COVETED GREEN THUMBS

This year's garden yielded a bumper crop. I froze green beans, corn, tomatoes, and peppers. I put up pickles, peach jam, and chutney. In the cellar are potatoes, carrots, cucumbers, and squash.

I don't often brag, but my End-of-the-Harvest Chutney is awesome. Though I did not enter it in the fair and win a red, white, or blue ribbon, my husband loves it. That is the best prize for me.

Soon I will harvest our apples: Macintosh and Granny Smith. Pies...tarts...sauce...YUM! At this point our freezer is stuffed, but we will eat all the meat within two weeks to make room in the frozen Arctic for all those apples that need to be peeled, cored, sliced, cooked, and bagged. It is laborious work, but come the middle of winter going to the freezer is like resurrecting the garden. Other farmers will certainly understand why this is alluring.

Now the garden is bare, its greenery raped and mangled by the tines of the rototiller. Gone are the cornstalks, gone are the pumpkin and cucumber vines. Now the rich earthy smell rises from the garden like farmer's cologne. Male farmers love bonding with their soil. Down goes the winter rye as my husband uses his broadcaster to shoot the seeds evenly on the soil. In a few days little green blades of grass will consume the dirt. A field of winter rye will grow...over the winter the soil and grass will keep each other company. In the spring the rototiller will fire up again. The grass will be tilled in; the nutrients will make the soil smell like cologne resurrected.

The seeds will go down. Sprouts will poke up through the soil. Farmer's will smile to themselves; congratulate themselves for coveted green thumbs. After all, not everyone has the gift. Then the growing season and the whole process begins again. A process farmers love, like a good New England boiled dinner. Ayup.