Lasts and Firsts

Today I harvested what may well be the last of the sweet corn for the year--a few little nubby ears on some pretty stunted looking stalks.  I guess we just didn't have enough rain.  The first planting was good, but this second one...well, Bea, the goat, and her daughter, Luna, seem to be enjoying them anyway.

But the garden is not "done" yet. Not by a stretch. The fall peas (above) are looking good.

 One of the ways we make efficient use of our small garden beds is to keep planting.  Above a fall planting of mixed leaf lettuces is just getting started.  Late potatoes and some carrots are in the background.

 Today's small harvest of corn, beans, Italian squash and cayenne peppers sits alongside starts of red cabbage and broccoli.  One season in the garden ends, but another begins.  a fall garden in our climate zone stretches the growing season into November or perhaps beyond with cole crops, lettuce and greens. 

Autumn Abstract

The rain stops, takes away heat and leaves autumn in it's wake. We lose 20 degrees by the thermometer.   Giant puffballs squat like fat toads on lawn and pasture.  The grass greens from the rain, but the trees begin to choose their wardrobe from a different palette--yellow, red, orange. I move my lounge chair from the back to the front porch vowing to find time during the next few weeks to sit and view the spectacle. I hear crickets chirp in the daytime, and that is always the moment I know autumn has arrived on our farm.  They are to fall what katydids are to high summer. 

The summer squash and the tomatoes slowly give out, but the brussel sprouts and romaine shoot up in the cooler nights, and I finally succeed in getting cabbage and broccoli to sprout.  It's time to plant garlic.  And meanwhile we continue to harvest and put up for winter all the goodness we have been blessed with this summer.

A stray shows up in our yard, but not the usual kind.

Eggs slow down a bit as days grow shorter and the barnyard is a flurry of feathers as my hens enter moult.  I have always found it strange that they moult right when the weather turns cool.  Wouldn't they want to keep their feathers then?  But they'll have a new down coat by winter I suppose.  We've lost one of the barred rock hens to a hawk or an owl.  Why do they always choose the most valuable poultry to snack on?

The goats are getting out of their pen...again.  I am remembering why we have gotten rid of so many goats in the past.

The Blessing of Rain

"He gives rain on the earth, and sends water on the fields."  Job 5:10

It's raining.  Really raining.  Not just a spotty little shower, but a soaking, splashing, dripping, puddling rain. 

We needed it badly.  The pasture grass was getting crunchy.  The leaves on fruit trees and brambles were starting to curl.  The garden was drying up.  I had tried several times to start lettuce, broccoli and cabbage, but despite watering every day they just either didn't sprout at all or wilted as soon as they appeared.

And it's cooler too. Not even 70 degrees as I write this from our front porch.   

I know the naturalistic explanation for the rain:  Lee has churned us up some moisture from the gulf.  A lot of moisture.  I know, too, that the west needed this rain even more than we and didn't get much of it.  I am sure there are faithful people in Texas praying for rain that hasn't come.  I don't try to explain that. But I do pray for those people.

 What I can tell you is that every day for the last several weeks, as my family came to a dinner of summer's bounty, we prayed for rain. Rain means a lot to people who grow food and draw their water from a spring.   So for me, the rain is an answer to prayer.  It is mercy and benediction.  I see in scripture that the sending and witholding of it sit squarely in God's sovereignty.  I am reminded how dependent we are, all of us, on His sending it. How dependent we are on Him for everything.

Thank you, Lord, for this beautiful rain.