S2E8: Fall Harvest on Our Maine Homestead

 

In this episode of the Ravenous Farmer Project, we bring in loads and loads of fall crops to store over the winter. Like last year, we're aiming to hold off from buying grocery store produce for as long as possible. I also cover late-season crops that do well in Maine, such as arugula, miner's lettuce, spinach, and kale. 

And did our tomatoes rebound from that terrible spring? Yes, they caught up just fine, proving that nature is designed to help things thrive even against tough odds.

Our 2020 fall harvest was surprisingly different from the first year of our homestead. For some reason, I thought our crop yields would be similar to 2019, but different crops performed remarkably better or worse due to factors only Mother Nature knows and understands. Additionally, we had entirely new crops that we needed to learn to process on the fly.

Discovering that our basement isn't an effective root cellar continues to cause problems. The only crops we can store down there are onions, shallots, and garlic. All the rest either needed to be canned or frozen. This was our first year canning, and it really wasn't all that difficult (aside from finding canning jars and lids in stock). I'll share the full story in the final episode of Season 2, The Verdict, Year 2, which lands on April 9, 2021.

The final episode of the Ravenous Farmer Project Season 2 lands next Friday, April 9, 2021.