The light has changed Upstate, everything glowing golden, copper and yellow against a bright blue sky. All summer the light fell straight down on the landscape, flat and green and relentless in the heat and sun through which we worked. Picking, packing, delivering.
At this time of year, the light comes in low and sideways from the south and west, and everything it touches seems to glow from the inside. Above it all this past week has been a sky so bright and blue you can’t get enough of it, can’t believe the air is so clean and crisp, the clouds floating so white across the sky, the sound of the geese punctuating their movement.
It’s as if nature is showing off one last time, awash with energy. The light bounces off the River and slips through the trees by mid-afternoon. It’s the light of a Hudson River School painting. When we walk out in the morning, we grab a jacket to ward off the chill in the air. By noon we’re down to T-shirts.
I am always overwhelmed by the turn to fall. It inevitably comes too soon and catches me off guard. The change is never clean. It’s unpredictable and halting: a warm day follows a cold spell, a warm spell gives way to a chilly rain. Sweaters come out, then go back in. Then come out again.
Out in the fields, the growing season is coming to an end. Earlier this week, temperatures dipped into the 40s at night. The cold touched the basil and the leaves of the peppers. Basil is always the first to tell us. A single cool night darkens its edges. When I saw it, I knew the clock was ticking. Soon the season, for this small farm, will be over.
We’ve been madly harvesting peppers of every kind: sweet and hot, thin-walled and thick, some still green, many blushing red, orange and deep purple. The ones whose color has turned, we’re stringing up and drying for winter stews and soups. There’s something deeply satisfying in knowing that in January a handful crumbled into a pot will bring back a little of this summer. Their spice and sweetness will be a welcome reminder, in the colder months, of the long days when we were still out picking at dusk.
October’s to-do list has a distinctly different set of tasks. The urgency shifts from keeping up to putting away, and from this season to the next.
Plant garlic and shallots. Pressing cloves into cool soil, tucking them under a blanket of straw, hoping they’ll sit quietly through the snow and push up green in spring. It’s an act of faith, really. A promise we make to next year.
Harvest seeds. We save what we can from the plants that did best for us, the ones that stood up to the heat, the wet stretches and the bugs. Every seed carries a little of this year’s story.
Hang flowers for dried arrangements and wreaths. The last blooms come in by the armful and get hung upside down to dry in the basement of our stone house. The basement smells like a field in late summer.
Clean up. Pull stakes, roll up drip line, coil hoses, put beds to rest. Not glamorous, but necessary, and strangely calming.
Make plans for next year’s season, which will come all too soon. The seed catalogs will arrive before we know it, and we’ll be at the kitchen table with coffee and a notebook, sketching out beds and swearing that next season we will be more organized, that we won’t plant too much squash, that we’ll grow only what we grow best.
It has been an incredible growing season, albeit with challenges. There were weeks when the weather didn’t cooperate, our beloved favas failed in the field, and days that stretched long past what our bodies wanted to give. But there were more weeks when the joy of working with the team and the productivity of a successful harvest made us forget the challenges, when a simple compliment from a customer made us feel the honor that it is to grow food for people.
Running a small farm is hard, relentless, unforgiving work, and it’s never the same year twice. But there is so much to be thankful for. The land, which gives back more than we could ever ask of it. Our team, who show up early and stay late, in heat and in rain, with good humor and dirty hands. And the chefs who believe in us and keep us motivated with their bountiful orders, their curiosity and their support. Seeing what they create from what we grow never gets old and eating at their tables is my greatest reward for the work we do.
Our cup is full.
As the season changes, there is still so much good left to uncover here on our small Upstate farm. The days are shorter, but the light is golden. Thank you for being here with us.
