Features

September on Licking Creek Bend Farm brought the peak and decline of summer crops and the beginning of fall ones. Due to our cold, wet spring, the tomato harvest was at its height during the first and second week of the month, a little later than usual. We were harvesting nearly 100 boxes of tomatoes a week in early September.

Keeping up with ripe tomatoes was the main job for the early part of the month. On the 11th we picked 80 boxes! But that was followed by a rapid decline, as the cold nights and bad weather hurt the plants.

The farming season seemed determined to end the way it started–rainy. The summer was refreshingly dry, with just enough rain from late afternoon thunderstorms to keep plants happy. Then September came in with more days of rain to get our trucks repeatedly stuck in the field.

Wet weather hastened the decline of the summer and winter squash, which had problems with a fungus called downy mildew that thrives in moist weather. Too busy tending and picking other things, we forgot about our pumpkins, and as the vines died back, the wilting leaves revealed many ripening fruits, presenting themselves like gifts in their own bright orange wrapping paper.

Other fall crops coming along, with a little hand weeding and cultivation, were arugula, broccoli, cauliflower, beets, turnips, snow peas, ornamental gourds, and muskmelons.

Hurricane Isabel roared through on Thursday the 18th, with a lot of rain. In a season full of bad weather, the storm was notable for the wind, which pulled some metal roofing off an old barn, knocked over a few trees, and cut the electricity until Sunday. The extra rain on the already-saturated ground drowned a few of our fall leafy crops, such as kale, collards and lettuce, but we were lucky not to have any storm-related disasters.

Isabel did pick pears for us, which is a good thing, because some of the trees are pretty tall. Right around the middle of the month the pears were ripening, and all the wind action dropped a lot of pears around the bases of the trees, where we could pick the nice ones up.

Tuesday the 23rd was the autumnal equinox, marking the point of balance between dark and light as the long days of summer were overtaken by lengthening winter nights. It was a beautiful sunny day that felt more like late summer than the first day of fall. We made preserves with our own organic peaches and pears to stretch the abundance of good things through the winter.

The first few yellow leaves started appearing on the trees about this time. It really felt like fall at the end of the month when we began pulling up the first row of dead tomato plants and their stakes. This left the field looking empty.

But the plants had died and stopped producing, and we needed to move on to fall crops, and winter jobs like resting and snuggling up someplace warm.

Voice reporter Andrew Mefferd is working this season on Voice columnist Mike Tabor's organic farm, Licking Creek Bend Farm. They are located on 60 acres in Needmore, Pa., six miles over the Maryland border. Updates of what they are doing on the farm are delivered monthly to Voice readers.