October

October was a good month for the farm this year. We are so glad it was not like last year, when the rain started and never stopped. Sure, there was rain this year, but there were more glorious, sunny days. The fall leaf colors were amazing. Down here, with the vineyards all around us, the hills were covered in gold.

With our good weather luck, we were able to finish the harvests that we really wanted to: dry beans, winter squash, persimmons. We still have potatoes to dig, and we’ll get what we can, but if we don’t get them all, that will be okay.

The fields were dry enough that we could till under the summer crops and seed them in cover crop. Seeing a field of cover crop germinating in the fall makes a farmer very happy. The last two fields were seeded late, at the very end of October/beginning of November, which is about two weeks later than it really should be done. But, maybe we’ll be lucky and it will germinate and grow.

Also that last week of October, we planted the garlic and mulched it. Since we had small heads of garlic from our harvest this year, we invested in new garlic for seed. We went with two old favorite varieties: Chesnok Red and Inchelium Red; and two new-to-us ones: Lorz Italian and Music. We are keeping our fingers crossed we’ll have a good harvest next year.

This past week, we shelled the dry beans. We are still in love with the bean sheller we bought last year. We had a lot of dry beans this year, so it took a few days to get the shelling done. (The daylight doesn’t last long anymore.) We have our three main varieties ready to go (Black Turtle, Rockwell and Rosso di Lucca), and will have some new ones to try soon.

Unless the weather is awful, we are going to have the farm stand one more Saturday (November 18). If you need any vegetables for your Thanksgiving dinner, we’d love to help you out! It will be from noon to 4 pm, Saturday, November 18, in front of the Bethel Church at 7575 Bethel Rd. We’d love to see you there!