On gardening, wood-cutting and hunting

My lone aspen tree is now adorned with bright yellow leaves, and the larch are beginning to turn gold. Daytime temperatures have remained in the 70s, but frost is common most nights. It’s definitely fall with fall activities.

Gardening on the North Fork has seen an upsurge in recent years. Homesteaders all had big gardens, which provided winter food. Root cellars were stocked with potatoes, carrots and other root crops, and every wife canned jars and jars of vegetables for winter consumption.

Today’s gardens are more for immediate consumption, although a few people, like Bonny Ogle and Naomi Hoiland, dry or can items for winter. This week, the big conversation has been ladies sharing their abundant tomato crops with neighbors.

Also, most gardens today have a profusion of flowers. So beautiful that the North Fork Landowners Association sponsored a garden tour this summer so everyone could share their beauty. Thanks to Bonny Ogle, this old bachelor even had two hanging baskets of flowers that provided color, beauty and a supplement to the hummingbird feeder all summer. (I hope everyone took down their hummingbird feeders by Labor Day so the tiny birds would leave for a warmer climate on time.)

Probably the largest garden today is the one at the Ray Hart compound, where two large outdoor gardens are supplemented by a big greenhouse, and the gardens at Jerry and Linda Wernick’s provide year-round vegetables and fruit for the Wernicks and students at the Tamarack Springs School.

Another big fall activity, especially for year-rounders, is filling the woodshed. Larch remains the wood of choice but is not as abundant or easy to get as it used to be, so more lodgepole is burnt by most folks. My woodshed is full with about half and half lodgepole and larch. I mostly burn lodgepole in the fall and spring and hoard the larch for really cold weather when the harder, denser wood holds a fire longer — especially at night.

Of course, the really big fall activity is big game hunting. Bow season is already underway, and most landowners are painting their borders with hunter orange to prevent trespassers. The general big game season doesn’t start until the last week of October, but already you can hear folks sighting-in their rifles, and we worry about poachers trying to get game early.

The North Fork Patrol and North Forkers and the Border Patrol are helping game wardens by keeping their eyes open. In fact, the NFLA and the Border Patrol offer a cash reward of up to $500 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of poachers.

The last NFLA meeting of the year will be held at Sondreson Hall on Saturday, Oct. 6, at 8 p.m. Don’t forget to bring nonperishable food products or money to donate to the Columbia Falls Food Bank.