The In-Between Season: When Summer Is Still Growing and Fall Is Calling

Basil from the Garden

Taking over the kitchen again!

There’s something about the beginning of September that always feels like a strange little in-between. Summer is still very much here. The days are still warm, the garden is producing more tomatoes than one household has any business receiving, and I am absolutely not ready to give up fresh corn yet. But you can feel fall sneaking in around the edges anyway, like it’s testing the water before it fully commits. The mornings are a little cooler. School is back in session, fall baseball has started, and our schedules are full again. By evening, we’ve been enjoying campfires as the weather begins to change. It’s still warm enough that you don’t quite need the fire, but cool enough that sitting around one feels right.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I have started thinking about soup, warm bread, cinnamon, dinner rolls and cookies. Basically, every food that makes a house smell like somewhere you never want to leave.

Every season seems to have its own rhythm in our kitchen. Summer is fast. It’s markets, early mornings, bread stacked everywhere and trying to keep up with the garden at the same time. It’s bringing in baskets of tomatoes and realizing that what looked like a manageable amount yesterday has somehow doubled overnight. It’s basil covering the counter, onions waiting to be chopped and jalapeño plants that apparently plan to continue producing forever.

Right now, fresh tomatoes, onions and basil are making their way into the freshest pasta sauce we can make. The jalapeños are finding their way into Jalapeño Cheddar bread. The garden is still deciding a good portion of what happens in the kitchen, and I’ve learned that it’s usually easier not to argue with it.

Fall feels different. There is still plenty of work, but it feels like a more settled kind of work. Fall makes me want to put a pot of soup on the stove, pull a loaf of bread from the oven and let everyone gather in the kitchen when they’re ready. It makes me want to cook food that simmers for a while and bake things filled with cinnamon and brown sugar.

It also makes me want to start something new, because apparently I do not already have enough going on.

We’re preparing the ground for a greenhouse, and I’m already imagining what could grow inside it. I’m thinking about extending the growing season, starting plants earlier and having another place to experiment and learn. I’m also thinking about what kind of cheese I want to try making next after the goat cheese turned out so well.

Tomato Soup

Fresh Tomato Soup hits differently in late summer

There is always something being tested, adjusted or improved around here. Sometimes it’s a recipe. Sometimes it’s a piece of the kitchen. Sometimes it’s the entire way I’m doing something because I’ve decided there has to be a better way. Some ideas work beautifully. Others make me wonder why I thought they were a good idea in the first place.

But I think that is part of what I love about this life. The bakery and homestead are never really finished. There is always another season coming, another thing to grow and another recipe scribbled down somewhere because I thought of it while doing three other things.

September seems to hold both sides of that perfectly.

Summer is still producing and asking us to keep up. Fall is quietly inviting us to slow down. The garden says there is more sauce to make, while the cooler mornings say it’s almost time for soup. Baseball keeps our evenings busy, but the campfires ask us to sit for a little while once we get home.

I can be quick to start looking ahead. I’m already thinking about fall flavors, holiday markets, the greenhouse and everything I want to do next. There is always something coming that needs to be planned for. But this season is also a reminder that I don’t have to rush what is here just because I’m excited about what comes next.

I don’t have to choose between summer and fall yet.

I can enjoy the tomatoes while thinking about soup. I can be grateful for the garden that is still producing while looking forward to the greenhouse that hasn’t been built. I can sit beside a campfire in a T-shirt and call it fall enough.

Maybe that is what this little in-between season is for. It gives us a chance to hold onto what we love about the season that is ending while slowly making room for the one that is coming.

So, for now, we are still picking tomatoes, making sauce, watching baseball and trying to find uses for all of those jalapeños. But fall is returning to the bakehouse a little at a time—in the cooler mornings, the campfire smoke and the growing list of things I want to bake.

I’m not rushing summer out the door.

But I’m making room for fall to come in.