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Fall is also a good time to plant trees! It's planting season for orchards & nut groves.
So fall is harvest season for a lot of NC crops: sweet potatoes, cotton, tobacco, soy, & corn.
But with all the fall planting we do, fall is also sort of like Spring 2: The Sequel.
A lot of Americans have picked up a classic agrarian calendar: plant in spring, work all summer, harvest in fall, rest in winter.
But that's not how most of the world works! That's not even how most of the US works!
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(Don't worry there'll be cozy fall content downthread. I just wanna prepare you for how some of this "here's some facts about fall" thread won't fit the classic New England 4-season model. It's because North Carolina isn't in New England. : )
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A very cool thing about fall being Spring 2 is that we can grow more crops per year! A single field can push out 2 or 3 crops per year. Even more for veggies that mature quickly.
That means farms in the southeastern US can grow more food than a similar patch of land further north.
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The downside is
well
if you're thinking "Wow, so instead of 'planting season, then harvest season' you've got days, weeks, or even months where you're doing both? That sounds crazy!"
yes it is
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So most farmers around here plan around that. Wheat is planted around the same time cotton gets harvested (Oct - Dec depending on where in east NC you are).
So if you're doing Big Acreage of both, you just might want to hire someone to help.
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A reader asked: "This has to DESTROY the soil right?"
Not really! Rotating crops w different seasons can really help the soil by keeping weeds down.
If you only grow summer crops (say corn & soy) then you'll build up a big population of summer weeds. Ditto for cool weather crops.
If you rotate, neither type of weed gets as much of a foothold.
Crop rotation: keep em guessing
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It's also not common to harvest a field & immediately plant a new crop in it. Just bc good harvest & planting weather don't often line up like that.
Usually a couple weeks to months btwn harvest & plant.
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Ok next ag fact: we need to talk about pumpkin spice. THE flavor of autumn in the US.
Cloves, cinnamon, allspice, etc are usually for sweets in western cooking. Baked goods, coffee, candy, etc.
We don't use them very much in main dishes.
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But! Have you ever heard about how fancy cooking in the Middle Ages used a lot of spices in main courses like roasts & soups & wondered "What did that taste like?"
In many cases, they were borrowing from how people used those spices back where they came from- southeast Asia.
For a good modern example of those spices in a main course soup, there's pho.
Why does pho taste SO GOOD? It's pumpkin spice beef stock.
(Usually has cinnamon, star anise, & cloves.)
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Tired: medieval European cooks used "pumpkin spice" flavors in savory dishes because they hadn't figured out proper cuisine yet.
Wired: the west still hasn't gotten back on medieval cooks' level
