Celebrating the Harvest!

It's happened again. The days are already 2 and a half hours shorter than at Summer Solstice and the nights are cooler. As summer wanes, garden harvest waxes, hurrying to mature before the frost, which in our part of the world  usually occurs in mid-October, but could happen sooner. There is much to do. It's a regular food frenzy. When we are not picking, we are canning or freezing, or weeding, mulching, tilling, or cover cropping. And EATING! Beautiful fresh organic food. Some days it's hard to choose which delectable delight from the garden will grace our table. Breakfast can be blueberries, raspberries and cream or fresh eggs served on a bed of steamed kale with juicy tomatoes on the side. Let's see should we have corn on the cob, corn chowder, or chicken paillards with corn salsa for dinner? Green beans, beets, carrots, potatoes roasted on the grill? Cabbage is made into either cole slaw or sauerkraut. Tomatoes turned into sauce. Green beans become canned dilly beans. Cucumbers are pickled. The freezer is full of berries, beans and peas. Elderberries are bagged and frozen to be turned into wine later. There are baskets of potatoes, onions and garlic in the basement. Pie and soup pumpkins will soon be harvested. Eating this way is such a pleasure and such a reward to know where our food is coming from and knowing that it hasn't been sprayed with poisons. The opportunity is there for anyone. I think everyone should get rid of their lawn and grow food!
Here's an idea: What if, instead of the federal government subsidizing huge farms to grow corn and soybeans (which are used mainly in processed foods that make us fat) they subsidized small local farmers that grow healthy crops. Everyone would eat better and the cost of organic food would decrease.

Because we are a salt water farm, not only do we harvest the land, but we are also able to harvest the sea. At extreme low tides we walk down to the bay with our clam rakes and basket and dig cherry stone clams. We look for a small hole in the sand and usually find what we are looking for. Sometimes as we step, a stream of water shoots straight up in the air, like a baby boy in the middle of a diaper change.

Clams for supper

Growing food is hard work and it consumes much of our time from April to October. But it's not all we do. I did a 50 mile bike ride with my daughter and a 30 mile bike ride with daughter and grandson - both events put on by Maine Bike Coalition. With friends we biked some of the carriage trails in Acadia National Park. Four of us Surry women - all in our 60s- have been training all summer to walk a marathon on Mount Desert Island in October. We've put in a lot of miles and so far are holding up. It's a challenge!
We have visited children and grandchildren. We went to a Bob Dylan concert. He still rocks!


There's a trip planned to Sodus Point, New York - my hometown - to celebrate my father's 90th birthday this month.
As I write, Sandy is vacuuming ashes out of the woodstoves to get ready for winter. There are 4 cords of wood to stack.  The cycle continues round and round. "Turn, Turn, Turn."
The Autumn Equinox is September 23 at 5:05 a.m. Celebrate the harvest!