October 28, 2023 It
all came to an end. A killing frost
ended the growing season the first week of October at the farm.
The trees put on a show this year.
It was a good tomato year as well.
No time for canning tomatoes yet. I have been freezing what I couldn’t use, which was the vast majority of them. Now that winter has arrived, it won’t hurt to heat the place up with boiling water to skin the frozen tomatoes and the canner water. It might actually feel good.
It was a good
squash year, too. I must have given away
50 pounds of the yellow crook-neck squash, the product of two plants. We ate a lot of them, too. They make good filler for casseroles, even
scrambled eggs.
I put an old ice
chest out on the corner with a sign, “Take Some”. The plants were at the farm, so I brought the
squash back and put them in the ice chest.
Most of them got taken by somebody.
Nobody wanted the
big ones, so they got put with the pumpkin excess lining the walk from the
driveway to the front door.
The zucchini
produced for a short time, but then backed off.
A few zucchini found their way into the ice chest on the corner and were
soon gone. There was one that couldn’t
be harvested. It grew inside the wire
cage and couldn’t be removed without slaughtering it.
I also had six cantaloupe from two plants. One was good, one was horrible, and four are trying to ripen.
The pretty colors are gone, too. Just white now. I won’t grieve too much when it disappears.