Wrapping Up the Fall Nursery Season

our fall sale ends tonight oct 20, I decided to extend the season because it's been warm, on today's date a decade ago I remember the ground freezing while I was installing some underground cable, on the 19th the ground was workable with a shovel and the one very cold night and the next day it was like trying to dig into cement. we are no where near freeze up this year, it seems weeks away. maybe it's the el niño. after we pack up today's orders I can start thinking about storing the rest of our stock for the winter, some things are dormant enough now, the grapes and walnuts dropped their leaves weeks ago after some frost. we had a good season, the nursery is small and we're only setup for mail order, and it's a family business so at peak there's 4-5 of us out there picking out plants, packing and shipping boxes. the rest of the year it's mostly a one person job (work for Doug) where I'll take all the stock counts and pack things into crates and bags and store it all in the root cellar. a few more fall projects, planting part of our new vineyard with bare root grapes, a few dozen orchard trees in an east clearing with solid deer caging, and finish cleaning and storing all of the seeds collected this fall.