Brace yourself for a chilly night ahead. It could be so cold, in fact that we are under the first frost advisory of the season. Weather Records has tweeted out that this would be the earliest frost since 1959, though local farmers would dispute that. At any rate, you may need the woolies tonight; the Old Farmer’s Almanac is predicting you may need two pairs for the winter ahead!  At the Rochon farm near Edwards, Ontario, the mad rush is on to pick what they can before nightfall.

“We got to get them all out tonight because frost tonight,” farmer Gerry Rochon says to his workers, as they frantically fire butternut squash into the back of a tractor. The squash and tender tomatoes are no match for Jack Frost.

"Right now everything frost sensitive,” says Rochon, “has to be brought in because by tomorrow, if we get a frost it's finished, done.”

In the Byward market where Rochon sells his produce, customers are scooping up the last batch of raspberries.

“I'm planning to keep buying berries because it's beautiful to buy them in season,” says one customer.

But that season could end tonight. 

Martine Bergeron, who staffs Rochon’s stall in the market advises, “Get down here and get all the stuff you want before it's too cold.”

In fact people are already feeling the chill in the air.

“I don't mind the cold,” says another customer, “but it's too soon. We should get this in November not September.”

The editor of the Old Farmer’s Almanac says we better get used to it. 

“We are looking at the T-Rex of winters,” Jack Burnett said on CTV’s Canada AM this morning.
Burnett says from Calgary to Quebec “we will be buried in snow to our neck.”

“It’s going to be colder, snowier, more wintery, it’s not going to be pretty.”

Back in the market, visitors from the West Coast are wondering what happened to those dying days of summer.

“We flew here from Seattle,” she says, “I don't want to see snow.  We left 90 degree weather in Seattle.  That is a major flip flop.”

That's what the geese are clearly thinking too, flying over Gerry Rochon's farm.  But he doesn't notice.  He's buried in butternut squash, another couple of acres to go.

“It’s going to be a very long day,” he laughs.

That is the bad news; an early frost, a nasty winter. But the Farmer’s Almanac is predicting a milder though wetter summer next year. Guess we will see.