Sunday, October 29, 2023

Summer’s Over

 

     October 28, 2023  It all came to an end.  A killing frost ended the growing season the first week of October at the farm. 

 

      Frost held off for another two weeks in Loveland.  The result of all the pumpkin vines over the backyard resulted in three good sized pumpkins.  Grandkids took them.  They had to have help carting them off.  I haven’t seen the jack-o-lanterns yet.  Hope they survived the cold weather!    

                                                     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.