The Race to Winter

Looking at the calendar recently, and our to-do list, it struck me how little time we have until winter arrives. There is one week left in October; how did that happen? We have been making progress on our end-of-season projects, but there is still a lot to be done.

Part of the work is preparing for spring and next year's garden season. With the garlic bed filled with chicken manure and the last of the bean succession crop gone, the end of October is time for planting garlic cloves. We saved several heads of garlic from this year's crop, which we broke into individual cloves and planted into the soft earth. About 100 cloves in total. Each will slowly form a complete head of garlic, to be harvested in July. Garlic shoots are one of the first bits of green we see in March. Garlic is one of my favorites; we bought a bunch of garlic heads at a farmers market 5 years ago, planted the cloves, and we have yet to buy another head of garlic since.

I am a big fan of Floret Farm, and this summer I watched a video of Erin Benzakein touring her crabapple orchard. She had planted extra daffodil bulbs from their cut flower business in the orchard years ago, and now they have patches of flowers cropping up through the tall grass of the orchard each spring. Inspired, I bought 20 bulbs of four types of daffodils in the late summer, which arrived a couple of weeks ago. With the first hard frost passing this week, I pulled the bulbs out of the refrigerator this weekend. I dug trenches between the trees in our orchard and planted in groups of twenty. Our chickens, forever attracted to freshly excavated ground, spent the afternoon following me from trench to trench as my 'assistants'. Since daffodils are fairly deer and squirrel resistant, I hope these make it and put on a little show in the spring. I'm sure the flowers will look a little forlorn their first season, but each year these bulbs, like the garlic, will divide and spread.

I had spent the morning on another group of projects that are associated with routine maintenance and repairs, including painting new windows for the barn. When that was completed, I had hoped to work on another side project, the processing of black walnuts we had gathered, and which have been sitting in our porch waiting for some free time. I had no sooner gotten the first bucket out when our new hayfield tenant arrived with a load of compost Maggie had negotiated for our garden. Changing gears, we spent rest of the afternoon shoveling and spreading compost. While it was hard work, the compost was a welcome addition to boost our soil fertility.

In general, it seems that for every item I cross from my list, two more get added. Unfortunately, we do not get two more weekends for each one that passes. All we can do is prioritize and get completed what we can. In a month, the holiday season will start and winter will arrive shortly thereafter.