It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

Well I’m just kidding of course, although time does fly. How about that, end of September already? Kids are in school, horses’ fur coat is starting to thicken (except that heart-shaped patch people keep shaving on his rear). Pumpkins are showing their lovely heads through the thick mat of weeds.  Farmers ponder where to put the blasted chickens over the winter, where they stay warm, happy, and keep their combs from freezing (although, in a pinch, I hear that freezers are a good place to “store” chickens over winter!

Oh and leaves are falling too. Speaking of which, if you happen to find leaves bothersome in your yard (technically, they’re feeding your soil) we could use a small mountain of them. We could spread 6 inches of leaves over an acre of garden and still want more. That’s… what, 22,000 cubic feet and change? At six cubic feet per yard waste bag, that’s more than 3600 bags. Impressive, but not daunting. Any way, we could pick up a few with the car while making deliveries, or even swing by with the truck if there are several.

In your basket yesterday:

Swiss chard, I believe, needs no further introduction. I hope you’re not getting tired of it… we just had a salad last night with the swiss chard, sliced carrots, sprouts and peppers.  Delicious! And if you’ve really had enough, you can stick in the freezer (after blanching, I think) for a winter day. Some radishes, carrots, cubumbers and/or summer squash (the plants are basically gone, but these are the tenacious few remaining) 4-6 small green peppers and one hot jalapeño OR bulgarian carrot (the latter is supposed to be colourful, but in late september, we take what we can!). Some tomatoes, potatoes and ground cherries. Catherine is just making another small batch of ground cherry sauce… the whole house smells like sweet paradise. Maybe we can survive without those little smelly gadgets you plug into the wall to make the house smell like a distant cousin to a pine forest.

I’ve added fenugreek to the sprout mix. It’s getting quite tasty…

And why are there still tomatoes and peppers being harvested? There are still some fruit clinging to the plants, and we haven’t removed the plants yet. While most of the leaves are dead and the stalks are withering, there’s usually enough nutrients in the plant to bring the immature fruit to maturity. If we had spare time (ha ha), we could even bring the most productive plants into the shed, hang them by the rafters upside down, and possibly extend the harvest by a few days (a couple of weeks if we were lucky). Thankfully, we won’t have time to do that, so we don’t need to worry about it. We’ll put it on the Someday/Maybe list. Really, those are the techniques we need to experiment to successfully extend the season. These are tons of ideas on how to do it, but it’s hard to get it all done. For instance, wrapping individual unripe tomatoes in newspaper in the cellar. That could work, but how many tomatoes to we need to wrap by hand to supply 40 baskets for a couple of weeks? Quite a few… maybe we can make a party out of it next year, and you can all come help!

Enjoy, and have a wonderful and beautiful week!