This is the final week of flower shares! Enjoy the last of those beautiful blooms!
Often, this is when we expect the first frost. A full moon, clear skies, cool days, chilly nights... it could come at any time. Now that there are weather apps that give you detailed predictions for every little thing, long into the future, frost rarely surprises us. In the old days, frost was a big deal. It killed so many plants that were still limping along. Nowadays, frost kills the last peppers, eggplant and peppers and that is just about it. We have already abandoned the tomatoes and taken down the plants. Summer squash is a memory. Everything else is harvested and stashed inside (potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squash) or it is safe underground still (carrots, beets, rutabaga, radishes, turnips) or it is hardy and fine in the cold.
The last category, the hardy vegetables, are the ones we find most exciting. Even with frost lining the edges of the leaves, we can pick kale and collards and broccoli and cabbage. We usually wait until things have melted a bit so we don't damage the leaves, but those frost-resistant greens taste better and better as the nights get colder. We barely even look at the collards before we get down to freezing temperatures. We certainly don't worry about picking rutabaga until it gets good and frosted.
Our work list is dwindling down as we check off one big task after another. We are within hours of finishing planting the garlic. We still have a vast quantity of sweet potatoes to sort, but they are all out of the ground by now. On Thursday and Friday, we push hard to pick everything we need for the markets. On Saturday and Sunday we load up and head off to those markets. And on Monday and Tuesday we start rounding up the CSA vegetables again. But picking is basically the most straightforward task of all. It is finite, fast and fun. Washing takes longer, but it is also finite. Weeding is infinite by comparison, but the weeds are slowing down.
We can see the finish line from here, just a month away. Life is very good.
