End of the Gardening Season

I was over visiting the Beans, who own Arctic Organics, between Palmer and The Butte, this afternoon.  I was delivering Tom Meacham's E-flat trumpet to Logan Bean, who will be performing the Franz Josef Haydn Trumpet Concerto with the Anchorage Civic Orchestra this November.

The Beans had several young workers, including Logan, pulling some of the last produce from their wonderful organic farm that looks out toward Pioneer Peak and the northwestern dorsal of the Chugach range.  Wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full of plump cabbages rolled past me, as River Bean showed off some of the fennel bulbs he had harvested and was sorting.  Behind us was a tub of a mixture of greens that looked ready to fill a salad bowl at the finest restaurants in Alaska, or the world.  Tubs of onions, potatoes and herbs surrounded us in the small shed that sheltered us from the pelting rain.  The kids working the field could have stepped from the farm onto any fishing boat in Alaska, with their Xtra-tuffs and HH raingear.

At our much, much smaller farm, the only crops still in the ground are beets, mint and carrots.  Everything else is stored, put up, refrigerated, frozen or being toasted in the oven.

Here's one of the beets - a Cylendra - next to some of the Spearmint:

The last of the purple poppies, amidst some carrots:

Flaming shrubs.  They were a housewarming present from Wasilla Mayor John Stein and his wife, Karen Marie: