Summer Gives Way

Are you one of those people that drives around the country sometimes? Do you see small farm houses and wonder who lives there and what it would be like if you lived there? Do you sometimes long for the peace of your imagined farm life? I used to do that. My husband used to love driving in the country and looking out over the fields and the farms. He especially admired the perfectly neat farmsteads, where the grass was always mowed, the weeds were non-existent, and the barns were freshly painted. I've never liked driving that much, but I used to gaze out the window and wonder what is was like to live in those places.
Now I know.

This is the view from the windows of the sun porch where we sit having morning coffee, making our plans for the day. It is early October now and you can see the faint reds through the trees. Our trees are still mostly green and I am waiting for all of the maples to turn red or yellow. Every day we get up and have coffee and eat breakfast and decide what we are going to do that day. Finish taking down the garden. Mow the lawn. Again. Put up more tomatoes. Again. Our freezer is overflowing downstairs.

This doesn't even show the door of the freezer, which is also full. So here's one of the secrets about "what it's like to live on that farm out in the country."  It's a lot of work. I guess in my mind I had fantasies about sitting on a lawn chair in the shade, sipping iced tea. And granted there was some of that. Oh the meals we ate at the outside table under the shade of the 300 year old maple! We set the table with table cloths, linen napkins and dishes of food that mostly came from the garden. So there were times when we sat down. But there were also many times when we worked and worked. Plus we were still trying to get settled so we had to continually clean out the garage because things kept collecting in there. My garden gloves had holes in most of the fingertips. The shovels were notched at the tips. Many of the tomato cages were snapped and broken, groaning under the weight of our six foot tomatoes. Most everything grew. And grew and grew. We had a few failures -- the celery, spinach, and lima beans never really came up. But everything else did just fine.
Now we are taking down the garden. Don tills the empty rows. We added manure -- free from our neighbor who had the baby Holsteins. Susan and David have begun to gather the fallen leaves to heap on top of the rows. I planted garlic. It is still warm here. We don't have the heat on in the house yet. But the end of the gardening season is coming. The chores are lessening somewhat. Only the tomatoes and the zucchini and the Swiss chard are left in the garden. The skeletons of the okra are still standing because Don can't believe the okra harvest is over. They look vaguely "Halloween-ish" so I am leaving them.
But winter is coming. It looms ahead of me. What will I do all winter?