Garden Variety: Winding Down

Things at the farm garden have been cruising along without much intervention from us human types. The fall has been a busy time with harvest in full swing, back to school routines to adjust to, and work schedules picking up again. Finding time to make the hour trek up to the garden has been tough for me.

Occasionally, though, Monica would pop up to the farm for an afternoon and bring us back some goodies, or, between picking grapes and pressing wine, Sarah or Ed would pop into the garden to harvest some tomatoes and come home with a box to share. Ed, Monica, and I each canned a batch of tomato sauce, and the rest we have eaten fresh. Herbs, too, were growing in spades, and we have had an abundance of basil and parsley.

Otherwise, we have not done much work up there lately, and it was good to head up a few days ago and see how things were doing. Someone had mowed a large swath through the weeds, and the garden looked less wild than usual. The most noticeable feature was the flowers on the Jerusalem artichokes, which brightened the garden with their blasts of bright yellow. They added a nice splash of color to our dining room table, too.



The ground was littered with tomatoes, casualties of the hard rain and gardeners who live far away. It was hard for me not to think of all that potential lying on the ground to waste. Those that were left were a motley bunch, but there were still plenty to fill a couple of boxes, although a few did get eaten on the spot. At home, I scored them, dunked them into boiling water, peeled them, and bagged them up to store in the freezer.





We also harvested all the remaining potatoes. Our littlest helpers had a good time digging through the dirt to find them, and we ended up with quite a large bag to share. And just before we left, we cut the heads from a few sunflowers. We will clean out the seeds and roast them for snacking.



Of course there had to be some time for running around, playing on the swings, and driving the forklift.



Because the summer was so hot, Black Ankle's grape harvest has been about three weeks ahead of schedule. The day we were there, they had just harvested the cabernet franc; the only grapes still on the vine are cabernet sauvignon, which are always the last to ripen. Wine grapes are very sweet and delicious right off the vine, although they have a high ratio of seeds and skin to flesh, which makes them less appealing as a snacking grape, but not everyone seems to mind.

After the grapes are pressed the juice is bled off to make wine.  The remaining skins are thrown on the compost pile. Nothing gets wasted, and the compost pile takes on a lovely purple color.

As for the ongoing Buddy saga, sadly, I have determined that there is no way to let him run around off leash. I had brought a long lead to keep him tethered while still allowing him to roam a bit, but before I tied him onto it, I could not resist setting him free to run for a few minutes. He raced around with exuberance, but after circling the garden in a couple of large loops, he headed straight for those chickens. I ran after him, screaming "Leave it," the command we generally use when he sets off for squirrels or the neighbor's cat. But the temptation was too strong, and I soon saw him tearing around the barn on the tail of a chicken. I got to him just as he got to a chicken, but not before there was a flurry of flying feathers and squawking chickens. Onto the tether he went, then, far from the range of the chicken's turf. I'm so disappointed that the farm can't be a place where Buddy can run wild, but now that he has had a taste of the chickens, there is no putting that genie back in the bottle.

Comments

[Andrea]

Are you eating some of those Jerusalem artichokes? We'd be happy to help, especially since I have yet to get anything out of our (regular) artichokes, year 2 and counting.

[Margy]

We haven't harvested any yet. It's our first year growing them, but we understand that it's best to wait until after a frost or until the leaves wilt to harvest. But then we should be able to have them all winter (or as long as the ground is not too frozen to dig them up).