Although the days are shorter and  the remainging crew starts later in the morning, (it’s getting tough to ignore how cool it is in the morning) we are still  very busy, mostly  buttoning up  for the winter and trying to get a few things done that we  wont have time for once we start greenhouse season in mid February. We have  recovered 5 greenhouses with new poly skins and  finished replacing  our old 28X96 greenhouse. Mike has electrical  work to do in it yet as well as reconfigure the bench layout within. Anne, Jenny and Sarah have been dividing,weeding and getting the  perennials ready to cover outdoors  in the field with insulation and a sheet of old greenhouse poly to keep them from getting any more wet than they are (it’s  been a very wet fall up here,so far.)  I have been occupying myself with  smaller  clean up  projects and trying to get the  machinery repaired and serviced and ready to go  for spring  09.  Most of the field work is done and we  took down a great many trees that were overhanging  the lower level greenhouses and along the river’s edge in the lower meadow. Our first tractor trailer load of straw will arrive  tommorrow and we will probably start mulching the strawberries and rhubarb next week,weather permitting.  Then we hopefully will try to prune some blueberries before winter really sets in. That should take  us   into December, so if we get anything major done outside after that,it will be gravy. Of course, there is tax preparation for Anne to contend with as our fiscal year  ends December 31.  She has already been ordering flower and perennial materials but we will have to  do the vegetable seed orders. When those tasks are completed, we can officially declare it to be the Holiday Season!