Compared to one month ago, the outline of the garden is pretty much unchanged, but a whole lot has gone dead and brown. Alive and well, there are lots of hardy brassicas, straining to grow in the diminishing sunlight. And there’s still quite a bit in the ground: tons of carrots, a fair amount of parsnips, and a huge quantity of Jerusalem artichoke, all sweetening in the cooling soil…
long shots
Last day of summer in the garden!
Here we are at the end of the calendar summer, a season of crazy weather largely gone by! Cooler fall conditions have been around for a couple of weeks now, with ample frost watch nights, so summer’s end at this point is only…ceremonial. Still, there’s that little twinge of melancholy that comes with the official end… The fall harvest is looking fine, with lots of brassicas, a good deal of lettuce, and the last of the fall spinach in the north end of the field (above), along with some last tomatoes, lots of peppers and eggplant, spared by frost so far. There’s also Jerusalem artichoke and potatoes, still in the ground. Green beans! And, of course, that section of sweet potato, fully row covered…
Moving down the field, there are the last plantings of beets and carrots, parsnips, some Swiss chard, and lots of mowed but still untilled empty sections…
At the south end of the garden, the herbs and flowers are all hanging in there—row cover has kept even the super-cold-sensitive basils alive and well. If I’ve missed anything in the rundown, well, it’ll still be there!
The field heading into autumn
Here’s how the market garden looks as a quiet Sunday, and the summer, wind down. A lot of the low-growing greenery is mowed weed cover on sections that have been finished for the season, waiting to be tilled under. This year, the final fall field prep plan is to direct-seed fall rye…
The View in early August
Here’s the long view for early August, notably GREENER than it was around the same time last year. I like the scene from up here, at the top of the gangway going into the upper level of the barn: distant, peaceful strips of green, row upon row… ;)
View from the other end
A view from the north end of the market garden field, the reverse angle of a couple of days ago and a relatively rare perspective for me. Although the crops are on a 7-year rotation that marches them from here towards the barn, I still tend to spend more time down around the greenhouse-Milkhouse end, no matter what’s growing where. Today, I’m once again checking things out as fall clean-up proceeds in pieces. The nearest section is the new addition, recently cleared of squash, pumpkins, cucumbers and melons, and the raccoon-fated corn just out of sight on the left. After one season, it’s a little overgrown with grass, but not bad. Next year, this will be beans!
Big old barn
The main barn is huge. I’ve gotten used to it, because it’s always around, but it’s on a whole other scale from my tiny farming, and I don’t know it that well. Upstairs, in the cavernous main space, mysterious rigging and wooden contraptions that probably have something to do with hay float in the shadows 30-40 feet up. There are hidden stairways, built-in ladders, chutes and trapdoors in the floor. In a little corner in the back where it stays cool, I store garlic and onions during the summer and fall. I also take a long view of the garden field from the top of the gangway leading in. The barn was built in 1949, after its predecessor was accidentally burnt down by the idly discarded cigarette of a wandering stranger (“hobo”? “itinerant rural homeless person”?) who’d spent the night. The main structure is all wood—mortise and tenon—with no nails or other metal fasteners involved. I’ve picked up lots of details and stories centered around this barn. It symbolizes farming, it makes this place look like a farm, but to me it’s mainly just…space. That’s a little weird. As I took stock of the last of the onions and the seed garlic today, I decided to spend some time on really looking around. Explore now!
Big sky
Autumn, what autumn? A finer summer’s day it would be hard to imagine… A warm, gentle sun in an absolutely cloudless sky. A silky soft breeze, without a trace of stultifying midday heat. Here’s the widest view possible with this camera, from the highest vantage point around: the market garden where I spend so much of my time! It all still seems a little odd to me, but I wouldn’t want to give it up!!