Beautiful fall kale in the field.
Fall arrived in blustery fashion this weekend, bringing rain and gray in a way we haven’t seen for months. Not every seasonal shift is quite so clear and dramatic — some years the first day of fall feels like just another sunny late summer day. I’m sure we’ll enjoy more of those dry(ish) days before November, but for now it was a treat to hunker down on a Sunday inside and turn our attention to spheres of our life that have been neglected amidst the growing season push.
Sunflowers for seed, drying down.
Each new season on the farm brings a sense of completion and relief — fall perhaps more so than any other. It is with a deep exhale that we consider putting away the irrigation pipe for the season and watch our cover crops germinate, brown fields transforming into lush green expanses. Our big work of the yearly cycle is behind us now, and we cross our fingers now hoping for a few more good days/weeks of weather so that we can bring in the big harvests next month. We’ll be moving massive tons (literally) of cabbage, carrots, winter squash, and root vegetables from our fields into the coolers and other storage spaces.
Other parts of our work continue day-in and day-out — the animals are moved, watered, and tended. We harvest for the CSAs and restaurants weekly. Our farm doesn’t get to stop completely in this other quieter half of the year, but it certainly does slow down eventually. We will rest in November and December quite a bit more than we do in June and July. And, thank goodness for that!
This week I was reflecting back to the beginning of this particular season, when we were blessed with the most amazing warm spring we could remember in years. On those sunny days, when the air was filled with the smell of apple blossoms and my spirit stirred with the potential of the season, I really couldn’t imagine desiring autumn again. I “knew” in my head that I love fall — that the sight of orange pumpkins makes me a bit giddy with joy. And yet those sunny days were so joyous that I was almost ready to pack up and move to a year-round sunny climate. I soaked it in, perhaps even more grateful for it after last year’s much-harder-than-ever-before fall season.
Transporting a pumpkin & a toddler through the fields.
But here we are — at the end of another summer. A good one. The farming season is never perfect, except perhaps when written on paper in February. But, this has been a fulfilling season, with most crops doing well and positive growth in every aspect of our farm and its people. And that sense of a job-well-done makes the return of the gray and the wind a totally different kind of event. Here we are, deeply worn out and fatigued, happy to be living where we live and doing this work. Happy to be providing delicious food for our community. Happy about a chance to nestle into the couch with a book once again. Happy to go to bed in the dark (and take down the black out curtains!). Happy to be eating cabbage …
Of course, by March or April, we’ll be chomping at the bit again to plant and soak up that sun. That’s how it works, turning turning turning. To celebrate these simple joys, let’s enjoy a poem together:
Linger in Happiness ~ Mary Oliver
After rain after many days without rain,
it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees,
and the dampness there, married now to gravity,
falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the groundwhere it will disappear—but not, of course, vanish
except to our eyes. The roots of the oaks will have their share,
and the white threads of the grasses, and the cushion of moss;
a few drops, round as pearls, will enter the mole’s tunnel;and soon so many small stones, buried for a thousand years,
will feel themselves being touched.
Happy fall everyone! Enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
P.S. Count yourself lucky that I didn’t write another newsletter all about birds, but I can tell you simply that this week could have warranted it. Among our bird sights were the flight of hundreds of thousands of swallows overhead at dusk each evening and turkey vultures perched on fence posts, looking like the dark silhouettes of large men in the field. Oh, what a beautiful place we live in!
~ ~ ~
Meet this week’s vegetables:
- Tomatoes — With this recent round of rain, we can expect to say good-bye to summer vegetables soon. The cherry and roma tomatoes are still hanging on, but the slicers and heirlooms are definitely done. The basil, cucumbers, and summer squash will soon follow suit. But, in their place we will begin to enjoy some of those cold winter veggies. Big changes coming soon!
- Basil
- Pickling cucumbers
- Kale
- Chard
- Salad greens
- Beets
- Carrots
- Summer squash & zucchini
- Scallions
