely contemplative, though. We’ve been getting steady frosts for a while now, but just got a fairly major one. Most of the vegetables still in the ground (lettuce, swiss chard, chinese cabbage, green onions, etc) can take some frost, but this was a bit much. We had to wait until mid-morning to start harvesting, until the sun warmed up the leaves enough to perk them up. Still, some didn’t really recover – the chinese cabbage, for instance, still had blocks of ice at the base at lunch-time. So it was understandably affected, and probably will not store very well as a result. The lettuce and cilantro were harvested the day before, as were the potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes. These four were thoroughly chilled but survived the night in the shed.
Stephanie showing off her Fall gardening attire
Also in the baskets: small bunches of green onions (they didn’t fill out much, but with the cold, who can blame them?), sunflower sprouts, celery root (those strange green alien heads) and swiss chard.
And there you have it folks – our last CSA basket for 2009. Kind of sad, isn’t it?
Thank you ever so much to all our friends and members and even to casual passers-by. Hope to see you all this Saturday for our Meadow Stew! Who knows, we might even encourage you to sneak off with a few of the vegetables left in the garden – whatever we can’t fit into the stewing pot, anyway.
Cheers!
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