This weekend the Chippewa Nature Center held its Fall Harvest Festival. There was candle dipping, cider pressing, apple-butter making, grain threshing and other fabulous crafts and demonstrations. I had the unique privilege of sharing the Heirloom Garden with visitors.
The adventure began in May when a group of us planted seeds for squash, watermelon, broomcorn, turnips and radishes and Scarlet Runner and Trail of Tears beans. School kids planted potatoes and onion sets, and someone else added tomato plants. Through the summer, we pulled weeds, hilled the beans, spread straw and compost for mulch and marveled at the growth. The tomato plants quickly outgrew the meager supports, and the beans teepees collapsed under the weight of the vines. The squash plants covered nearly a quarter of the garden, growing into the broomcorn and over the fence and into the lawn. On weeknights and Saturdays, I shared the garden with visitors. “What kind of corn is that, and how did you get it to grow so tall?” was a common question. When the tomatoes began to ripen, we ate them and marveled at their juiciness. On five or six Sundays, I hung out at the garden during Homestead Sundays. Kids helped me pick potato bugs to throw into the chickens. We pulled radishes and turnips. Later Amanda and I dug the onions and put them in the barn to cure. After a week or so, I tried my hand at braiding them and hung them in the cabin. The non-human visitors included toads, snakes, leopard frogs, mice, hummingbirds, grasshoppers, potato and Japanese beetles and one raccoon who watched me from a distance.
A couple hours a week are not enough to keep up with all that needs to be done in a garden this size. The field bindweed and purslane alone can get ahead of you in just a couple days. The compost piles should be turned once a week to speed their progress. The onions would have benefitted from extra water. Left unprotected, many of the turnips hosted root maggots who nibbled little trails through their purple and white skins. During hot weather, I drank three bottles of water in a two-hour work session, barely replacing all I lost.
As a gardener, I know that there is still work to be done, in spite of the fact that the Homestead season has come to an end. There are still tomatoes ready for picking and the late crop of turnips and radish have another few weeks before they will be ready. The school kids will return to dig the potatoes they planted. The bean plants need to be pulled once they are dead and all the beans picked and shelled for use in soup. Once everything is done, the plants can be chopped. Once the compost bins are emptied onto the garden, the plants will go in to the bins to be mixed with straw and manure from the animal pens. The compost will be plowed in to improve the soil for next year. We will cut the grapevines that have grown on the fencing (and attracted hordes of Japanese beetles) and use them to make wreaths. Finally, the garden can be put to bed until spring. I’ve never spent a summer so completely in touch with the changing seasons. I can say with no hesitation that it has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
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