Colorful fall

Sand cherry showing its fall colors.

By now, winter has normally shown itself

But not this year. Instead, we are having a wonderfully long autumn. No snow yet but we did get 3 inches of rain this fall. The ground is wet enough to put a damper on getting the garden prepped for winter and any dirt work we have to do.

The orchard has been beautiful reds, yellows, oranges and purples. We have really been enjoying the colors. Most years we get a pretty hard freeze early in September which turns the leaves brown and then the fall off.  Not very pretty. 

 We planted garlic last week, the start of next years produce. Garlic is planted in the fall and harvested in early summer. We actually get two crops from our plants: scapes and bulbs. Scapes are immature flowers. Harvesting them accomplishes two things. They are edible and have delicious beautiful green stalks that have a mild garlic flavor. They are wonderful in salads, eggs, pesto, anything you would use garlic in and would like a milder flavor. The second benefit to harvesting scapes is larger garlic bulbs since the garlic is not putting energy into making flowers.

We are finalizing plans about what trees and bushes to get for next year. We source our plants from many different places. In the past year everything came from out of state. This year we are getting some trees from a grower here in Montana. We are getting apple trees, cherry trees, and plum trees. We are trying out a yellow sweet cherry that is supposed to be hardy to -45. If the hardiness is correct, it would be very nice to have some sweet cherries to offer. We are keeping our nursery license and we will again have haskaps/honeyberry plants, elder berry plants, straw berry plants, goose berry plants for sale. We will also order trees, just let us know what you want.  If there is something you want that we haven’t had in the past or listed above, let us know and we will try order it in for you.

The seed catalogs will start showing up in the mail soon.  We will be pouring over those searching for all the vegetable varieties we love and any new or old (heirloom) varieties that are out.  The kitchen table will be full of open catalogs with turned pages and sticky notes as we decide.

This mild fall has been great.  Looking forward, it would be wonderful if we have a nice mild spring. The early fall and late spring freezes are really hard on everything, including us. If we get a hard freeze before the plant has become fully dormant, it can damage spring bud growth and even kill the tree or bush. If we have a hard freeze in late spring, it can kill the buds and early fruit growth.  Last year we had more fruit than the past for a couple of reasons: the plants have started to recover from the freeze in 2024 and they are a bit more mature. This year we are hoping an even better year. The haskaps we planted three years ago should start to produce this year. The raspberries and gooseberries are three years old as well. Most of our plantings are less than 5 years old and they are just starting to come on.

November brings us Thanksgiving.  We thankful for the blessing of a good harvest, rain, and beautiful fall leaves. We are thankful for the wonderful support from our community and friends far and wide.  We are thankful that we are able to provide the bounty of our farm with you.  Thank you for the support that you have given us this year. 

Recipe:

Winter squash soup. This recipe is from Larry and it’s a little like getting one from your grandma. It’s some of this, a pinch of that, etc. Next time we will get him to measure things.

Most any winter squash will work. We use Red Kuri and Butternut. Spaghetti squash will not work for this soup.

Vegetable or chicken broth

Dairy product, we use whole milk or half and half. Lower fat milk would also work but the soup will not be as creamy.

1 winter squash, halved, seeded and baked.

Cool the baked squash

Scrape out cooled squash into a large soup pot.

Use equal amount of vegetable/chick broth and whole milk or half and half. The broth and dairy combo should be about equal to the amount of cooked squash. If you have 3 cups of squash you will need 1.5 cups of broth and 1.5 cups of dairy.

Salt and pepper to taste. Some recipes call for nutmeg.

Heat ingredients on stove top till hot.