It happens every year at Labor Day — the weather gets threatening and we all swathe our tomatoes in some sort of jerry-rigged cold frame/greenhouse kind of thing. One reason I’ve always sort of liked the trellis-and-string method is because it also provides a handy structure to hold the plastic up.

With the new beds up against the fence like that, I just stapled the plastic to the fence, then draped it over the top of the bamboo and it’s held down with rocks. Lots of rocks. Big rocks because Livingston is windy. I also filled a bunch of wall-o-waters and stuck them in there in between the plants to try to help out with thermal mass. They’re helping a little — keeping it about 3 degrees warmer overnight inside the beds than outside, and well, that three degrees can go a long way. Where the plastic is really performing though is in the daytime — yesterday we had a little thin sunshine after the fog burned off, and when it was 50 degrees outside, it was 94 inside the plastic. Tomatoes (and the peppers that are in there) like heat, so I’m hoping for a few more sunny days (today is supposed to go up to 80 — I might have to open the poor things up and give them some air) to ripen what looks like a great crop of tomatoes.

I’m pretty happy with the varieties I grew this year — I’ll definitely do the Sasha’s Altai again — they not only ripened early but were delicious. Prairie Fire ripened early, but was only okay — it was a nondescript small round tomato. I still haven’t found a cherry I’m entirely happy with — the Galina’s are good but don’t ripen that early, and the Black Cherry I grew this year is also nice but again, didn’t ripen significantly earlier than anything else. I don’t like the supersweet modern hybrids (just like I don’t like the supersweet sweet corn people are growing these days — I want corn that tastes like corn, not like candy), so I’ll probably shop around for a couple more cherries next year. The Milano Plum is a fabulous tomato — bigger and meatier than the Principe Borghese and bears heavily. The Jaunne Flamme was a husge success — they did really well and taste fabulous. I’m currently fermenting a little jar of seed to use next year.  And the Marglobes, what can I say — Marglobes are like that guy you have a crush on who you can’t quite get over. They seem so promising, and I every year I think see — this time it’s going to be great — but they never quite perform like I want them to — they grow gorgeous big green tomatoes that never seem to quite ripen in time, and then I wind up eating them ripened in the basement, wrapped in newspaper, and they taste sour. I might have to finally give up on them. I suppose we’ll see in March, when I’m down in the basement, poking seeds into flats of soil.

Now the Farmer’s Almanac is saying it’s going to be a very cold winter, and I have to say, if my mania for getting organized and stocking up is any indication, they’re right. It wasn’t a great year for jams and preserves — I didn’t get any cucumbers so I’ll have to make do with what’s left of last year’s pickles, but I did put up some gingered plum jam, some apricots in vanilla-cardamom syrup, peach chutney and tomato salsa. I’m hoping for another batch of tomatoes because I like that salsa — it’s clean and bright and it canned really well.

I also did a “big” grocery shopping this weekend, stocked up on pasta and canned goods and got my supply of beans all organized. I also ordered a few varieties that I’ve run out of, flageolet, cannelini, marrow and some Santa Marias from Steve at Rancho Gordo. While it might seem odd to order a staple like beans online, and while I considered the 69 cent bag of beans in the grocery store, I like Steve, and his beans are so much better — really — fresh, delicious, gorgeous, that I went online and placed a little order. They’ll last me all winter. I managed to resist going crazy in the pasta aisle this time — whenever I get nervous about the state of the world, impending financial meltdown, scary election, the Farmer’s Almanac saying it’s going to be really really cold, I find myself in the 2-for-1 Barilla aisle buying pasta. My brother used to tease me when he’d come home and find the pantry full of blue boxes, “feeling anxious, are we?” he’d ask. I have so much pasta in there that even in my current state of existential wobbliness, I resisted the siren song of dried pasta. It’s cheap. It keeps forever. If you really get stuck, say like in graduate school when sometimes it was a week or so at the end of the month when you were living off your change jar, well, you can always survive on pasta: pasta with garlic and oil, pasta with a can of tomatoes and an onion, pasta with butter and cheese.

And because we all live with our windows open all summer, the big cleaning of the year is not in the spring, but in the fall. It’s windy here, and dusty, so when the time comes to close the windows there is often a thin layer of dirt on everything — baseboards, windowsills, the corners where the vaccuum doesn’t quite reach. It was one of those weekends. I cleaned. I re-organized my closet. I slow-cooked. I organized the pantry. If by some strange chance all roads into Livingston are shut down this winter, I can survive out of my pantry. I’m ready.