By Becky Nelson
Bramblings
The last few days have been weird. A hot, muggy Halloween was part of the weirdness. We are working to clean up summer as we look toward the possibility of winter and are finding it hard to think about pruning raspberries when there are actually some berries still on the plants, and chopping down the corn stalks when there is still edible corn in the fields.
We turned our Halloween attention to other winter prep tasks instead, getting the pool cleaned and put to bed and the camper winterized and ready for storage. I do wish we had some more summertime weather, thinking another camping trip would be welcome. I don’t have time for these fantasies, though, with the clock ticking away and the time between now and Thanksgiving to be filled with wreath making and Christmas preparations. It’s funny how the proverbial clock keeps ticking … one holiday to the next, one big human moment to the next, and how any little difference year to year makes a big difference in our attitudes toward life in general.
The COVID years were tough. The changes in our social patterns and our daily living were immense, and we are still paying for the decisions we made as we tried to keep each other safe. Everything we do has an effect on something else we do, and we need to keep that in mind as we go forward and the world gets warmer and the growing seasons bless us with some added time. We may not be able to make any real difference in the trajectory we are now traveling on, but we can at least stay informed and work on plans for “what if” and try to think of how to stay comfortable and alive on this little marble spinning around in the universe.
I read an article on Halloween day that scared me about the warm weather. It described the process of ocean mixing that occurs in the northern oceans and keeps the earth temperate. It appears this process is being disrupted by earth’s heating, the melting glaciers and the introduction of lots of fresh waters in the Atlantic that messes up the salinity and the mixing. The mixing has some dire consequences if it stops, disrupting weather processes all over the globe, sending the polar regions into a deep freeze with expanding glaciers and all kinds of unknown and speculated consequences for us humans just decades after the mixing stops. There was a “mini ice age” in the 1600s they think was created by lower solar energy and increased volcanic activity that created havoc across Europe and resulted in what was termed “the great dying” of Indigenous people here in North America as climate changed and adaptation became difficult. I don’t remember much about this in my history lessons, but the information is out there and may help us prepare for what might be coming to make some contingency plans for when the climate goes haywire and how we can adapt to keep food growing and people living.
I started down a rabbit hole of researching about climate patterns, causes for ice ages and all manner of scary scenarios and decided that was too much scariness for Halloween so I would look toward more niceties like corn on Halloween and maybe into November. I exited the rabbit hole and tried to look toward more pleasant topics.
We planted the last block of sweet corn very late … later than we thought it would come to fruition. We were amazed yesterday when we started picking a few bushels to feed the animals that looked good enough to eat. Some of the husks had been severely nipped by frosts, but we took a chance and cooked it up for dinner. It was amazing. More Halloween weirdness.
Along with our corn, we ate one of our last tomatoes of the season Halloween night. We have had tomatoes well into November before as we grow those in a high tunnel, though we planted a little earlier this year and the crop has dwindled. We have lost the peppers, beans and other tender crops to a frost, but these late season crops are an amazing gift. Even though the husks were nipped by frost, the corn we had for dinner Halloween night was delicious, though perhaps scary on its own merit if we think too hard. I wonder if we will still have corn for Thanksgiving … and what that means in the long run.
