How does our garden go - part 4

September brings the rush of the closing the growing season as autumn and frosts draw ever nearer. Usually the first week of September finds us harvesting the last of our eating corn crop. What isn't eaten fresh, is cooked and sliced off the cobs, then quick frozen in meal sized packets of real heirloom flavor to be savored over the coming winter and spring months.
On the first Thursday of the month in the afternoon, we set up tables outside and invite all our friends and neighbors to help us with the tomato tasting trials. They are given cards that are number 1-15 and asked to taste pre-cut samples of tomatoes and then rate them, 1-10 and give a comment or two on the taste. We later post a list of which varieties they were and have them circle the numbers if they wish to have seeds from which ever varieties they liked. I find it amazing the different responses that we receive about each variety. Laughter peals out as spouses find that their opposite, rates the same tomato exactly opposite. One will give it an 8 or 9 and the other will place it at 2 or 3. The results are complied and added into the comments that you see when we post our tomato lists for trading.
Nine days after the taste testing, when we are sure that we have adequate sample of all our open pollinated or heirloom tomatoes, we hold what we prefer to call the "Great Tomato Pick Off". Starting at 1 pm, Sunday afternoon the tomato garden is thrown open to anyone who wishes to come and pick the tomatoes. We supply picking pails and the pickers supply containers to take their goodies home. This past summer, 39 people hauled around 2500 pounds out of the patch. After the picking is finished, we supply beverages and the people bring snackers and we set around and catch up on how everyones' gardens have gone over the summer. Would you believe that all those tomatoes were picked in less than 2 1/2 hours?
When the last guest leaves, I clean up the snacking area and Grunt goes down and starts stripping off the side lines to allow the tomato plants to flop over.
Monday morning finds me, pruners in hand and a couple of buckets (one for green and one for ripe tomatoes), back in the patch. I prune off all the branches about 6" above the ground and strip off all the missed tomatoes. The branches are piled into piles that either one of us (who so ever has a couple of minutes to spare) will wheelbarrow up to the cold compost pile. As I finish a section, I go back and pull the roots out, shaking off the dirt and adding them to the growing piles.
While I am working in the 'mater patch, Grunt picks the seed corn cobs, and cuts down the corn stalks, piling them by where the chipper will be set up. The corn plant roots are de-earthed and laid down in the bottom of next year's compost pile. The corn beds are then weeded and the mulch is fluffed to break up any clumps. With a transplant shovel the mulch is turn in to a depth of 12- 13", and the bed is top dressed with the fall amendments. Using a spading fork the corn bed is turned one more time to work the rotting mulch throughout the soil, where over winter it will finish breaking down and provide a deep, humus rich bed for whatever we decide to plant there next year. If it isn't carrots, ( since they don't appreciate unaged compost), we will top dress the corn beds with manure to age over winter and supply additional nutrients.
Each evening after supper the pails of green tomatoes are gently rolled out into cardboard flats and transported into our spare guest room where we maintain a temperature of 55-60F. Once there, they will slowly continue to ripen, providing us with fresh tomatoes, well into February. The ripe tomatoes, minus the few that we eat for meals, are transported to the local food bank and nursing homes. Of the 4000 - 6000 pounds the garden produces, we will eat, or can about 1500 pounds. The rest are eaten by other folk who also appreciate the old fashioned tasting tomatoes. As each row in the tomato patch is cleaned up the branch and root piles are removed to the cool compost bin. It, like Topsy, grows and grows. The bin is 6' X 6" and often by the time we are done it is also over 6' high.
When the corn patches are finished, Grunt bends over the necks of the onions, if need be (as it help speed ripening) and then starts digging a trench in one of the beds to winter store our root crops. As soon as the trench is ready, the potato, carrot and beet harvest begins. They are dug in turn and the beets and carrots lose much of their tops. Then each type of vegetable is stored in its own section of the trench, covered with a very thick coat of mulch, a tarp, a plastic sheet and another tarp to keep the soil from becoming soaked from rains and snows. Doing this provides us "fresh" root vegetables until the following April. Whenever we need the vegetables, Grunt brushes off the snow, lifts the tarp and burrows under the mulch and brings in a pail of mixed potatoes, carrots and beets. Then he carefully recovers the trench to prevent it freezing.
Near the end of September, (or early October, if the weather holds), the squashes and the last of the melons are picked, their plants are ripped out and added to the compost pile. The melons are eaten and the seeds are saved as soon as they are available. The squashes are washed and wiped down with a damp bleach water rag, and then dried and allowed to finish curing their rinds at room temperature, for a couple of weeks. Then they also find their way into the cold room with Grunts assistance.
As soon as the onion tops die back they are harvested and allowed to cure either right on the bed if the weather is nice or under a tarp leanto should rain threaten. A few days there, we rub off the loose onion skins, trim off the roots and tops and bag them in 10-20 pound bags to hang downstairs.