Our winter squash harvest is a harbinger of fall. Following last week’s spaghetti squash, which we’ll be serving up again this week, we’ll soon be harvesting delicata, butternut and acorn squash, as well as pumpkins. Of these all, spaghetti squash is the only one that needs to be consumed quickly – it cannot sit on your countertops for weeks like the others. Harvesting squash is immensely satisfying, a wonderful reminder of nature’s bounty, and the colourful, heavy vegetables quickly fill our storage bins. Other vegetables are growing in the fields, including radishes, which you tasted at the beginning of the season and will be sampling again by the third week of September.
Even so, we won’t succumb to the fall doldrums just yet (as long as we have tomatoes, summer is still in the air) – although the telltale signs of autumn are noticeable: heavy morning dew, slowing solanaceas and resplendent rutabagas (their time has almost come)…and soon enough we’ll have to accept the definitive passing of summer.