Sustainable Saturday - The Transition

Two weeks ago, in Fayetteville, Arkansas, it was 98 degrees and we sweated our way through a farmer's market.

Last week we were back home in the Binghamton area of upstate New York, and the produce still said "summer".

Peppers....

Corn...

...and heirloom tomatoes.
But today, it was an unpleasant low 50's with a strong wind, strong enough to rattle some of the tents of the vendors.  Customers of the bakery truck that also serves breakfast huddled, clad in jackets, with coffee steaming in cups held to their cold lips.  The weather was announcing that outdoor farmers market season would be over in just a few short weeks.

And the produce, seemingly overnight, had changed.  We still had corn, but now, next to the bicolor Butter and Sugar, lay the all white late variety Silver Queen. 

The apples are coming in.

And, next to the apples, winter squash.  Acorn, butternut, red kuri, delicata, hubbard, the names roll off the tongue.

Pumpkins.  And more winter squash.  Gourds.  Dried ornamental corn.  Mums.

I bought a small basket of deep purple concord grapes.  They were a cultivated variety, almost seedless.  The yellow jackets buzzed away to other displayed grapes reluctantly as the farmer put our purchase, slowly, in a bag for us. When we got home, I ate a cluster, the tart, tough skin not fooling me.  I knew the reward of what laid under that skin, and I gorged myself on the pulpy, tart/sweet, firm concord grape flesh.

The first fingers of fall rest lightly upon us in upstate New York.   It will be warm again.  But each time, it will be less warm.  The winds will be biting and no longer refreshing.  Soon, the sun will be with us less than 12 hours a day.  Tonight, the sky glows as the sun sets.

Fall is almost here.