I am still in denial – but the forecast is calling for -12 degrees Celsius during the night between Wednesday and Thursday, here at the farm – an unseasonally cold and way-below-average mid-November forecast. This week’s basket deliveries will seem more like a Christmas bazaar than a CSA basket pick-up…In anticipation of such extraordinary lows, we’ve already harvested this week’s leeks and today we’ll be harvesting all the lettuce and other leafy greens in our unheated greenhouse that are unlikely to survive a deep freeze. Everything else, i.e. our remaining winter squash and root vegetables, is already in cold storage at a steady, and much warmer, 4 degrees Celsius. Indeed, the packing of our last November baskets will be done in our largest cold room – where 4 degrees seems balmy in comparison to the -1 reading in the rest of the warehouse (note to self for next year’s to do list : insulation work)…This week’s update includes news of the departure of our two last Mexican employees, Crescencio and Gregorio, who are already reunited with their families under warmer skies. The last few weeks were a challenge for all – rainy, cold, with late harvests and last plantings under difficult conditions. But such travails will quickly be forgotten in the Mexican sunshine…

While we can’t shake the rotten weather, we’re moving right along, harvesting root vegetables and leafy greens from our greenhouse to fill your basket. It’s a bit frustrating, all the same, to realize that Mother Nature is refusing to give us a break. In hindsight, Sunday’s sunny weather was just a teaser, as this morning’s rain, and its consequences – water-logged roads, muddy boots and numbed body parts – attest. The forecast is for more of the same for another week. So we might as well forget about the El Niño effect previously mentioned – clearly borne of some wild and woolly imaginings…

That said, I toured our woods this weekend, if for no other reason than to let any trespassing hunters know that the owner was afoot, and would not tolerate any uninvited hunterly activities. The excursion was a success, as nary a soul was seen, which was exactly as I hoped it would be. The woods revealed their sad beauty, hidden all summer by the insolent greenery, but revealed at last as one walks through them, dripping wet in the autumn chill. Winter is fast approaching, and with it, the prospect of many more woodland wanderings.

Cooler weather but relatively sunny skies mark the end of the regular CSA basket season at Arlington Gardens. Twenty full weeks, sometimes wet but mostly hot and dry, the likes of which we hadn’t seen in several years. We’ll do a seasonal post-mortem in a month or two, once winter will have settled in, as we contemplate snow-filled fields – but already, in terms of lessons learned, we know we’ll have to be prepared for just about anything next year, given this year’s prolonged dry spell following on the previous year’s monsoon-like weather. Growing vegetables in these here parts has become part gamble, part obstacle course, definitely not for the faint of heart. That said, it’s a challenge we continue to take up, and we are already thinking of improvements for next year.

We extend a hearfelt thanks to those of you who will be ending your baskets this week. We wish you a great winter and hope to see you again next year, ready to share in our agricultural adventure. For those of you continuing with us for the extended season which starts next week and ends November 22, you will continue to receive our weekly missive, reminding you to pick up your baskets and informing you of their contents. We look forward to seeing you all again.

Fall has arrived suddenly at the farm, like an unexpected guest. In just the past few days, we’ve had to switch from shorts to pants and from comfortable shoes to heavy boots. Don’t mistake me, the grass is still green, thanks to abundant morning dews and nocturnal rains, but our fields are no longer as luxuriant as they once were, the cooler temperatures having affected each and all of their inhabitants, without exception. Well, almost all : there are some leafy greens who relish the cold, which draws out the sweetness hidden within. We’ll be serving them up in succession over coming weeks. The cooler temperatures also signal that it’s time to move seriously into field clean-up mode, patch by patch, sowing green manure as we go. Next week will see us begin to dismantle our low tunnels, yet another Herculean farm task.

In your baskets, then, roots and leafy greens, the freshly harvested rutabaga, or swede, and the shapely butternut, the squash lover’s ultimate favourite, particularly well-know in North America, and super-sweet to boot.

I know I’ve been talking about if for a while now, but it was only this past weekend that we truly finished harvesting our winter squash, under the blazing sun. To be more precise, more than a week ago we had cut the squash off their vines and left them in the field to cure a bit, waiting for the right moment to actually bring them in from the field, into the empty bins waiting to receive them in the cool shade of the barn. But with the infinite (or so it seems) list of things to do on the farm, we woke up Friday morning with a sudden sense of urgency, realizing that while it’s okay to let a butternut cure for a few days, it’s not okay to let it roast in 35-degree heat. And so we rallied the troops, and some 10 tractor-loads later, the stress level abated…Although I must admit that as I contemplated the once luxuriant squash patch, I realized how messy a crop winter squash can be…a battlefield, I thought, observing the weeds competing with the trailing vines, rotten squash here and there having succumbed to some disease or another, squished squash (sic) having fallen under the wheels of our Farmall. A veritable carnage, I tell you, albeit quickly forgotten as the next chore beckoned, and a distant memory once we sow the green manure and make amends…

Meanwhile, your basket is a Fall one, with Kuri squash, carrots and arugula – my favourite leafy green, which will soon dethrone the tomato in my vegetable kingdom.

As I write these lines, the much anticipated winter squash harvest, heralded last week, has yet to be done. A build-up in farm chores, each more pressing than the next over the past few days, has been such that we have decided to harvest them one at a time, starting with this week’s special, our spaghetti squash. The others will follow in due course…and truth be told, there’s no particular rush, yet. This week’s basket bridges from summer into fall, with potatoes and onions on the fall side, and other items reminders that summer is still with us. Some of you will be relieved to hear of a notable decrease in the productivity of our summer squash and our eggplant. Say what you will, you cannot complain of a lack of them…but all good things come to an end, and the cooler nights of the past week have finally slowed our solanaceas down, not to mention the presence of the tarnished plant bug (TPB), who is particularly fond of delicate mauve and yellow eggplant flowers. While these vegetables have not yet come to an end, they will be served up less frequently until their inevitable demise. The question of the timing of the inevitable demise of our tomatoes has likewise begun to haunt us – as the slightest inflection in a hitherto bountiful yield causes existential angst, a fear of what will no longer be, our very own Paradise Lost…So like the ant of La Fontaine’s fable, we will gather them up fresh in copious quantities now, knowing that we will have to make due with their by-products when winter winds come.

 

High season at the farm continues, unabated. A sticky heat, with a humidex reading through the roof, makes these late August days bear an uncanny resemblance to the dog days* of July. Before writing these lines, I tour the fields to take in the sounds and smells of the late afternoon and surprise, surprise – there are signs of an early, and bountiful, winter squash harvest. Just a few days ago, our squash plants seemed to be full of vim and vigour, bright green and ready to weather the month of September. All it took was a rainshower or two to make them collectively decide that the time had come to call it a day and let their farmer reap the fruits of his labour. I will keep you posted, but plans are in the making for a weekend of squash picking, an enjoyable task, believe it or not – a symphony for the senses, a mix of colours and textures, shapes and sizes. In short, a pleasant way to spend a day, or two, in the fields.

In this week’s basket, we give you a glimpse of the fall that is yet to come with our first real harvest of summer leeks, with their white stems turning to green, light and delicious. And to make amends for our blueberry shortcomings, we offer up a third serving of watermelons, sans seeds, courtesy of our friend Gabriel Samson et Fils, our trusted supplier of the best organic potatoes in Quebec. I do not grow the seedless variety myself, given a nostalgic preference for the old-fashioned one with seeds, no doubt nourished by memories of seed-spitting competitions with my brothers, and the effort made to crunch nary a seed as we wolfed down slice after seed-filled slice of our favourite fruit…back in the day when life’s simple pleasures made us happy.

*To the Greeks and Romans, near the time when Sirius appeared to rise just before the sun, i.e. in late July

Summer continues in full swing for this, our 10th week, and basket, of the season. It’s been in full swing for a while, now – 2018 will definitely be a season to remember – with alternating bouts of drought, gang-buster growth, goings-to-seed and weeds galore – the latter the only true constant in a crazy summer to date. But as I like to say, I’d take 10 seasons like this year’s in exchange for a single rainy one anytime. And the season is nowhere near finished, what with hot nights and days still pushing the high 20s and occasionally still topping 30. That said, here is a small sign of the fall-that-is yet-to-come: today I started sowing some of the root vegetables for your late-season baskets – turnips and radishes of all types, and in the main greenhouse we’ve started sowing our Asian greens – mustards, rapinis and the like. Fall vegetables don’t like the summer heat, so we’ll pray for a reasonable autumn. Meanwhile, we closed out the day harvesting good old-fashioned (i.e. with seeds) watermelons…

Several of you noted the bitterness of our yellow cucumbers, for which we are truly sorry. The explanation is simple: they are a variety that definitely does NOT do well in drier conditions. We mistakenly thought it was only the skin that would suffer, but some of them were bitter to the core. A few rainy days have made all the difference for our latest crop, but we will have learned our lesson: next year, we will be sure to irrigate them well (in summers past, none of our cucurbits ever required extra water). We look forward to seeing you all.

PS: no lettuces this week, they’ve all gone to seed…