The garden is empty now, save six lone Brussels sprout plants. They are hunkered down, waiting for Thanksgiving. I’ve read that you can leave them in the ground until you’re ready to use them, and that a bite of frost even mellows their flavor, but the way the weather has taken this hairpin turn, I’m a little nervous to risk them. I’ll have to do some more research.

We spent several hours outside last weekend, the girls and I, pulling plants and narrating elaborate games of make-believe. My mother’s birthday was a few days before, and I had hoped to have the girls pick a bouquet for her as the zinnias were still vibrant and strong. About an hour before Gramma was set to arrive for cake and presents, I sent Sweebee and Beans out with a pair of clippers and their Uncle T-Rex, and they sadly discovered that all but the most hardy blooms had succumbed to the black kiss of Jack Frost.

So we stacked bunches of marigolds on piles of zinnias on massive stalks of cosmos, all outside the fence in semi-tidy heaps to be carted off at a later date. Happily, that later date came quickly, and I poked my head out of my office earlier this week to see that T-Rex and the girls had cleaned everything up, including the pile of rocks we picked. Because somehow there are still rocks surfacing. Our neighbor rode the tiller down the hill on Monday night for us to borrow, and by Tuesday, we had freshly turned dirt, ready for amendment. As of this afternoon, the space has a year’s worth of composted chicken manure and pine shavings raked across the top. I’m hoping to do some additional layering before the snow covers things up. We don’t have enough cardboard saved to cover the whole plot, and we certainly don’t have the rotting apples like last year, but might have a line on some free cow manure. To be continued…

In the meantime, I have a lot of squash to manage. There are pumpkins to roast and to carve into faces. Not pictured are the baskets and buckets of apples in my bathroom that we’re hoping to press. Also not pictured are my children’s Halloween costumes. Because they’re not started. Oops. I suppose it will all get accomplished sooner or later!

How are you putting your garden to rest this year? Got any tried-and-true methods for me?

Last year was our first fall on the property. It was a season of possibility as we explored our land and watched our orchard produce more than we could ever have eaten. I filled the freezer with jars of applesauce and bags of pie filling. We invited everyone we knew to come pick, and pressed gallons of cider with neighbors. We scooped huge handfuls of dropped fruit, filling two 55 gallon drums, and umpteen buckets for the pigs our friends raise, leaving behind plenty for the deer and bear. We spread apples on our new garden plot and covered them with chicken manure and cardboard to try and enrich the soil over winter. And still apples remained – on the ground and on the branches, long into the winter. I had dreams of pruning, and spraying organically, and supplementing our income with apple sales.

And this year? Goodness, it’s dismal out there.

Four of our trees didn’t produce a single apple, including the two that were most prolific last year. And we’re down a tree, having lost a big one in the storm last October. Half of what’s on the remaining trees is already nibbled, and there isn’t a single fruit on the ground. That’s not an exaggeration. I walked the orchard today with a mid-sized kitchen trash can, looking for anything I could collect for the pigs. I found little more than poop, both deer and bear. We’ve seen a doe with two fawns in the orchard several times recently, once with a young buck. Thankfully I haven’t seen the bear. Nature’s cleanup crew seems particularly efficient right now.

Through local conversation, I’ve gleaned several theories about the situation. It was the second dry summer in a row, so apple harvests all over Maine are suffering. Fruit trees alternate years, so this is just an off year for our trees. The overabundance of acorns last year led to a squirrel population boom, and those silly tree rats decimated the immature apples early in the season. When you stack all three ideas, it doesn’t bode well for orchards, and I am grateful that our livelihood does not depend on those trees.

I’m bummed for several reasons, and not just that I was unable to enter the apple industry. We had really hoped to feed healthy, fresh produce to our pig for lean, flavorful meat. And expanding on that, our apples would have lowered our friends’ grain expenses, which would have lowered our own payment for the finished pig. It’s a very small but certain example of how everything is connected in a small, local system.