Final Hurdles of Fall
The first frost has come and gone so surely the farming season is over for the year, right?!
Byers Woods
I would’ve thought that a few years ago too, but now it feels like autumn may be just as busy as spring here at Local Blooms. Well, maybe it isn’t quite as crazy, but it feels like it. Probably because we are exhausted of farming come October.
From dahlia digging, to getting tulips and peonies planted (…hydrangeas, willows, and who knows what else I stuck in the ground), getting fabric up and cover crops down, we slowly but surely get to the good part: when everything is tucked in and ready for a long winter’s nap. Not only the plants, but us as well. Maybe even ESPECIALLY us.
The anticipation of winter outweighs any other anticipation I feel throughout the year. I used to feel so depressed by the prospect of winter, it’s part of why I left Ohio in the first place. When we moved back, I knew I had to find a way to cope with Ohio’s grey months. If anyone else is struggling with the same, might I recommend farming?
Now I greatly look forward to the respite that is winter. I like to practice Hygge — a scandanavian concept of “coziness.” My favorite Hygge practices are reading, hiking (ok — it may not always seem cozy but I argue that all depends on your clothing), scratch cooking, and immersing myself in blankets, socks, candles, basically anything that reminds me I’m safe in my home and the crisp winter wind can’t touch me!
We just finished digging the dahlias. I don’t like to clean and divide them until spring. I find it easier to divide once the “eye” of the dahlia has started to grow. Mostly though, I do a lot of the dahlia grunt work in spring because by that time I feel excited to touch the plants again. Right now, I resent being with those ugly clumps of tubers. That may sound harsh, but really, look at them and you’ll see they are not what flower farmer social media dreams are made of:
Not exactly cutie pies are they?
A face only a mother could love.
Now we need to get our tulips and peonies in, these are less urgent then the dahlias because they like it cold cold. With a rainy week ahead & our first expected snow on Thursday, the dahlias would’ve turned to mush. It feels like we’re always just barely ahead of the weather around here, but we got em’ up. Now time to store them.