Road to Emmaus: Fall is fast approaching

After what has seemed like a mercilessly long summer, fall seems to have finally arrived. You can just feel it when you go outside. You can smell it. You can sense it. The garden senses it too, as things go through their final maturation. The potatoes we lovingly planted, mulched, and weeded throughout the summer are now brown and ready for digging. The pumpkins are turning orange. We're just about sick from eating garden fresh melons, but that doesn't stop us from having just one more. The sweet corn has been picked and now mowed down with the rotary mower, soil food for next year's crop. Squash are starting to turn and the tomatoes more than we can keep up with. Despite the odd summer, we fared much better than many, so for that we are thankful. Many of the new berries we started this summer are thriving and offer promise for next year.

A few observations and musings: I think the black plastic with strawberries makes so much sense. Once we got the strawberries inside the electric fence so the deer would stop munching them down, they took off and are full and lush and ready for the next growing season. I went through the patch a few times this summer and pulled off the runners so we can have nice healthy plants for next year.

The trellis for the blackberries seems to be working very well too, although for the raspberries I believe I'll keep the top set of wires further apart than I did with the blackberries. I think it will be good for the tops of the canes to be able to hang out further and have more air between them. I'll be anxious to see how the blackberries do next year after I've pruned the 2nd year canes.

I have the best luck with cool weather plants (e.g. broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, lettuce) by planting for a fall harvest. Next year I'll do the same with peas. You plant the seeds in the garden in late July and by the time they get established, you have 2-3 months of cool growing conditions so the plants thrive and the fruit is tasty and tender. Unless you're able to get them in early in the spring, they don't seem to mature until the heat of the summer is upon you, which stresses the plants and makes the fruit more bitter.

Here's some updated pictures from the homestead. The cabin is coming along. The steel roof went on the last week and they are putting pine up for the soffit, which will then be cut out for vents. We're still debating on what kind of windows to put in, but hope to reach a decision on that in the next day or two. Then it will be boring holes in the walls for the wiring and cleaning out the cavities with a stiff piece of wire. After the wiring is done, we'll then move to insulating the ceiling of the loft and hanging sheetrock. Finally, we'll finish the kitchen and add hardwood flooring on the main floor (likely hickory at this point). I'm shopping around for a wood cook stove to warm the cabin and to give us an opportunity to learn to cook with wood.