The Taste of Fall

This Farm Note is from the archives, before I began to regularly post on the blog. The Farm Notes began in 1999 and were shared for those years with a group of friends and family. Over the coming year I will post periodically from those archived “Notes.”

The first hint of fall shows in the valley with slightly cooler nighttime temperatures, lower humidity. The days have shortened and the leaves on the Tulip poplar begin to turn.

The rhythms of our day change to match the dying summer. The final beans are harvested and stored in buckets waiting on Cindy and me to find the time to shell. The wire trellis supporting the beans, cucumbers and squash are rolled up. When the vines dry we will burn the trellises free and store for next year. The tomatoes are past their peak productivity. If nursed along we should be able to glean a few stunted fruit well into early October.

The muscadine vines are ripening signaling wine and jam making ahead in our future. The pear tree is weighed down, each branch holding an impossible large weight on slender support.

I planted the first of the fall garden last week, white egg turnips. That will be followed by kale and mustard. Greens are what we will crave when the mercury heads towards the bottom of the glass.

The weather continues a dry pattern leaving the pastures dry and brittle, the dirt blooms powder puffs as the hoe hits the ground. Only sporadic rain this summer leaves uncertain about how many cattle to carry over the winter months. Hay prices will rise.

Our friends, Melanie and Sara, were over last night for dinner: we provided the country fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy. They brought squash casserole, crowder peas and some delicious blueberry crepes. It is a tired theme of these notes but all four of us delighted in eating a meal largely produced from our two farms.

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Reading this weekend: A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm by Edwin Way Teale