Glorious fall like weather these past few days and we have been reveling in it and getting a lot done.  Mornings have started kind of brisk at least in comparison with the past month, long pants and shirts, Elizabeth has even started the days with a wool hat on!  Slowly the unraveling of the farm proceeds.  The little sliding tunnels have been cleaned out of their long finished tomatoes and melons, the first ten rows of tomatoes in the Big Tops are now gone too.  All of the trellises, landscape fabric mulch and irrigation line out too.  Lisianthus trellis pulled out and drip lines in the old Zinnias pulled up.  Tomorrow we will take the plastic off the Big Tops and cinch the long rolls up like sausages to rest the winter in the valleys between the bows. One week to go now until we are finished marketing for the year and then the final clean up will begin, taking down the last of the tomatoes and the major roll up of the pepper field.  If it will rain a little more and I can get soil worked for next year we will seed it all down to a beautiful winter cover crop to hold it until we pull their starter rope again early next year.  Soon the staff will head off for their winter occupations and Betsy and I will be here all by ourselves enjoying the heart of the fall.

Too much to do the think about all that now and the forecast for the weekend is to be back into the low 90’s, so the reality will come rushing back.  All of the summer cover crops and as many of the finished cash crops as possible have been mowed in anticipation of the fall soil preparation fiesta.  Today I need to go and take soil tests as I am bit late in getting them done.  It has been so dry that it is hard to get the soil probe in the ground which makes taking a hundred or so samples a real pain.  But I can’t wait any longer because I will need the results soon so I can add any amendments they may indicate before I seed all the winter cover crops.  We also need to begin planting flowers for Betsy and leeks for me for next spring.  And all too soon the ranunculus corms from Italy will be here and they will need to go into the ground too.  Guess I better get out there and get to work.