Mid-September typically brings a frost that brings summer plants to their knees or at least shuts them down enough that I feel a sigh of relief. So, imagine me reacting to Friday night’s frost – yeh! Still, it was not enough of a hit to call it quits on summer. Some tomatoes are hanging on, peppers escaped below their thick foliage, and, heck, even beans made it through untarnished. Well, enough for that escape hatch!

Instead, the season marches on and I’m just getting tired. We didn’t get a freeze last night, we got a thunderstorm! A thunderstorm? Come on, two more inches of rain? The end of the produce season should be me mowing down weeds, tilling a bit, and putting beds to rest. Not this year. Picture me sitting on my couch anxiously looking out at a pile of mud which was once a field on my second cup of coffee – hoping for the oomph I need to surge inside me, awaiting one more shot of an adrenaline-fueled caffeine buzz to slog through mud and save the spinach.

As you can tell, farming this time of year gets pretty mental. It’s a motivation game. I try to focus on the beautiful images I can see around the farm at every turn.

Whether we make our living slogging through a field or typing on a keyboard, I think that’s all we should ask of ourselves. Pay attention to the beauty that surrounds us all.

In the box:

• Pie Pumpkin: You just bake this this over like any winter squash. Cut in half, take out seeds and bake upside down on a cookie sheet. Once soft you can use however you use that pumpkin stuff in the can.
• Red Kuri Squash
• Acorn Squash
• Rutabaga: See recipe below for a fall soup. I like that this guy says not to be afraid of the rutabaga because it is a pretty intimidating veggie.
• Carrots
• Garlic
• Spinach
• Green Onions
• Japanese Eggplant
• Potatoes, Russet or Yellow: Farmer’s choice

Hello folks! As a farm operator with a dayjob, there’s no time for a newsletter. I must travel to Duluth this morning for the annual Extension Program Conference. Boxes are available at the farm as of 8 am this morning and those in D.L. will be there by 8:30 if you want to pick up early. Take care. -Ryan.

In the box:

• Mixed Beets: A mix of gold, red, and Chiogga beets (cut a cross-section Chiogga are pretty inside with red and white concentric circles)
• Delicata Squash
• Acorn Squash
• ‘Sunshine’ Kabocha Squash: If you like buttercup, you should like Kabocha. Similar color and taste.
• Yellow ‘Satina’ Potatoes
• Kohlrabi 
• Sweet Onion and Red Torpedo Onion
• A few Tomatoes 
• Italia Pepper
• Yellow or Orange Pepper
• Mizuna: A Japanese green you had in some spring boxes. This can be mixed in with a salad or put on sandwiches or burger instead of standard iceberg.
• Fresh Dill: Best idea ever – cut this up with some sour cream and put on those yellow potatoes!
• Little Broccoli: A few of you lucked out and got a nice-sized head, but most of you got these tiny heads (bit of a disappointment – in hindsight, I should have planted them in a different area).

I used to wonder why our dad got so bent out of shape when we were slow getting into the car in the morning. My brother and I were tired so we just didn’t move so fast. Our dad would give the impatient, “Come on! Let’s go!” to cajole us. In times of desperation, he’d lay on the horn in the driveway. I think in the back of my mind I had the idea that middle-aged people were just unhappy. Now I get it. I have even laid on the horn in the driveway a few times myself. Have I become my dad?

Now 42, I don’t think that middle-age makes a person unhappy. I think few people would describe me that way. But with school starting, there is just a schedule pressure that makes everybody crazy. In some ways the school schedule is good because it forces discipline at the farm. I’m a procrastinating pusher in my work style. I will only do a job when absolutely necessary, but will run like mad to slug out any task on the docket. I admire people who have two weeks planned out and diligently take measured steps day by day so everything is done at least three days before its due. I think my adrenaline levels would be more stable.

In the box:

• Carrots
• Garlic
• A couple yellow onions
• Red onion
• Bunch of cilantro 
• Little head lettuce
• Cantaloupe 
• Mix tomatoes 
• Zucchini
• Mixed beans
• Two Italia peppers: These are not hot.
• Orange or yellow pepper

The birds have something to tell us. As I said this to Jackie, I had no idea their message. They were keeping it to themselves at this point. All day, they had gathered – flocked together, if you will – until a gigantic conga line of them were draped across my telephone wire. It was quite a sight. People stopping by the farm stand were even taking pictures.

As I walked back to my harvesting, the phrase ‘the birds have something to tell us’ took on more meaning. I remembered the story my grandmother told of losing her eldest son. She was born in the Turtle Mountains in 1920 and raised by her Metchif-speaking grandparents (Metchif is a mix of Native languages and French). Even though she had spent her life trying to get away from the reservation and being ‘Indian’, the story of her son’s passing was every bit as mythical as stories told by the oldest and wisest of medicine men. She told me how a raven had perched itself on the window near the sink where she was washing dishes. As the bird turned its eyes to meet her own and pecked at the window, she said that she knew. Upon climbing the stairs, she discovered that Scarlet Fever had finally taken him even though Billy lived but 20 minutes before. She recounted this to me some 60 years later with the lingering pain of a mother’s heart, but also the wonder of a story that held great meaning. The raven was not a coincidence, but a messenger from another world. To my Catholic grandmother, a messenger from God.

For me, my grandmother’s stories pulls my imagination to a pre-modern time where people better heard the messages that nature provides. She could have told stories to me that illustrated the abject poverty she lived on an Indian Reservation, but instead she chose to share images of a supernatural America now lost to time. Toys purchased from a Jewish peddler who drove his donkey cart across the prairie from Grand Forks. Her devout grandfather who knelt before he planted each row of crops to perform the sign of the cross. Family members who freely walked across the national border to gather chokecherries, just as their ancestors did. Animals communicating important news.

I don’t think the stories of humans learning from nature are exclusive to Native Americans. We don’t need to fetishize Native knowledge as if it were the only tradition available to unlock some human mysteries. If you go back far enough, every cultural tradition has respect for nature and belief in the power of nature’s spirit. Even the most modern Western European can find an earth-centered spirituality in the not too distant past, whether you call it folklore or paganism.

So, again, what are the birds telling us? At this point, A HELL OF A LOT. Are we too distracted to listen? In our obsessive pursuit of consumption, we are passing the point where nature can repair itself. We owe it to our ancestors to at least listen to this message, whether given to us by our neighborhood barn swallow or a girl from Sweden.

In the Box:

• New Orchid watermelon
• Cippolini Onions
• Japanese eggplants
• Black Spanish radish and some red radishes
• Regular red tomatoes
• A sample of heirloom tomatoes: They are ugly but good
• Greenleaf lettuce 
• Mix of grape tomatoes
• Colored pepper
• Mixed color beans