Meryl LaTronica
Farm Manager, Powisset Farm

Today I walked around the vegetable fields with new eyes. Rather than scouring the fields for what needs to be cultivated, planted or hand-weeded, my gaze has shifted towards what needs to be mowed, plowed, harvested, cover-cropped and protected from frost. This change has happened over the last few weeks and it’s the phase of the farm season that’s called “putting the farm to bed.” The time of year when we transform the fields back to the state they were in when we greeted them in the spring. The better job we do now of clearing the fields and prepping them for winter and spring, the happier we will be at the start of next season.

Our time now is spent harvesting the remaining peppers, eggplants and tomatoes, and quickly mowing them down, plowing them into the fields and seeding rye, vetch, peas or oats into the soil to act as cover crops. Cover crops are plantings that not only hold the precious topsoil in place to avoid erosion in the winter months, but hopefully add “green manure,” or biomass to our fields come spring. The winter squash and popcorn has been picked, and is curing in the greenhouse until we distribute them at the end of October and throughout our winter CSA.

Changes to the landscape of the farm occur on a daily basis during these last couple months of our farm season. One day there are hundreds of winter squash dotting the field and crawling out from under green vines. The next day, the squash are gone and the vines seem to melt into the soil, making way for the vetch that we undersowed in August, which is suddenly looking like a carpet covering the soil. One day we are seeding our final lettuce, spinach and radish plantings, and the next we are harvesting from those beds, and discing the now bare soil over, making way for oats and peas to hold the soil for the winter.

Sitting on the humming tractor today, I mowed old summer squash plantings, the last few bright yellow fruits calling to me to harvest them before they were diced by the rotating blades. I mowed patches of weeds that had been bothering me for weeks. I mowed the handful of remaining napa cabbages into coleslaw in the fields. And I mowed two long rows of sad, sagging sunflowers, their heads bowing to winter.

This time of year always creeps up on me, causing me to walk the fields in a slightly bewildered state wondering where the season went, and pulling me deep into thought about what I will try to do differently next season. As I pondered the merits of planting my broccoli crop earlier next season and where I would plant the beets next spring, the sun began to set, of course earlier than ever—another sign that the season is coming to an end.

This video about Powisset Farm was produced by one of the farm’s CSA members. See Meryl in action!