Ciao, Summer

It’s official.  It’s fall.  I know, I know.  I’m supposed to embrace this change.  I should get out my favorite sweater, go apple picking, and buy a pumpkin.  I don’t want to.  Instead, I want to invite summer to stay a while longer.  I want to thumb my nose at Mother Nature.  I want her to understand in no uncertain terms that she can keep her beautiful foliage if I can keep my tomato patch a while longer.

I don’t have anything against fall.  I actually like pumpkins.  Let me count the ways:  pie, cake, bread, risotto.  Okay, I think that you probably get the picture.  It’s not really that I don’t like fall.  It’s just that I really love summer.

I don’t love summer because of the hot weather or pool parties.  They don’t bring anything to my dinner table.  Instead, I love to garden.  I love to plant the tiniest of seeds in the hope that they will bear fruit.  I enjoy the planning, the planting, the tending, the harvesting.

I’ve yet to find a food that doesn’t taste better when we grow it here at 1840 Farm.  It’s the easiest way I know to elevate the taste of everything we eat.  Dinner becomes an adventure.  We can go out to the garden with a bowl and come back into the house with the freshest of ingredients and a recipe brewing in our heads.  It’s like having a Top Chef quickfire challenge right here in our kitchen every night.  I love it.

True, it is a lot of work.  Farming isn’t easy.  Sometimes you meet heartbreak right in your own yard.  This year, I spent hours planning and planting a Three Sisters Garden.  As I worked, I thought of how wonderful it would be to harvest all of the corn, squash, and beans from this new addition to our garden.  I started to plan ahead for the harvest.  Where would we store all of these beautiful vegetables?  The answer was simple.  Nowhere.  It’s pretty easy to ingest the three ears of corn that we were actually able to eat before the corn earworms did.  What a disappointment.  But there was no time for wallowing.  The tomato harvest was ready.

Fast forward to today and the tomatoes are barely hanging on.  They’re unhappy about the cooler evenings.  They aren’t ready for fall’s arrival either.  I’m bound and determined to eat every last one of them.  I don’t care if today is the official start of fall.  On my dinner plate, it will be summer.  At least, until the tomatoes are gone.