A harvest dinner and an October snowstorm end the summer growing season; Looking ahead to Winter Bounty

A little over a week ago, we shared a potluck at Logan’s to mark the end of the summer growing season. Before dinner, we poured glasses of wine and walked over the hill to visit the greenhouse.

The greenhouse has been rolled to cover the winter garden beds.

In anticipation of cold weather, Logan and Greg had rolled it on top of the winter beds, which (despite all of the best efforts by the caterpillars) were lush with greens, leeks, radishes, turnips, and the like. It was a little disorienting to visit this section that had earlier been open to the elements–kind of like getting used to a room with rearranged furniture. A few eggplant and tomato plants were still thriving in the summer bed, now open to the weather, and we blanketed them with row cover fabric against the cold weather to come.

For dinner, we had Greg and Kim’s casserole with tender layers of potatoes, eggplant, and sweet potatoes; Marsha’s gratin of fried green tomatoes with chard; and a big green salad from Logan, along with her delicious cassoulet. There was cheese from Sprout Creek Farm and the Amazing Real Live Food Company, a pissaladiere from the Art of the Tart, and Marsha’s pumpkin pie. Over dinner, we commiserated about some local farmers whose crops had been damaged by flooding this summer, talked about an invitation to make a public presentation, and agreed to pursue opportunities to tell the more people about our winter harvest project. We hope to host an open house there one weekend this winter.

For many farmers and gardeners, a dinner like ours is a bittersweet end-of-season ritual, marking the finish of an exhausting harvest (provided that summer weather has been kind) and the beginning of a quieter time of year. For us, it’s an end and a beginning; the end of summer veggies like tomatoes and eggplant, yes, and also the end of the hard work of preparing beds for winter crops, planting them, and fending off pests during the late summer.

Inside, our lush winter beds, plus a few tomato vines hanging from the rafters

But now we enter the season that we truly planned for when the Winter Bounty Project was launched, and we anticipate the seemingly miraculous ability to harvest fresh produce from an unheated greenhouse for a second winter in a row.

So when a foot of snow unexpectedly fell on the Hudson Valley in late October, abruptly ending the late growing season for most gardeners, the greenhouse was once again an oasis of green in a blanket of white. We’re not looking forward to winter, but we’re looking forward to eating well in the coming months.

One lonely tomato outside in the snow.

Inside, it was 60 degrees; outside, 45.

October snow: trick? or treat?