NOVEMBER AT LEWIS CREEK FARM
We can usually count on “enough snow to see the cat’s tracks” by the 10th of November. About one year in seven we’ve picked brussels sprouts in a snow storm in early November. The last year we did that was 2000. November is a dark and rainy month but if it ever clears up much it’s likely to freeze up and not thaw until after Thanksgiving or maybe not until spring. So we use the 10th as our harvest deadline for even the hardiest of crops. Now we are consistently harvesting more than we can sell and stock piling storable crops in the barn where the temperature will hover just above freezing until mid December. We had some folks from Texas working for us one year and the crew took great delight early in the fall telling them incredible stories. “Some day you’ll come in from working in the field , and it will feel warm in the walk-in-cooler.” “Later in the season the refrigerated trucks will have heaters in them to keep the produce from freezing”. The Texans listened with stunned disbelief. But sure enough, those days came and they came in November. We keep the full crew on until the Friday before Thanksgiving. The last week is spent putting away machinery, cleaning up and mulching the strawberries for the winter. So, by time Thanksgiving rolls around, we're all done in the fields, we have lots of stuff in storage. We store a lot of carrots and potatoes, as well as parsnips, beets, rutabaga and cabbage. We take most of Thanksgiving week pretty slow, except for deliveies. Then, after Thanksgiving, a much smaller crew of 2 or 3 will start settling into what is pretty much our winter mode, washing and packing stored crops as they're needed for deliveries.

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