Winding down the season

It's fireplace time! The last few nights of frost have had us scrambling to get row covers on our crops (mostly greens, which will survive, but we want to be extra safe). We said our final goodbyes to the zinnias and peppers, which are always are last holdouts of summer. We have two more weeks of CSA and one more festival and then we are done with our season. It's sad, in a way, but also a relief. We can hunker down and prepare for winter.

This notion is especially appealing since I'm 29 weeks pregnant and starting to have a hard time with farm maintenance. It's been a month or more since I've been able to hoist myself onto the back of our truck, and kneeling down to harvest is getting increasingly difficult. I can't imagine that there was a time that I could actually get my knees to my chest. And once I get down, well, getting up is a whole other story. So my attention is turning toward more domestic issues - baking, sewing, nesting - all activities that accommodate my growing abdomen.

But we are also getting ready for next year. We're going to build a new greenhouse this winter, and we just had the site leveled (yes, it will be big enough to require a level site, unlike our other, smaller, slanted greenhouse). Hopefully it will allow us to expand not just the amount of vegetables that we grow, but also the products we can offer. We're planning on selling annual bedding plants in the spring to give ourselves a little early season economic boost. We've also expanded our field to almost one full acre of production, which is about double what we've been using for the last two seasons.

So we've got our hands full. Hopefully we can get everything done before the baby's due (January 8). We've also got to get all the stuff we need for the baby. Today we went to Target and stood baffled in front of the car seat and stroller display. How do parents decide these things? How do they decide them on a budget? And since we don't know what we're having, we are constantly struck by how gender specific baby items are. Even the receiving blankets are color coded.

But back to fireplace time. We just installed a used woodstove fireplace insert in our living room, which should keep us nice and toasty through the winter. We've got plenty of wood, winter squash, canned tomatoes and pickled okra, so we're ready to hibernate! We'll do our best to keep you posted throughout the winter on our Spring CSA plans. Enjoy!