OCTOBER AT LEWIS CREEK FARM

October is a month when the home gardens are being put to bed, but we’re just starting up with a whole new selection of crops. Carrots are now in their prime, made extra sweet by the cool weather. Fall spinach is wonderfully sweet as well, and perhaps the best of the season. Kale in the fall is like a whole new vegetable it’s so sweet. In fact when we bunch kale in the late fall there’s so

Full rain gear and bare trees are all part of the late fall harvests.

much sugar in it that our hands are sticky from the sweet sap when we’re done. New crops appear like brussels sprouts and leeks. The potato crop is in and we have potaotes in 50 lb. bags at the farmstand so you can stock up for winter. Winter squash is in abundance now. Sweet dumpling and delicata that you can eat the skin on. Buttercup which many people know as "a nice dry squash". Butternut is the standard for peeled and mashed squash. Acorn has a wonderful nutty flavor and is frequently served in these parts cut in half so it forms a bowl which holds melted butter and maple syrup while it’s baked in the oven. Hubbard squash is enormous, ranging from 10 to 50 lbs each and are prized for big family get-togethers like Thanksgiving.

About the 15th of the month is the latest date for seeding down fields to winter rye. So there’s a bit of a rush about then. Winter rye is a great cover crop. It grows any time that the temperature is above 32 degrees F. It holds the soil from washing away on sloping land and on any land it soaks up whatever fertilizer is left in the soil so that it doesn’t leach into the ground water through the winter. It also makes a lot of organic matter at time in the season when not much else is happening. It’s the closest you can get to a free lunch.
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