Comox Valley Kids

So, here we are with the cooler nights and still the hot sun during the day. Ah, Fall.

Time to harvest the rewards after a long season of gardening. Seems a shame to put the garden to bed with the weather we’ve been having, but alas it must be done before we are caught off guard and the produce rots in the rain.

Taking the garden apart can be as much fun as it is work.

There is something satisfying about pulling whole plants out of the ground, and Ayla is thrilled to hear that she can pull out anything she wants! Randomly, with nothing off limits! She makes a beeline for the tomatoes, still a favorite, and sits down to eat the red ones.

Hmm, maybe I didn’t explain that well enough. I repeat myself, “Ayla – we are pulling it all apart!”

She smiles a mouth dripping squishy seeds and says “I know, mom.” Then she calls the dog over to see if she’d like to share in the tomato eating. OK, so this may take a little direction after all, but for now I leave my preoccupied toddler alone while I unwind the peas from the lattice and pull the stakes out of the ground.

I have a simple method when it comes to gardening in the Fall.

Pull the good stuff off, pull the whole plant out, done. Well, maybe not quite that simple.

Some plants like kale and swiss chard will continue to produce fresh leaves than can be harvested even as the snow Falls. And some of the smaller beets stay so they can grow a bit more (beets don’t mind the cool air).

But I worry about worms and frost, so when the garden comes down I don’t leave much behind.

I get bowls and pots, anything to collect the food, and soon we’re busy plucking beans and eggplants, tomatoes, tomatillos, zuchini, cukes. Ayla has learned to distinguish the goodies and helps me uproot beets, carrots, potatoes, and turnips, sorting them into piles, and sampling the odd thing. I laugh at the face she makes as she bites into a hard, dirt covered beet.

This prompts an educational preschooler conversation with endless questions. Do we cook this? Why? And This? Why? After a few meditated answers I revert to the simple “because it tastes better”

Next we’re off to the onions, which Ayla collects all by herself – they are so easy to pull up. To my surprise Ayla loves helping me peel off the dirty layers to prep them for storage. We have a good laugh over our crying eyes as we process a bin of red and yellow onions.

Harvesting the garden this Fall has provided some very amusing moments for our family. Like when we decided to take markers and draw faces on pumpkins in our patch! What a great way to have fun in the yard!

Now their lopsided faces have moved indoors to ripen. I think everyone looks forward to fall pumpkins. This weekend we wandered over to eat pumpkin pancakes at a friend’s house – talk about a taste treat! Personally, I grow pumpkins so I can make muffins. For years, my grandma made these awesome pumpkin muffins, and whenever I went to visit she made sure to send me home with a tub of them. So now every Spring I plant pumpkins, and every Fall I look forward to making muffins.

Next we tackle the flowers.

Ayla really likes scissors, so she is tickled when I hand over the gardening pair and ask her to cut some flowers for me. I hover over her making sure the stems are long enough, and when she asks for help I hold the flowers as she snips. If you want spring tulips now is the time to get those bulbs in the ground.

I show Ayla how to pull the seed heads apart on the cosmos, and how the seeds will fall into a little jar she holds beneath them. She is so happy to be helping in the garden. Then I amuse the whole family by dancing the jitterbug when a spider climbs up my arm.

Finally, its up the apple tree.

Ayla loves to climb and every chance she gets she’s up the ladder on the roof, in the trees, or wherever her dad happens to be. She wastes no time climbing up into the tree with dad to pick buckets and buckets of apples.

We take some to the cider press for fresh juice, the rest are used for applesauce, fruit leathers, and dried apple slices.

Another great thing about Fall is the way our kitchen smells. Ayla layers sliced tomatoes into dishes for me to dry in the oven. (These “sun-dried” tomatoes make a great addition to winter dishes – pastas, soups, brie cheese with garlic and pesto – mmm).

She spoons steamed apples into the food processor to blend, and then onto trays to dehydrate into leathers. She searches through the carrots for bugs before putting them in freezer bags. She even wants to cut the cucumber into chunks for our dinner.

A little pair of hands can do many, many things. It all seems a little less like work when we take the time to show her; to explain to her that by collecting the seeds from flowers we can have flowers again next year; that the plants are finished producing and now they are put into the compost to breakdown and create food for next year; that some food we dry and some we freeze.

As the food dries, or is cooked – as the last flowers gather into a vase on my table, I look out into the dirt patch that was our garden and sigh.

It’s a sigh of relief that all the hard work is done for the season. It’s a sigh of sadness that we will not see such abundance for a whole year. And it’s a sigh of frustration as I watch the dog tramp through my kale.

And then laughter as Ayla tries to pull her out.

Photos courtesy of Kendra Quince.