Zoë Bradbury has been blogging for Edible Portland about her first year farming. Nine months in, the fruit of her initial labor is fully evident—but her work is far from done.
By Zoë Bradbury
The harvest moon is waxing overhead, marking time in this year of firsts on the farm. There is a density out in the fields where round, red beets fatten underground and ripe cabbages crowd one another above. This is the time of year when summer bleeds into autumn, and autumn into summer, in a swollen slack tide of vegetables.
It is the crescendo, the realization of months of stoop labor, and it is all heavy: corn, leeks, squash, beans, carrots, beets, chicory, potatoes, lettuce, fennel, kale, celeriac, apples, pears. The tomatoes and strawberries squeeze out their last fruits while the dahlias bloom on and on, unstoppable until the rains come.
It’s a bittersweet bend in the calendar. In the Chinese philosophy of the Five Elements, this is the time of Metal—of death and decay. Metal carries Water (winter), which nourishes Wood (spring), that feeds Fire (early summer), which creates Earth (late summer), bearing Metal once again.
The cycle is plain to the eye and felt on the farm. Ceaseless winter rains gave way to tender spring shoots that grew into blossom, then fruit, and now Metal is everywhere: The withering squash plants are dusted in fall’s powdery mildew and the gone-to-seed sunflowers have been pecked by birds. Life and death collide. And in that window of overlap, the farm puts out its greatest abundance—a crazy, fleeting cornucopia. The celebration of harvest is made poignant knowing that the ebb is inevitable.
I am one part melancholy, one part relieved.
Harvest mornings are cold, demanding rubber boots again. Vine maple leaves streaked with scarlet are like warning flags at the swimming hole: Beware the icy strata a few inches beneath the surface. Water warm like butter went the way of August. We swim anyway, in defiance.
I push back against the ache of summer’s end by hunkering into the monomaniacal preoccupation of food preservation. Maybe it’s survival instinct, maybe it’s an emotional coping mechanism for vegetable separation anxiety. Either way, the freezer and pantry are stacked deep: Sungold cherry tomatoes are sliced in half, dried into candy, and put away for winter; basil finds itself reincarnated as pesto and frozen into ice cube trays; tomatoes become sauce. Vibrant red quarts cause the shelves to sag.
We light the woodstove.
The gradual slackening of the season gives me a chance to marvel that a seed smaller than a pin head could become a six-pound red cabbage named Ruby Perfection. Ruby, wrapped in her tight cloak of purple leaves, will see us all the way through winter, filling the vegetable void till spring. She is the queen of winter slaw. She will get to know her winter compatriots—kale and winter squash and celeriac—very well.
Coming through the gate this morning, I paused. Less than a year ago there were no farm fields here—just eight acres of pasture. No greenhouse. No water. No draft horses. No equipment. This little farm has come a long way in a short year.
Which is something that our six-year-old neighbor, Luke, still has not forgiven me for. His only comment about the new farm this season: She ruined our softball field, Mom.
It’s going to take a lot of pints of berries to make up for the fact that I plowed under our roughcast neighborhood baseball diamond to plant the perennials last spring.
[Follow Zoë’s story at edibleONLINE.]
Zoë Bradbury is a Kellogg Food & Society Policy Fellow. She lives, writes, and farms on Oregon’s southern coast.
