Week 23 and covering the crops

Hi All,

Things are really winding down on the farm now. We have been cleaning things up around the fall crops that are still in the ground. This past week, taking out the tomato stakes and cages ended up in a tremendous pile of stakes and stacks of cages. Looking at them all reminded us of the work that went into starting the seedlings last spring, transplanting them in the ground in May, putting in the cages, staking the cages and wiring them together in June, mulching them all, watering the plants during the dry times of June and July, harvesting in July, August and September, and now, in October,the clean up and tilling the soil so it looks like nothing was ever there...... a lot of work, but they sure were good!

Thursday My Dad and his wife Joyce were visiting. We were talking in the kitchen when I looked at the outside temperature gauge at about 11pm and it read 39 degrees. I immediately panicked that a frost was on it's way, but decided to wait another hour to see what the temperature did. We are in a little "dale" so some of our planted areas do get frost, when higher areas may not. At midnight it was 37. At 12:30 it was 36. I hated to, but I told Vicky we had better get up to the front barn, grab the row covers and get the lettuces and peppers covered. So under the light of the full moon, we trudged to the barn, grabbed the covers and headed for the crops. We were back inside by 1am, the temperature was 35.6. I was up at dawn to see how far the temperature had fallen and it had fallen to......44! Apparently preparing our crops for the first frost had shot the temperature up to spring like conditions! Unbelievable. All the covers were out and crops were covered the next night and we had our first frost of the year on Friday.

In your crates this week:

Butternut Squash
Mild Lettuce
Spicy Lettuce
Swiss Chard
Basil
Turnips
Acorn Squash
Pumpkin

Enjoy, there's only one more week.

Vicky and Steve