We’re heading to the pumpkin patch today. It looks cloudy, but the way the weather has been heading it will clear up by 9:30 and become sunny but cool, with mist over top of the fields. Just how we like it: a crisp and not too sodden fall day.
Up here in Canada, this is the time we celebrate harvest. Our Thanksgiving is on October 10th. We spend the month of October thinking about harvest before indulging in that spectacle that is Halloween. October is all about food.
We like to go to the local pumpkin patch. It is a wholesome and hokey experience. It has four fields of different kinds of pumpkins and a few more exotic squashes, like great green-grey Hubbard squash. There’s also a barn, snacks, hay rides, and an enchanted forest that the kids can walk through. We’ve been visiting with the same family since our daughter was six months old.
We’re getting a fruit share this year and drying apples and making sauce is one of our pastimes. We’re also thinking of visiting the apple farm as well so that we can pick apples. Our local university has an apple festival with an amazing apple tasting room. We’re definitely heading to that! Imagine tasting 100 varieties of apples. Yum.
I put the garden to bed and help it stay alive for the winter as well. I need to harvest the last of the lettuce and beets before it gets frosty overnight, which will happen in the next few weeks. I will mulch the garden with the fall leaves and place cloches over the plants that I hope will grow over the winter: fava beans, winter beets, chard and kale.
This year we are pressing leaves from the many gorgeous trees in our townhouse complex. The local maples turn a wonderful red, yellow, green and orange medley, and we’re preserving them in books and then turning them into a book themselves.
What are your harvest traditions?