All of a sudden, winter hit North Dakota hard last week. It all started with heavy rain in parts of the state, followed by freezing rain that changed to snow. In some places the snow was heavy. Some communities in central North Dakota received more than a foot. St. John, just a couple of miles off the Canadian border, received 18 inches.

The first blizzard of the year prompted the Weather Channel to set up shop in Bismarck for a couple of days. Here in Carpio, we received about 3 inches of snow on top of about an inch of rain.

My goal for the weekend was to pick up more autumn leaves and cover my garlic but since there was 3 inches of snow on the ground, that wasn't going to work very well.

Instead, I harvested okra and some peas. Not a problem at all. Of course, I'm doing it by hand so I'm just walking through the snow as I'm picking the pods.

I've harvested items in the winter before and I should almost plan some of it because Saturday (Nov. 8) was a beautiful winter day and I really enjoyed the tranquility of working in nature on a "winter" day.

The only problem was, after all that rain on Wednesday, some of the pods weren't dried out so when I pulled the seeds out, they contained a high moisture content.

Too easy! I just put them in old cake pans in the greenhouse to dry out. As a matter of fact, the afternoon temperature here in Carpio was 28 Fahrenheit, but the temperature inside the greenhouse where I was now working was 78 degrees, which should have dried out the seeds pronto.

It got so warm in the greenhouse I had to remove a couple of layers I was wearing while out harvesting. It kind of surprised me how much power the sun still has despite its position in the southern sky.

The peas are dried out and have been for a while. The pods have protected the seed very well and those shelled out very easily. And as I was wrapping up, I got to thinking I should have enough seed for 2009 that I won't have to purchase any pea seed.

I still have 21 tobacco plants to harvest but I'm going to wait until the snow melts before I do that since I'm pulling them out by the roots. The longer I wait, the more dried out the leaves will be, which should make for great smoking tobacco around the holidays.