By Zoë Bradbury
November 25, 2008
It is the eve of my last harvest and I am tucked in by the woodstove while a storm slams at the south side of the house. The weather vane swings atop the roof, screeching as it tilt-a-whirls on the ridge cap. The dog snores in an overstuffed chair by the window. I have dug out the wool socks and cracked into the first jar of stewed tomatoes. Summer is long gone.
To its credit, though, it did linger. The month of October went on and on in a string of warm, sunny days, giving the gift of an Indian summer to a farm that was still catching up from a frigid, intractable spring. The warmth was enough to miraculously ripen the winter squash that had been set back first by mice, then by cold, then by cucumber beetles. It brought on the first flush of fall raspberries, stubbornly ripening in spite of a frost and shrinking day length. It powered the unstoppable strawberry patch until I was begging for mercy. It gave us enough dry days to get a shed built for the horses.
And all those October sun rays mixed with a few inches of autumn rain to coax up fields of green across the farm: grass for the team and acres of cover crop. Local ranchers were calling it the best October forage they’d ever seen. It was a month to give thanks for.
And then came November. Let’s sum it up to say that since November first, enough raindrops have landed in my 5″ rain gauge to fill it up two and a half times. I’ve permanently donned the rubber wardrobe of muck boots and rain bibs and shifted into the new winter pace known as slogging. The creek is roaring brown. The leeks are slimy. Cutting heads of escarole is more like harvesting compost than food. Yum.
Believe it or not, though, here I am on the couch tonight — staying up way too late given the early harvest morning scream of my alarm clock tomorrow — with a pile of seed catalogs on my lap. I can’t help myself. I’m already excited about next season and this one isn’t even over yet.
Having a year under my belt has turned scheming for 2009 into an addiction. A year ago I was doing the same thing, but blindly — headed into a year of unknowns. How much lettuce could I sell? How many hours would it take to pick the strawberries each week? Would people eat celeriac in Langlois? This season gave me some answers: A lot. 9 hours. Yes.
This time around I am armed with data as I hungrily flip through Johnny’s, Territorial, Seeds of Change and all the other seed catalogs that start flooding my mailbox this time of year. Creating a crop plan is something akin to making art: the potential is boundless, the process is all-consuming. And I love it. These nights are filled with sculpting and scheming — notions of starting a CSA, of growing new varieties, of honing what works and experimenting afresh.
But first, tomorrow. There is a lot of kale to be bunched in the morning and then one more trip to town, boxes brimming with the farm’s last harvest of fall produce.
Zoë Bradbury is a Kellogg Food & Society Policy Fellow. She lives, writes, and farms on Oregon’s southern coast.
December 1st, 2008 at 3:38 pm
I LOVE this Zoe! Keep up the great work and drop me a e-mail if/when you get a chance. I’d hoped to drive up Floras Crk. and find you while home last month, but time just flew. Would love to get back in touch and talk dirt! Congratulations!
December 8th, 2008 at 9:18 am
[...] can also check out Zöe’s blog: Diary of a Young Farmer on Edible Portland for more [...]