Yesterday, I picked 22 pounds of beans—green beans, yellow beans, purple beans. Actually Roy helped at the end, as the sun was going down—after he finished washing and packing 800 eggs. Then we sorted through 250 pears and apples that have landed in our lap. After closing up the farm stand, locking up the chickens, and eating a quick supper of cold roast pork, fingerlings and arugula, we hopped in the car and made an egg and bean delivery down to our friends at Lucky Hank’s restaurant in Edgartown. It was a long day. (I was happy to find I could stand up this morning though, as I thought I might get frozen in crouching-bean-picking position. My poor back!)

You’d think, with the crazy August tourist season behind us, that we’d be less busy. But September is always a bit of a trickster like that. A lot of the veggies and flowers are actually much happier now, and either they’re finally hitting their stride, or they sense that cooler weather is coming and they should start producing faster. In the case of the beans, the survival instinct had set in. They were ravaged by sparrows in August and subsequently responded with millions of blossoms. The eggplants are flowering and fruiting like crazy, the zinnias are soaring, and not only are we still picking cherry tomatoes, but there’s a round of ripening beefsteaks out there that looks a whole lot better than anything we saw in August. Go figure.

So there is stuff all over the place—pears in the feed shed, apples in the shop, tomatoes on every surface. And, um, pork in the freezer. Our pork. Yes.  I’ll spare you the details right now, but I will tell you it is the most delicious pork I have ever eaten.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ironically, with all the veggies and fruit around, I still don’t have time to do much preserving. (Fortunately, most of it will travel to grateful homes via the farm stand!) I did make a quick tomato sauce from odds and ends this morning, but I think farmers and preservers must be two different people as it is really hard to find time to do both.

Beyond harvesting, we’re also busy turning over a lot of the beds in the garden, planting more fall lettuce and greens. We’ve already turned the hoop house over, too. Goodbye cucumbers, hello carrots. Meanwhile, Roy is trying to get a lot of off-farm work done and I am trying to wrap my head around book promotion, which requires as much attention as actually writing the book!

Oh well, it is all good. I hear we are in for a very cold winter so soon enough we’ll be house-bound, with intermittent dashes to the hoop house and the chicken coops. And somehow winter always seems a whole lot longer than summer. Yikes, maybe I should just stop and enjoy this beautiful fall. (Truthfully, I actually like picking beans.)