As the days start to turn a bit colder and the leaves begin their shift into the infamous New England fall, the days of garden growing are quickly coming to an end.
I’m sure you are wondering how my gardening adventure turned out this year. Or maybe you aren’t. I’m still going to tell you. Because I have great pride in how hard I fought for a few tomatoes. It will be a battle that goes down in the history books (although I hope they embellish things a bit and make me look like a brave hero instead of an anxiety ridden, slug squishing, fertilizer toting, fake farmer).
The slugs, I must say, were a constant battle this year. With so much rain, it seemed like they were always there. I’d sprinkle slug killer and a couple days later of rain, they were back. They ate entire baby plants. My lettuce never saw them coming. Beans were a lost cause.
I was, however, able to beat the woodchucks at their game. All it took was the purchase of a motion sensor sprinkler. Move it once a week and the woodchucks moved out one by one. Eventually just the mom was left. And even she made her way elsewhere after awhile. The sprinkler was a brilliant solution. However, it doesn’t seem to understand the difference between plant predator and farmer. And I often get a face full of sprinkler water.
My garden was slow to start with all the issues, but I finally starting to see some actual growth. It wasn’t until mid August, though, when my cherry tomatoes started ripening and even then I didn’t see a single summer squash or zucchini until September.
My tomatoes were filling out, but simply didn’t want to redden. And it’s been frustrating. And then, as I was watching them every day, I noticed Mother Nature wasn’t quite done with her attack. Because that was when I discovered the Tomato Horn Worms. Now, I had read about these critters. Read how awful they were to plants. But they have never affected my gardens in the past, so I never really thought about them. And I never really understood how MASSIVE they were. Never did it occur to me that I would find dozens of caterpillars longer and fatter than my middle finger munching away on my tomato plants like the Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Now, everything I read said I needed to pluck this thing off the plant and drop it into soapy water. I have garden gloves that I love. They give me the strength and confidence to touch a lot of things. But I sure as heck wasn’t about to touch this monster caterpillar. So instead I succumbed to removing stems off my tomato plants that housed the caterpillars. As for disposing them, I had a better idea than soapy water. I had six little feathered cluckers that I was sure would be happy to much on some fat juicy worms.
I tossed them in, leaf and all, ready for the slaughter.
Except chickens are really really dumb. They couldn’t even see the worm right in front of their faces and munched on the leaves instead. I moved the leaf, wiggled it, shoved it in their face, and nothing. Just munched around the caterpillar. I finally gave up and when I came back later, the fat fiends were gone, so I can only assume they eventually got eaten.
At the beginning of September, our apples were finally ripe for the picking. We didn’t get a ton and they were small since, not knowing what kind of apple tree it was, we didn’t know how to trim in back in the Spring or anything. But they were our apples and we were excited to pick them all.
I was also able to cross another thing off my farmhouse bucket list. Learning to can. I had purchased the canning equipment back when I was making the maple syrup, so it was already on hand. And now I had apples to make wonderful apple goodies with. I made Apple butter and Applesauce and lots of apple pie filling. I’ll be able to make an apple pie out of my own apples soon and cross that off my farmhouse bucket list as well.
As I said before, my zucchinis and summer squashes got a really late start. But I’ve gotten a few and have been able to make some breads to freeze for the colder months. I’ll probably freeze some more shredded zucchini to make more for the winter. And I’m still waiting for those tomatoes to redden. They are severely running out of time. I might not be able to can all the spaghetti sauce and salsa I was hoping to, but maybe I can get some salsa verde out of the green tomatoes!
Our grapes are just about ready to harvest. I was beginning to lose hope on them. I kept testing them to see if they were sweet and immediately spitting them out. Which probably wasn’t the best idea because now I will probably have grapes growing everywhere next year. But I was beginning to think they were goners when one day I came out and they were 50% purple! Which makes more sense why they tasted awful as green grapes. Apparently they weren’t green grapes at all. So next week I hope to make some grape juice and grape jelly. They are apparently good wine grapes as well, but that’s level 2 canning for me and doesn’t seem to make much sense to make wine when you don’t actually drink wine. But maybe that needs to be on my bucket list as well, just to say I did it.
One day, while gardening, I looked over to see a toad hanging out next to me. I called the boys out and they chased it around until they finally caught it. I tried to catch it too, because catching a frog/toad is also on my farmhouse bucket list, but it was too fast and I would scream and jump away and flap every time it got near me. That one will take me awhile.
Earlier in the summer I had purchased some self watering window boxes. But I never got the time to put them up. However, I had these 2 mum plants, which somehow multiplied to 4 mum plants because apparently they breed like rabbits, and I wanted a nice place to plant them. So I put up these window boxes, painted them to match the front door, and put my mums in them. Actually, I squeezed my mums in because they were ginormous plants but I got them in one way or another. And maybe they won’t survive because I crammed a little object into something half it’s size, but they bring me joy even when I’m inside because I see them peeking through the window.
This week, I discovered the Pagen holiday of Mabon. Which is the celebration of the coming of Autumn (or the Autumn Equinox). And I told Tyler, we are surrounded by nature, in the magical state of Vermont, and love the changing of the seasons. And the celebrating of Mabon involves decorating for Fall, harvesting food, making apple pies, drinking hot cider, and eating a feast of fall foods. All stuff i enjoy doing. It only makes sense that this was something we should celebrate.
So I set out first to find pumpkins. There were some pumpkins at a couple nearby stores, but they were expensive and I wanted a lot. I ended up calling a couple pumpkin patches but no one had their pumpkins out for sale yet. Until I hit one patch who was like “We don’t have them out yet, but if you come, I’ll take you out to the pumpkin patch and you can pick the ones you want.” Um yes please! And that’s what I did. In fact, I got the royal treatment. I got driven out in their truck to the patch, got to pick how many I wanted, and then they drove me to my car. And they were priced at an average of $5 a pumpkin! And they were BEAUTIFUL pumpkins with no yucky sides to turn to the back!
I got home, put up my pumpkins, lit some candles, decorated inside, wandered my farm and gathered leaves and pinecones and sticks to decorate further. And then I made a feast of roast chicken, peach caprese salad, and grilled corn. And it was very fun and Fall magical. I’m going to need to look into celebrating more Pagen holidays. Celebrating nature, Celtic Irish practices, finding joy and understanding in the seasons is right up my alley and feels very perfect for the atmosphere of where I live.
Happy Fall Friends!
