All good things come to an end. Last week I rode the van to the Long Island Farm in Boston Harbor for the last time this season. We put the finishing touches on a farm that will sleep peacefully for a few months and reemerge after the cold.
Preparing for winter isn’t as exciting as mid-summer harvesting, but the farm reminds me that every part of the cycle is equally important. Everything comes in due season, literally.’
To prepare for the cold, we had to do a few things. Last week we drove the tractor, in our Halloween costumes, over anything that remained in the fields, flattening the stems and breaking up the soil. Poor little leftover beets and carrots flew left and right under the giant blades rotating behind the tractor.
Then we planted cover crops like oats and peas to grow during the winter. They suppress weeds, build productive soil and help keep out pests and disease. It’s like a blanket so the soil won’t feel so naked.
We also planted some crops that grow in winter, such as garlic. A bulb, garlic grows under a few inches of soil and a thick layer of hay throughout the winter, and emerges in the spring with tall, pale green shoots. Planting garlic is amazingly simple: rather than breaking apart the cloves to put them into spaghetti sauce, we broke apart the cloves and stuck them in the dirt. A new head will grow from each clove.
We also measured the fields, the old-fashioned way with one tape measure, lots of wooden stakes and three sets of very cold fingertips. We separated the fields into squares and rectangles to plan where to plant different crops next year, but we didn’t have any fancy measuring equipment. I felt like a Pilgrim, without Squanto to show me what to do. We’d accidentally planted the garlic in a diagonal line. Oops.
Now the fields are marked, the cover crops raked in and the garlic sleeping peacefully. We replaced the tools in the shed and latched the door shut. If we lived in the Little House on the Prairie, our cellar would be stocked with the food harvested all summer, so we could survive the winter. In Boston we just go to the grocery store.
I’m going to miss my farm. My weekly venture there was a breath of fresh air. Sometimes I had to force myself out of my busy schedule and onto the T, but every time I reached the van, with its colorful mix of gangsters, I was glad to be there. Last week, the two farm gangsters received opportunities to move off the island, get good jobs and continue rebuilding their lives. The farm helped them and it helped me and the season has come to an end. But that garlic is pulsing, under its diagonal straw blanket, and in the spring, we’ll see what comes up.
