Squash Season

Well, I think this picture says a lot about the season. Harvest time, time to prep the gardens for winter. I have a few days at market to go and then I will have more time for the gardens again. Ann  picked these squash last week after a very hard freeze that effectively ended the growing season for most things here. These will go in the pantry for our use this winter,yum! We are digging potatoes this week between road trips to harvest black walnuts. About the only things left to harvest from the gardens are Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and some broccoli.

We do have some Jerusalem artichocks to dig  as well as a bit of celeriac.I had a late planting of beets but I don't think they are going to make it. I wasn't able to get enough water to them when they were getting started. As you can see from this pic, leaves are turning and falling. I don't think we will have very good color this year, lots of trees dropped their leaves due to the drought. As soon as they are dormant I will start cutting balsam boughs for christmas wreaths and roping. I think nice boughs are going to be hard to find this year because of the dry conditions. A few wild mushrooms are fruiting in the woods since we had a few nice rain showers last week. Hopefully that will continue as we certainly need much more rain to replenish the ground water level.
We are off to harvest wild leeks or ramps as they are called this morning. We like to get them in the fall when they are much larger than in the spring. I'll have some pics of that and several other topics latter this week.