36. Taking Stock
It seems like a stock-taking kind of day.
A Sunday, I’ve just returned from a shift at The Amazons that began at 5:15 this morning. Now, it is around 2 pm. The farm is warm, windy, and golden, the sun giving away a secret: it will be cold very soon. I feel like today is the last gasp for summer. My silhouette is longer than it should be for this time of day. The corn in the neighboring fields crackles, and the soybeans have been harvested by the belching monsters of the night, roaring for hours on end, their running lights hazy into dusk amid the harvest dust.
My own fall farm products are just beginning to burst forth: crops that love the cold. I hope to nurture and harvest well into the winter months using season extension techniques like row cover with agricultural fabric that allows light and water to pass through but insulates against too cool temperatures and heavy mulching with straw and composted chicken and geese manure.
Last week, we built an additional eleven beds and planted them all. I plan to build a couple more in the next week or so, and plant and cover them so that they’ll germinate and grow slowly in the cooler weather, or will overwinter and sprout very early in the spring, depending on when the cold comes.
So about that stock-taking…I feel pretty hopeful.
The close of the main season left me a little bereft. My summer harvests were better than last year, for sure, and considering the lifeless soil I’m working to improve, I should be proud of the exponential progress. But you know me—fostering ridiculous expectations that I will never, EVER, meet, let alone exceed, and then beating myself up about it after I have “failed”. So I will say that despite my complete lack of tomatoes or melons at the market, or berries to bring (ate them all, sorry/not sorry) to customers, I am optimistic about fall and winter.
I have winter squash and sweet potatoes coming on, broccoli (still!) from the summer plants, cabbage, turnips, potatoes, radish, kale, arugula, mesclun mix, and collards. I planted carrots, more kale, green onions, more collards, broccoli, lettuce, spinach, beets, garlic, Pac Choi, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and a partridge in a pear tree. So yeah, I’m feeling prepped for fall and ready to offer fresh food to customers.
The soil is getting better with every crop, so my harvests are, too. It feels good, and while I am generally not a fan of doing “grateful” posts online (because why do you need to tell the world you’re grateful? Just be it, right?) I have to admit I’m feeling like things are falling into place. I just have to be patient, keep working, and keep learning.
And I’m still taking showers with a hose, thank goodness for this last warm spell, but the bathroom is coming along. All that’s left to complete is the actual shower.
One more time, for the people in the back: I am so proud of the Hubs. His relentless work on this project has been, for lack of a better word, impressive. Sure, this renovation began out of necessity(ish—let’s face it, a drippy shower is not the end of the world, though our water bill was beginning to feel its effects), but he has done parts of this project multiple times, from the walls being the wrong Chelsea Gray (that’s Benjamin Moore Chelsea Gray, not Sherwin Williams Chelsea Gray—would you believe they are completely different colors? I mean, why is that even allowed? Isn’t there some kind of proprietary process that aligns with these names?) to the paint not adhering to the vanity (stupid, cheap veneer), to the simple fact that the original floor wasn’t even level (yes, he replaced and lifted the joists before replacing the floor). He’s never done drywall in his life, but look at those beautiful walls, and the built-in shelves! His attention to detail and dedication to the finished product is above and beyond: he chose the color scheme, the materials, demolished everything (the guys at the dump know us by name, I think), rebuilt everything, and now, it’s just the actual shower left to complete and I couldn’t be more excited or proud of him.
Yep.