It is Halloween (All Hallows Eve) halfway between the Autumn Equinox and the Winter Solstice. As we look ahead to the farm chores this season brings.
The rich colors of Autumn have faded on our farm and most of the leaves are now brown and dropping to the ground – a rich banquet for the earth worms! I’ll mow the orchards one last time to chop up the fallen leaves and give the soil microbes more to munch on.
The annual machine repair and changing of engine fluids begins. Making machine repairs during the winter are not my happiest tasks on the farm, but necessary. All the garden tools will need sharpening and oiling (I’m not very good at doing that during the hectic gardening season).
Of course, firewood needs to be cut and split. They say that you are warmed twice by a fire – once when you cut and split the wood, and again from the warmth of the woodstove.
November is arriving as I write this, which means I will begin pruning the apple trees. Pruning is hard on a 75 year old body - working up on ladders in the cold. I'm glad I can still do it! Because I have 120 trees to prune, I spread out the pruning chores over several months. I just do three or four trees a day, so I’m not too sore the next day!
It is also that time of year when we put the gardens to bed – composting dead plants, mulching, and sowing cover crops. Although Eva may still plant some vegetables like kale for a welcome green in the Winter. I’ll also go around the farm cutting the tops off weed stems to provide more habitat for over-wintering insects. Many insect pollinators hibernate in the hollow stems of weeds.
I will continue to bottle apple cider vinegar and pear cider vinegar from this year’s harvests. The new “Mother of Vinegar” I grew this year will be stored in 5-gallon glass carboys to inoculate more vinegar next year. I’ll also clean vinegar vats, etc. The chores in the Vinegar Brewery continue until the end of March. But I have a heater in the Vinegary that keeps me warm, and together with the delicious aromas of vinegar, these winter chores are pleasant enough.
Although there are many farm chores ahead of us this time of year, I’m grateful for All Hallows Eve, because it marks another magical change in the seasons.