The turn of the tide

It was 50-something degrees out today! I think we finally have broken the back of winter. We still have 1-2 feet of snow on the ground, but that is down from 2-3 feet last week, and it is supposed to be (relatively) warm this week.

Of course, the warmth really means one thing -- no, not spring -- mud season! Which means everything is slush and mud during the day, and frozen ruts and bumps at night.

The "road" from the first greenhouse, in front of the barn, and down to the house.

My foot ankle deep in mud.

In other breaking news, children grow up quickly. Compare this:

With the last photo in this sequence. Wavy doesn't even fit under the greenhouse tables anymore!

In a couple more years she will tower over them.

Picking rocks

Wavy, Henry and I picked three (half) buckets of rocks from greenhouse 2 the other day. Its so nice to be in the greenhouse this time of year -- they're warm, there's real dirt to dig in -- that we all seem to be looking for excuses to go in. They're not on, but they're plenty of cleanup work to get them ready. The strings hanging down are the tomato trellises.

Mud season preview

Watching Wavy play in the mud yesterday reminded me of this picture, one of my favorites.

Happy Halloween!!

Waverly dancing in the rain

This is photo from Wednesday. It was hot!!

Studying up

Waverly and Henry attempting to i.d. a caterpillar they found on the dill. I'm pretty sure it was a black swallowtail.

Really fresh salad turnips

Waverly's been really enjoying the salad turnips lately. Yesterday we were walking through the field, she found one left in a row, pulled it out, dusted off most of the dirt, and started eating it.

Cold

We've gotten a blast of real winter. The ground is snow covered, though not deep, but the temperature has been around zero for a few days now.

Waverly discovered that the velcro on the Old Shaw Farm hat could be adjusted to make it small enough to fit her and now she wears it everywhere. Luckily she thinks wearing two hats (the underneath one was knit by our friend Maya -- thanks Maya!!) is also fun, so she is staying warm.

Growing up on a Vermot veggie farm

This morning Waverly and I were discussing the order of the seasons. When I was a kid, I learned about winter, spring, summer, and fall. However, the seasonal clock being constructed in Waverly's head seems to have a different look.

W: So after Christmas and all-the-fun-stuff season, does greenhouse season come next?

P: Well, yeah, I guess so . . .

W: And after greenhouse season comes mud season.

P: Actually, that's right, mud season is after we turn on the greenhouses, but . . .

W: I love mud season. Is it going to be mud season soon?

'Tis the season

Yesterday, Wavy and I went and cut down a Christmas tree. After we got it back to the house, she proclaimed that its name was "Lemon".

Earlier that day, Wavy starred as an angel in the annual kid's service at the Peacham Congregational Church.

She was a little nervous about being an angel, but she did great. (Sorry the photo is a little blurry, but it is the only one we got of the kids actually singing.)

And then last night when I was reading her a book before bed, she asked, "How much longer until Christmas?" So the countdown begins! I remember making that same countdown when I was a kid!

Time, and the weather, march on

Cornelia showing Waverly how to plant garlic

This week is our last week of CSA. And this Saturday will probably be our last farmer's market. It has been getting cold (some 20s at night), and our field inventory is starting to run down. We will still have carrots and broccoli and onions and maybe some spinach for a few more weeks, but we will mostly sell those to the coop, or through our stand, or to the school in Peacham.

But it is moving from early fall to mid-late fall. A lot of the leaves are already down, the bow hunters are out in the trees, and it is getting dark early. Time to wrap things up a bit. But only three more months until we start tomato seedlings for the greenhouses again!

Brrrr.

Vermont kid

So as we blab on and on about the season winding down, our 3 year old daughter is already jones-ing for winter. She and I are going to learn how to snowboard this winter, and now she keeps asking, "When is it going to snow?", like that would be a good thing.

Wavy and I like to get on You Tube sometimes and check out various videos. Here is her favorite video these days.

all girl snowboarding

Happy birthday Waverly!!

Waverly is three today. We love her!!

Pulling in the oars

We are expecting our first frost tonight. This is early for us, but not unheard of. In an average year, we get our first frost around the end of September. But today was autumnal, no doubt about it -- sunny, dry, high of 63.

But frost tonight means that we have to harvest certain veggies now, and then cover certain crops to try to nurse them along for a few more weeks. We ran out this morning and pulled all our onions, and all the winter squash that was ready.

And we finally remembered to bring the camera up into the field when we went up to pick onions this morning.

Wavy doing a little empty onion truck dance when we first got up to the field.

Maryellen and Henry picking while Wavy and I gathered and stacked.

Hmmmm . . I think the CSAers may get a French onion soup recipe this week.

Wavy sitting on top of the FIRST full truck of onions. There was at least one more onion load, plus winter squash loads. Then we had to cover what we could cover with remay for the frost.

But even after that we still had time to go for one last swim at Harvey's Lake (it was cold), and then out to eat at the local greasy spoon. So it was not a bad way to bid adieu to summer.

Waverly at market

Waverly loves to buy blueberries at market.

Gee, Peter, what's in that veggie bin?

Oh, it's Waverly!!

Waverly was using this bin as a splash pool -- I filled it with a bit of water for her. This was last weekend, at about 9 a.m. in the morning after the night of frost warnings. So even that early, in the sun at least, it was warm enough for splashing.

Tomato jungle

The sun golds have made their jungle out in the greenhouse. Waverly is in heaven.

Wavy's with her pal Kat.

Kat and Wavy

Kat's one of the stars of our crew. She's been staying with us, mostly in her tent up in the field, but all this rain has driven her down to the house more lately, which has been awesome.

Greenhouse season

Waverly still fits under the tables, though not quite as well as last year.

Surveying her domain.

Greenhouse #2!!

Wavy and I spent some time planting sungold cherry tomatoes in our new greenhouse #2 the other day. We have dumped a lot of time, sweat, and dough into this second house over the last six months, so this is a very satisfying day. Very exciting stuff!

And then Wavy went on patrol in greenhouse #1 to inspect the earlier tomatoes and peppers in there.

Waverly and Henry

The sun is getting stronger and stronger every day. The rooms with South facing windows are bright and warm even at 8:30 a.m. when this was taken.

Eating tomatoes

Today was another spectacular day, weather wise. Dry, sunny, blue skies, warm - like 80. It was hard to believe it's really our second to last market. Usually the last couple markets are so miserably cold that I am really ready to stop coming, but this was a perfect market day.

There were lots of tourists in for the foliage (which is just starting -- way behind normal). Anyway, one tourist thought Waverly and her friend Elliot were so cute playing hide and go seek behind the sign (they are pretty cute!!) that she was taking pictures of them! And then when the two of them started eating tomatoes like apples, she had to take a picture of that too, in part because it was so cute and in part because, she said, she was so surprised to see kids happily eating veggies. Maybe that's because her her grandkids don't get yummy Old Shaw Farm veggies!

Anyway, you can see the stand in the background and can see that the display is definitely getting smaller.

Wavy is 2!!!!!!!

Our little baby turned 2 last week! We threw her a party last Sunday, and when we had planned for it, Wavy said she wanted a fire engine cake, some balloons, and for Tommy, Maggie, Molly, Ethan, Emma, Aleda, Quinn, Emmaline, Elliot, Mama, and Papa to be there. Maryellen made the cake (I helped frost it), Aleda brought the balloons, and everyone else showed up, plus the older Cobb boys, and Craig, Mark, Lori, and Corny. We all played t-ball (sort of), played in the sandbox, drove (toy) tractors everywhere, and ran around like a bunch of kids jacked up on sugar. I have to say, Maryellen and I had a ball, I think Wavy had a lot of fun too, and everyone else seemed to enjoy themselves. I only wish we had taken more pictures!

Tomato jungle

Waverly loves to go into the greenhouse to pick and eat sun golds straight off the vine. She is really good at it too -- she only picks the ones that are perfectly ripe. Here she is in her Papa's rain hat.

Sweet corn is here!

The Danville Fair

Danville is the next town over from us, and every summer they squeeze a lot of fair onto a pretty small town green. Waverly goes to a day care in Danville a couple of days a week, and the kids there had gotten her all amped up for the fair this past weekend. So we went, both Friday and Saturday nights, and we had a blast!

We danced to music at the bandshell with Waverly's friend Tommy, we saw a lot of friends, neighbors, and customers, we watched the horse pull, we saw the exhibits, and of course, we ate too much fried dough.

One of the funnest things about being a parent is being able to be a kid again. Only 363 days until the next Danville fair!

Waverly helps out

Waverly and Cat washing mesclun. The extra pair of hands at the back belong to Aleda.

Waverly

Waverly and baby Sam at market last week. You can see Cafe Wavo in the background.

Waverly and Sarah dancing at market. (Sarah is Sam's mom.)

Waverly weeding in the farm fields.

Waverly enjoying her new (to us) pool and the freezing cold water from our spring. (It's been wicked hot! The photos of long pants and long sleeves above are a week old.)

Farm prodigy

Even though Waverly is eighteen months old, and is still learning how to talk, I am constantly amazed at how much she understands what is happening around here. This morning at the breakfast table, Maryellen and I were discussing how we had to go out to the greenhouse today and seed some trays.

When we finally made it out to the greenhouse about a half an hour later, Maryellen and I got distracted by some other project, but Waverly headed right over to the pile of seedling trays and started putting potting soil in the trays.

Not only did she understand what we were talking about at breakfast, but she was the one who remembered what we had to do when we got to the greenhouse, and apparently she remembered how to seed trays from some other time we were out there seeding trays. Too much.

Later, it got so hot and sunny in the greenhouse (up to 85 degrees!) that Wavo went for the hillbilly look. [Note the snow piled up around the outside of the greenhouse. Even though daytime highs have crept into the mid to high 30s, we still have at least a couple feet of snow on the ground up here.]

But the tomato and pepper seedlings love the heat!

And later, when the sun starts going down, it can get kind of foggy, for reasons that I am sure make sense, but that I don't fully understand. Here is Maryellen using a broadfork to aerate the area where the tomatoes will go.

There is lots of other news around here too, including the Catamount's big win, and our first CSA customers, but those topics will have to wait -- the busy season has started and right now I am tired and going to bed.

Mud season preview

Maybe the groundhog is going to tell us spring is just around the corner, maybe we've got six more weeks of winter, but, in any case, someone around here is already in training for mud season.

Is Waverly really a CIA secret agent?

We have three computers around the house, all in various stages of deterioration, and Waverly loves looking at the pictures on the blog, and banging on the keyboard.

But lately we have noticed something strange. Although supposedly she is only "banging" on the keyboard, the other day Maryellen saw that Wavo had somehow pulled up a spreadsheet on the screen with economic data on various South American countries. And yesterday I looked over her shoulder and saw a page entitled "NASA privacy policies and security protocols". Even more ominously, last week I saw she had a window up that simply stated "Your download is now complete". Yikes!

What is she up to? And should we be worried? I know there tend to be areas of a child's life that a parent doesn't know about, but I thought that was mostly a teenage thing. I think we are going to have to keep an eye on this one. For all we know, she may already be keeping an eye on us!

Kid tricks

Waverly is firmly in her putting-food-on-her-head phase.

Here she is trying to wear some kale and soba noodles. All our parenting books say kids usually outgrow this stage, but in my family, I think my brothers and I continued into our early twenties.

Tommy Z

Wavo's friend Tommy came over to play the other day.

Tommy's parents are friends of ours, and he is a couple of months older than Waverly. Maryellen was once sitting at a restaurant with Tommy and Wavo, and someone asked her if they were twins, and you can kind of see why that person asked.

I guess these two have known each other pretty much their entire lives. They genuinely seem to like hanging out with each other, although they do kind of egg each other on into trouble sometimes. For example, they had a ball climbing on the grey easy chair in the livingroom. But I did find myself saying at one point, "Waverly, please stop head butting Tommy." And I heard Tommy's Mom, Tracy, say, "Now Tommy, don't kick Waverly in the head anymore."

Ahhh, to be young again . . .

Waverly update

Well, I guess it is true what they say -- they do grow up fast.

Waverly has this Big Wheel-like scooter that her cousins Derek and Brett gave her. It is called Rock, Roll, and Ride, and the way it is set up now, it has a handle on the back so her Papa can push her around. She loves it, but she can't get up onto it by herself, and I (gladly) spend about 40% of my time in the evening pushing her around the house, because she can't quite push or pedal it herself.

But tonight, I went into the livingroom, and there she was sitting on her Rock, Roll, and Ride. I said to Maryellen, "Did you put her up there?" "No. Why?" But before I could answer, she started pushing herself around, and even semi-steering through the doorway. Unbelieveable. I almost starting getting choked up a bit because she looked so much like a little kid, rather than a little baby.

Next she'll be asking for the keys to the truck!