Mid-October Around My Farm
With the temperatures getting cooler and the days growing shorter, so much is changing around my farm. To stay organized, we have a schedule of events we follow from one year to the next. For example, we know that by a certain date, the screens must be removed from the house and replaced by storm windows, or that before the first big frost the tropical plants should all be brought indoors, or that the shrubs should be tucked securely beneath burlap before the first snow. Last year, like so many people, we were taken by surprise, first by the destructive Hurricane Irene in August and then, by a devastating October snowstorm. Fortunately, we've had no unpleasant surprises thus far and winter preparation is going according to schedule.
1 It's mid-October and here in Westchester County, New York, the autumn colors just aren't all that spectacular. Most of the trees seem to be turning a deep yellow and gold. This past week, the terrace umbrellas were put in winter storage.
2 This tree, next to the corn crib, looks alike an apple from afar, but it is a quince, the fruit of which looks like a cross between an apple and a pear. However, the flesh is very hard and astringent and really benefits from being cooked.
3 Quince skin is quite fuzzy and the fruit contains high levels of pectin, making it an excellent choice for jelly. At my dinner party on Saturday night, I served a delicious homemade quince ice cream, made with quince syrup.
4 The road leading to the stable is flanked by a boxwood allee that has been pruned with an undulating shape.
5 The crew has been busy giving the boxwood shrubs one last pruning, to shape them nicely before covering them over with burlap for the winter.
6 A view towards my house from the boxwood allee
7 Inside the stable, Billie, Rufus, and Clive were waiting patiently for their stable to be mucked and lined with clean bedding.
8 What an adorable face!
9 You know the season is changing when white pine needles drop en masse.
10 Or when you encounter large piles of leaves
11 The guys have been busy keeping on top of the leaf-removal chore.
12 With so many leaves, a large leaf vacuum saves much time and labor.
13 The leaves are sucked up by the large hose and fed into the back of the dump truck. When the dump truck is full, the leaves are taken to the compost area, where they are piled up and will decompose to form composted mulch.
14 Meanwhile, Wilmer has the task of removing the giant tropical ferns from the decorative urns outside the stable. The ferns need to be placed in large plastic pots for winter storage. This one doesn't quite fit.
15 Wilmer knows what needs to be done.
16 Using a sharp knife, he began trimming the root ball, decreasing its size.
17 He also used the flat edge of a shovel to cut through the bottom roots.
18 Back into the pot
19 And we have a fit with a bit of room to grow - The green foliage at the base is baby tears, a wonderful ground cover that looks great around the base of potted plants.
20 Gyurme and Wilmer loaded the fern into the back of the Kawasaki.
21 And headed to the winter storage greenhouse
22 You may recall a year ago when we were desperately trying to complete the construction of this greenhouse. You might remember that we had a devastating early snowfall in October, which took the northeast by total surprise.
23 At that time, so many of these tropical plants were still outdoors and suffered snow damage.
24 However, the greenhouse was finally complete and the plants were moved indoors. With a good pruning, the damaged plants came back nicely over the winter.
25 Every day, more plants are brought inside and soon, this structure will be filled to capacity. The heater is checked a couple of times each day to make sure the temperature remains comfortably warm inside. Too cold, plants will freeze - Too hot, plants will rot
26 Outside the greenhouse, the sky was very dramatic.
27 The yellow leaves were glowing against the stormy clouds.
28 The view across a hay field
29 Rather ominous looking
30 The breaks of clouds and blue sky were amazing!
31 The clouds just kept rolling across the sky.
32 Turning in the opposite direction - more ominous clouds
33 The popcorn patch has yet to be harvested.
34 Dolma led the Friesians to their run-in paddock where they spent the night.
35 The temperatures were dropping and this was the first time this season that the horses wore their warm blankets.
36 The horses enjoy their nights outdoors and have only been kept in the stable if there is a threat of a storm.
37 And they're off!
38 This is the run-in, if the horses want shelter.
Martha Pins
Martha Tweets
Martha, all of it is beautiful, but photo number 27 looks like an Old Master's painting. It is out of this world BEAUTIFUL.
Gloria G!!
Posted by: Gloria | October 15th, 2012 at 12:56 am
I absoultely loveeee your pictures of your homes..especially the autumn,fall,and winter photos..well heck I guess I might as well add spring and summer too..I LOVE THEM ALL!!! Thank you so much for sharing..I check daily for new photos...The changing of the leaves are the most beautiful sights ever!! Cant Wait for your new cooking show to air!! thanks Martha!! Love ya big big!!
Posted by: Patti L. | October 15th, 2012 at 1:06 am
I just wanted to say Thank you. I have been a follower of Martha for many years and just love everything she does and has done. As I sit here at work, and I work the midnight to eight a.m. shift, I enjoy looking through, reading, and learning everything new. I also wanted to let everyone know that when I need a little pick me up, I turn to this site, MSL.com, or one of my many Martha Cookbooks to make me feel 100 percent better! So, thank you all again, keep up the AMAZING work, and have a great upcoming week:)
Posted by: Lisa Brand | October 15th, 2012 at 3:14 am
Another wonderful blog! Although the foliage might not be as radiant this year, it still looks beautiful in your photos- especially the contrast of stormy sky, gold leaves, and green lawns. Have you considered opening your gardens to the public, at certain times of the year? In the UK many of the grand estates do that, and even the Queen opens up Sandringham and Balmoral for public tours when she's not there
Posted by: Christopher Hatch | October 15th, 2012 at 3:35 am
How are you,
Love the blog!
Posted by: Vera | October 15th, 2012 at 3:59 am
Martha, I'm so glad you and everyone else in the Northeast did not get an early winter surprise this year. If you're not prepared, those storms can be so devastating. I think your farm looks lovely in every season, and even though fall leaves can be a bother to keep up with, I love how they look scattered on the ground! The picture of the donkeys huddled together is so cute, they're so huggable! Spectacular pics of the sky, very dramatic and beautiful. Thanks for giving us an update Martha, we do so love your farm!
Posted by: Cindy F | October 15th, 2012 at 6:43 am
Martha, your vistas are lovely. I did a blog post this weekend on the same topic! It appears in CT you are at about the same stage of foliage that we are. I am actually feeling that we are a bit behind schedule. Last year as you mentioned, we had Hurricane Irene sweep through. She removed every last leaf from the trees, and carried them away to an unknown location, leaving our yard looking all cleaned up. Then as you did, we had the snow. I have photos of snow on our pumpkins. How odd. The winter that followed was just as peculiar...mild....little snow.
Like you, we do (on a much smaller scale) preparations for winter. Storm windows to tuck us in for the winter, clean the furnace, put the garden to rest. Although we will plant our garlic and winter greens over the next few weeks. The winter garden will be an experiment this year!
Happy fall.
Posted by: Nantucket Daffodil | October 15th, 2012 at 6:48 am
What a beautiful farm!!! Just love the pictures of Clive, Billie, and Rufus.
Your horses are sooo majestic. The scenery on your farm just takes my
breath away. I miss you so much on TV. Hope you return soon.
Enjoy the beauty of this day,
Kathy
Posted by: kathy peterson | October 15th, 2012 at 7:18 am
Breathtakingly beautiful....our farm looks like a painting also! Wish it could be that way for the next several months...Fall is Way too short of a season!
~Kim
baileywife.blogspot.com
Posted by: Baileywife | October 15th, 2012 at 7:52 am
Wow, amazing. Its so beautiful and autumn scenery looks so romantic. How I wish my country Malaysia has four season too. I have never experience spring, autumn and winter in my life. All the pictures really look like post cards! I love it.
Posted by: Lian Oi Choo | October 15th, 2012 at 8:29 am
Martha, thanks for sharing this blog.
Posted by: KLBrown | October 15th, 2012 at 8:37 am
Lovely blog but pictures are always better when they have a shot of you. Having no greenhouse, carried many plants into house with large southern exposure window. Had lovely strawberry pot and planted up some stray plants to watch blooming and setting on of berries indoors for first time. Once again October's bright blue weather continues reminding me of circle of nature.
Posted by: ann | October 15th, 2012 at 9:45 am
Hi Martha, So glad that you are not having any unfortunate weather this fall and that it's easier to get ready for winter! We had a very unusual summer with no rain for 80+ days and now we are having rain daily since October 12th and could get more! Your Bedford farm looks wonderful and how nice that your workers are getting ready for winter by clearing away the leaves, moving the tropical plants to the warm greenhouse, and getting ready to put the burlap on the boxwoods, etc.! These photos of the farm are magnificent and the leaves on many of your trees look beautiful when the sun is shining! The skies look somewhat like ours do right now! I love seeing that quince fruit and my neighbor has some and enjoys them, too! How fun to see Billie, Rufus, and Clive in their stable and your horses enjoying being outside with their coats and a place to go if it rains! How fun to see Wilmer repotting that tropical fern to put it in the warm greenhouse! So glad your tropical plants did survive that bad, late October snow storm! Sure wish I had a great warm greenhouse, but I don't have enough space! Can't wait for you to harvest that popcorn patch-would be fun to see the results! Thanks so much for sharing so much of your fabulous farm and animals-love it all! Enjoyed seeing your 2nd PBS Cooking Show on Saturday and was really happy that I got to see a rerun on the first show on Saturday, too! We have 2 PBS channels and Channel 12 is the main one at 5:30PM and channel 9 showed the rerun at 2:30PM! So fun to see you twice in one day! Sure hope you have another great day! Off to see The Daily Wag about "Storing the Tropical Plants for the Winter!" Jan
Posted by: Jan Erickson | October 15th, 2012 at 10:37 am
Leaves, leaves and more leaves here in NH!
My home is surrounded by trees and the amount of leaves that fall is mind boggling.
Here is my message to the trees: "Leave" me alone!
Thank you for sharing the happenings around the farm.
Especially the cute pics of the honky tonk donks!
gail
Posted by: gail pierson | October 15th, 2012 at 11:01 am
Hi Martha,
Gorgeous pictures of your farm at this time of the year.
Best wishes
Posted by: Rowaida Flayhan | October 15th, 2012 at 11:29 am
Thanks for the great farm pictures that I always enjoy viewing. I am amazed with the amount of tropical plants that you have. Most houses in Florida don’t have that many unless they have huge gardens. I bet anyone who visits your farm really enjoy seeing them. I like the baby tears in picture #19 – maybe I could grow some around my ponytail palm tree. Also, looking at that big pile of leaves makes me wish I had some of them. Our neighbor’s leaves fall into our yard but they aren’t the pretty fall colors that I love so much – they’re just a pile of nuisance that I have to rake up.
~
When you mentioned your dinner party I thought, man, you weren’t kidding when you tweeted that Saturday was a busy day – Rhode Island hospital in the morning and the Bedford Historical Society later in the day plus your dinner party. I’d get tired just changing clothes three times! You’re just like that energetic bunny in the TV ads that keeps on going. It’s also pretty obvious to me that your passion for what you do gives you heaps of energy. You have stressed that word ‘passion’ quite often for the benefit of many budding entrepreneurs and I hope they’re still paying attention because passion also means staying power. That definitely relates to you. While watching your Cooking School on PBS this past Saturday, I couldn’t help but think that you are still the best teacher of cooking anywhere. After watching you demo eggs last week and sauces this week, who wouldn’t want to try making a frittata or Beurre Blanc sauce. I’d make the Beurre Blanc sauce just to say the words and that I made it. I remember the first time I heard you say chiffonade. After that, I was no longer just cutting up basil into strips; I was doing a chiffonade of basil. Some people may have heard that word on Food Network TV and not to be partial, but I bet it was after you started saying it. I think you deserve a lot of credit for introducing us to so much including cooking terms. Have a great day! Trish
Posted by: Trish | October 15th, 2012 at 11:46 am
Such a beautiful time of year at the farm--but aren't they all? Thank you for sharing the behind-the-scenes activities that keep the farm looking and operating at its best.
Posted by: BG in SF | October 15th, 2012 at 12:17 pm
I've given up on putting burlap on my boxwoods; instead I spray anti-dessicant on them. Saves alot of time and $$$. The labor of staking the rows of boxwoods, plus storing all the burlap off-season, not to mention replacing the burlap every couple of years (depending on how harsh the winter was)....adds up to alot.
I haven't lost a boxwood yet so the spray must be a reasonable alternative. Is spraying not something you like to do?
Posted by: Bedford Mom | October 15th, 2012 at 3:07 pm
I think it's fabulous! My name is Gloria too!
Beautiful farm and animals!! LOVE!!
Posted by: Gloria L. | October 15th, 2012 at 8:13 pm
Love reading about your wonderful farm!! Thanks for the story about trimming the ferns- we had our I rest hard freeze here inRye, NH on Sat . Our costal community has a seasonal snack bar that left a huge tropical plant behind when they closed. Yes, of course I had to rescue it from the frost.. Friday night a the cold weather approached, I drove down to grab the plant only to realize I could not lift it into my truck. ( it didn't look that big from the road)
So, two teenager boys happened by - and after explaining the plan would die if I didn't get it inside, helped me lad the big guy into my truck.
Made it home, and I now faced a new challenge of getting it into my house!!
My wonderful son, came to my rescue by bringing it inside or me!! Hero ugh he years he has helped me save countless animals, and thankfully laughed it was just a small tree his time..
I need to read up to find out just how to care for this guy an hope I got I inside in enough time!!
Posted by: Elaina Blodgett | October 15th, 2012 at 9:09 pm
I really am missing watching the Martha Stewart Show on TV. I retired two years ago was so getting used to spending some time with Martha every afternoon. Any chance the show will come back on?
I've been watching the show ever since Martha cooked from her home and had her Mother there to assist her. That was my favorite show--not so much with the live audience.
Posted by: Joyce | October 16th, 2012 at 3:08 pm
Glorious! Your farm tours are my favorite posts. The donks are so charming. Now that I've had my fix I'm inspired to get to some routine house and yard work this afternoon.
Posted by: jw | October 17th, 2012 at 5:00 pm
Shot 27 is an absolute "bewdie".
Posted by: freefalling | October 20th, 2012 at 8:59 pm