End of Garden Season

The sun was bright, the day was cool, the maples, (not all) were in full fall color as we put our big Roshara garden to bed for the winter.  The process is simple.  We started by cutting the remaining corn stalks into small pieces, using a corn knife that my father used on the home farm sixty years ago.

A couple weekends ago, Steve and Natasha dug the remaining potatoes, picked the late ripening tomatoes, dug the carrots and beets, cut the last heads of cabbage, picked the pumpkins, squash and gourds, and chopped up the early sweet corn stalks into small pieces.  They also removed all the tomato vines from the garden site (keeps down potential disease).  Likewise for all the dead pumpkin, squash, cucumber and zucchini (they plug up the disk).

Today we wound up the electric fence wire and pulled the fence posts—not an especially easy job, but a necessary one as the tractor needs room to work.  With the fence put away, Steve hitched the tractor to the disk and a half-hour later, the garden was transformed to a field of freshly turned soil, with all of its rich smells.

Once the garden was disked, we broadcast (that’s a word that means flinging grain kernels by hand) winter rye and wheat to cover the soil, which we worked in with yet another pass of the tractor and disk to cover the kernels.

And the thus the 2013 garden season came to an end.  The garden, with its cover crop of wheat and rye will rest the long winter, waiting for the tractor and plow in April when we do it all over again.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Gardening has many seasons.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

October 13, 1-4 P.M. August Derleth Celebration, Circus World Museum, Baraboo.

October 17, 5:30, Park Falls Library, Park Falls.

October 20, Noon. Rib River Ballroom, Marathon City. German-American Group. Limping Through Life.

October 22, 3:00 p.m. Brillion Library. Limping Through Life

October 23, 2:45-3:30, Wisconsin Library Association, Green Bay. Letters from Hillside Farm

October 26, 10:00-2:00 Grafton Book Festival, Liberty Memorial Library, Grafton.

November 2, 9:00-4:00 The Clearing, Door County. Writing From Your Life Workshop

November 2, 4:00-6:00 p.m. The Clearing Door County.  The Quiet Season

November 6, 3:30 UW PLATO group, Oakwood West, Madison. Winter on the Farm, TV show with talk..

November 7, 7:00 p.m. Baraboo Public Library. Ringlingville U.S.A.

November 9, 9:30, Sheboygan County Research Center, Plymouth, Limping Through Life.

November 10: 3:30 p.m. Books and Company bookstore, Oconomowoc, The Quiet Season.

FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN PURCHASING “A FARM STORY WITH JERRY APPS” DVD

DVD Jerry Apps: A Farm Story List $16.95 The Patterson’s price only $15.00 ($20.00 shipped)
Special Bundle Offer exclusively by the Patterson:
Tamarack River Ghost & Jerry Apps: A Farm Story – List $43.90
The Patterson’s Price Only $35.00 ($43.00 shipped)

Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division St. PO Box 305
Wild Rose, WI 54984

(All items are sold by the Friends of the Patterson Memorial Library. They will accept checks or cash, they’re sorry but they don’t have any way to accept credit or debit cards, checks should be made out to the Friends of Patterson Memorial Library.