We’re actually doing it!
It’s all Octobered out out here. Leaves are dipping into their choice of color. Barns are sprinkled along the side of State Road 114, looking good amongst the shift of old corn stalks and trimmed soybeans. Brown, yellow, green, and a big block of red beneath a graying rainy sky.
The barns beside the road,
The barns beside the road,
Hi ho, the derry-o
The barns beside the road
All the way down the road until I turn left onto that last little stretch, finding the gravel driveway that leads me straight up to that J.L. Hawkins barn; the barn I see all the live-long day, more than any other barn I pass each day driving to the farm each morning.
Once in North Manchester, these familiar scenes of fall decay take a completely different shape than I am used to. It’s only the beginning, but slowly the cold has begun to grip Hawkins Farm. Bustling in with a chilly grin, cold air has signaled a departure, biting basil leaves and eggplant plantings along the way.
Yep, it’s the slow drum roll of cold. It was a perfect week for playing with layers, with mornings beginning in the mid 30s, slowly rising to a comfortable high 60s, giving us a break as we learned how to carry out work that is familiar to us in brand new conditions, giving us no choice but to sloooow dooooown.
We’re actually doing it though! Woohoo!
Despite an introduction to chilly days, it still feels good to be outside early in the morning. After all, we kick off our weeks by harvesting lettuce and spinach, and nothing gets the blood moving like some early morning crouch squats! Fifteen minutes was all it took for me to shed that fourth layer (this week).
And just like each thrilling week of The Bachelor, I get a front row seat of each crop that drops off soft from the coming cold. THIS WEEK ON HAWKINS FARM: The eggplant went “kaput,” which meant that we got to strip the plants of all they were worth, leaving no eggplant behind.
I’ll be here to report who gets to stay and who will get evicted from the farm by Mr. Frost in the coming weeks, but the results may surprise you! It was a surprise to me when Farmer Zach explained that you can grow some pretty sweet carrots even when there’s snow on the ground. Just so long as you are using some weather warming hoops and don’t mind digging up carrots in cold conditions. As a natural defense mechanism, vegetables will convert their starches to sugars to combat the cold, making for some naturally occurring sweet treats. For real, the spinach we were harvesting back in March was sweet as can be.
Speaking of sweet things on (and off of) Hawkins Farm, there’s nothing sweeter than a group of German Baptist boys making your CSA work out! Woohoo! Since one of our main pack checkers wasn’t able to be around for the Thursday pack, she called for backup in the form of four teenage boys on fall break who sure knew how to pack some groceries with the volume at ten. Never before has a pack included so much whooping and hollering.
Have you ever gotten punched in the arm while grocery shopping for someone? Well, let me tell you, that’s actually the sweetest part of the whole thing. Apparently when kids around here like you they rough you up a bit. Just the fact that things work out makes all the oddities along the way such a hoot. And hey, we’re actually doing it right?
-Alex
