Frosting

Sunny all day through. A cold front is finally pushing off the big rain rotation, but the temperature peaked in the low 60Fs and settled in the mid 50Fs. A light frost is due tonight-- tomorrow night, however, a serious frost is coming (they're calling for 29F overnight). It's time for the last hard rush.


The boss is still mulling over Viking's letter-- he talked with us a bit this morning about business. The foreman, Newport and I didn't have much to say-- the season is winding down fast and our only concern is working up enough dollars to last the winter. We saddled up the wagon to the tractor and rolled up the hilltop. It was a picking bonanza-- we filled the wagon with ever sugar pumpkin, and then piled up the front loader with all the acorn squash and a few stray buttercup.

Newport and I set up a little ground cover over one of the dead gardens around the store-- we piled it high with the sugar pumpkins. The foreman got himself into a predicament-- while dumping off the acorn squash into the greenhouse he forgot to shut the tractor's cab door (the glass shattered). Embarrassed as all hell he cleaned up every speck and offered to cover the repair costs. The accident aside-- the greenhouse is loaded with 3 mountains of squash, they're ready to weather out the frost.

It was time for some serious picking. The boss came with us down to the big gardens and we pulled 25 or so of the enormous novelty sized pumpkins. The biggest weighed 250lbs, and even the smallest was 90lbs. Using the tractor, we carted them out to the store front and plopped them all around the fence/gardens and roof posts. The sea of orange really brightens up the place. Lunch time.


Lunch was cut short when the wholesaler arrived-- 40 boxes going out. I started loading the 10lb boxes from the barn into the truck, when another big truck pulled in. It was a delivery of 500 more tomato shipping boxes (this 40 box shipment was all the cardboard we had left). The boss had 1000 boxes delivered earlier thi summer, so 10,000 lbs have gone to just the wholesaler-- an equal or greater amount headed to the markets/store/CSA. I think it's a fair guess that we cleared the 20,000lb or 22,000lb tomato marker so far this season. I scrubbed up yesterdays potatoes while waiting for the boys to get back from their lunch.

Off to the big pumpkin field. We rolled through the patch and once again filled the wagon and front loader to over flowing. There's next to nothing out there now, it looks pretty sad. You can always tell a season is almost dead when the pumpkins are outta the field. Back at the store, I climbed up the pumpkin mountain and hurled them down to the foreman and Newport. They arranged another sea of orange to surround the giant novelty pumpkins, cover the gardens over and stretch out along the parking lot. Newport and I hefted up the biggest monster pumpkin and propped it against a post, surrounding it/supporting it with the biggest green pumpkins we could find. Viking was covering the store today (her only shift now)-- she has some horrifying ideas for the monster. She might paint something, or-- her favorite idea-- hollow out the inside and cut it to look like a casket, then put a spooky doll inside. I laughed my head off-- just thinking of the endless irate parents we'd have to deal with.

Time to finish the potatoes. We crawled up the hilltop one last time and got busy pulling. We filled 4 buckets of Nikola and 4 buckets of the Reds. Big potatoes are a blessing, the buckets fill quick. We horsed around on the hill a while and then finally down to the store for scrubbing. My day ended early-- my mother needed a lift to the doctor's office-- so it was time to get going. I chatted with the boss and foreman for a few minutes, then got on my way.


I bet more emergency picking is in order tomorrow. Thursday's frost will be heavy. The peppers will die, the basil will die, the string beans will die and the eggplant will die. The tomatoes should be fine-- especially the young field on top of the hill (it stays warmer up there, as the cold settles in the valley-- the boss intentionally plants the late crops accordingly). The cherry tomatoes might be killed off -- they've grown too old to easily shrug off bad weather. All my secret berry hopes also die on Thursday-- whatever the weather afterward, the frost will end the raspberries. I'm not sure how the corn will weather, I'll have to ask the boss. It's back to cold weather crops and clean up work.

Take it easy.