08/10/2025
Organic farms around here celebrate fall as the moment when the year’s work finally pays off, with pumpkins and squash in every color, young roots pulled fresh from the dirt in any shape you can possibly imagine, and tender cabbages and leeks stacked high.
Maybe it’s an old farming tradition to take a break in mid-October from school. Once, it was for harvest time. Now, most people use it to travel, to chase a last bit of sun before winter really settles in.
In the kitchen, fall just feels right. It’s that sweet spot where summer’s green freshness meets winter’s cozy, deeper side. Wild mushrooms show up, berries linger, game comes back into season. After months of chasing crisp greens and delicate shoots, it feels natural to slow down — to soften flavors, let things simmer a little longer.
Roots stay a bit crunchy, roasted carrots and cauliflower hit the menu again. Sauces get thicker, richer — stock-based, reduced, a little toasty, a little nutty, but still light. And then there’s the fruit — pears and apples at their peak, slow-grown in the northern sun. Their flavor just hits different — simple, honest, full of character.
Fall isn’t really an ending. It’s more like the quiet payoff, when the year finally tastes the way it was meant to.