Whiteley Creek Homestead

The final days of October… Most leaves have fluttered to the ground, but the maple trees bordering my veggie garden are ablaze with color.

I have cleared away the dried vegetation from my veggie garden, but the Swiss chard continues to produce brilliant green leaves that add mega nutrients to the vegetable soup that I make at  time every year.

Each October, Cub Foods Grocery in Brainerd (Minnesota) stocks a "soup mix" of amazingly colorful root veggies from Harmony Valley Farm, an organic CSA farm in Viroqua, Wisconsin. Some of the varieties included in the bag are purple top turnip, rutabaga, carrots (purple, orange, red, yellow, and white), golden beet, and parsnip. Look at their beautiful fields! (Photo courtesy of Harmony Valley Farm's web site.)

The overnight temperature dips have resulted in several morning frosts that have caused the demise of many plants, but the mums, lamb's ear, and salvia faithfully beautify the stone walkway leading to my front door.  

The landscape's shades of grey are becoming more prominent as bare branches are exposed, but the tiny crabapples' brilliant red provides a cheery pop of color near the path that leads to my chickens' coop.