Fall Ritual...45º

My FB page says the first day of fall has arrived...We typically, can look forward to Indian Summer here in October, cold nights with sunny days...We used to wait until mid to late October to harvest potatoes and plant garlic but as we "age," it seems smart to get it done in September, so we don't get caught in an October snow storm or really wet weather...Yesterday with a slight chance of rain in the forecast seemed like the perfect day...Herb and I gently tugged on the potato vines and found nests of potatoes, clean and scab free...The yield isn't very big, but what we get are nice potatoes and we also have to consider that we "robbed" quite a few for summer eating.

All Sizes.

After breakfast, I sat at the picnic table, where I broke garlic heads apart and separated out the largest cloves for this years seed...I filled 11 "hallocks," with enough cloves to plant a row, about 200 plants will sprout and grow next spring.

Remember, I talked about getting sidetracked when I write, here I go again...Many years ago we grew lots of raspberries and my neighbor Jane, explained to me that the little boxes I put them in were called hallocks, not "thingies"...I didn't question her, but I liked that name and have used it every since, sometime getting strange looks from people when I use it...Today I googled hallocks and from the "Farmers Almanac," got this definition...Your trivia for the day.

The proper spelling is “hallock”, a name applied from that of the company that originally produced the small wooden baskets in the middle 1800s (Hallock of New York). Hallocks were held in a “flat” of berries (a flat usually weighed 20-25 lbs) and we (Oregon kids in the late 50s/early 60s) were paid by the pound even though we had punch cards that got punched for each flat we took to the field boss (poundage was recorded on the back of the card as I recall).

Herb dug the rows, I carefully planted each clove, covered then with dirt and walked all over them, just like Mom taught me...Hugs To All...OWAV:)

Planted garlic bed, still needs to 

have a straw mulch on top.