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Sometime around the first real rain of the season, the farmers market changes shape. The berry flats and peach boxes start to disappear, and in their place are bins of winter squash stacked like cordwood, sacks of potatoes, crates of apples down from Hood River, and the first bags of this year's Willamette Valley hazelnuts. It's less glamorous than July. It's also, quietly, the best-value season of the year for stocking up.

Here's why. In summer, a bulk buy is only a deal if you do the work — blanch it, jam it, freeze it, can it — before it spoils. Fall produce does most of that work for you. Winter squash, potatoes, onions, garlic, storage apples, cabbage, and roots are built to keep, and they hit their lowest prices right at harvest. Buy them by the box now, stash them somewhere cool and dark, and you'll be eating October prices in February, when the grocery store is charging you for squash that rode a truck in from somewhere warmer.

I've organized this guide the same way as the summer one. The headline crops — the ones worth a drive to Hood River or a bulk buy at the market — get the full treatment: what to look for, how to handle it, and how to make it last. The supporting players get a quicker rundown so you know when to watch for them. And because the last of summer is still hanging on, we'll start there.

Early fall is a two-season market. The tomatoes, peppers, and corn that defined August are still here — often at their cheapest of the year — right up until the first hard frost shuts them down. If you missed the summer preserving window, this is your do-over.

This is the last good window to put up sauce, and the timing works in your favor: growers want the final flush of fruit off the vines before the weather turns, which is exactly when "canning" and "seconds" boxes show up at a steep discount.

Pro Tip: When a cold snap is in the forecast, farmers pull everything — including green tomatoes. Don't pass them up. Tomatoes that have started to blush will finish ripening on the counter in a paper bag, and fully green ones make great fried green tomatoes or a tart green tomato salsa. Never refrigerate a tomato you still want to ripen.

Save & Preserve: Freezing whole is the easiest route: core them, freeze on a tray, bag them, and slip the skins off under warm water as they thaw. If you're canning, remember the rule from the summer guide — you must add acid: 1 tablespoon of bottled lemon juice (or ¼ teaspoon citric acid) per pint, doubled for quarts. It's not optional.

September is peak pepper season in Oregon, and it's when fully ripe red, orange, and yellow peppers finally show up in volume at a fair price. Green peppers are just unripe peppers — if you can wait for color, you get more more complex flavors for the same price.

Pro Tip: Buy firm, glossy peppers that feel heavy for their size, and skip any with soft spots near the stem.

Save & Preserve: Peppers freeze raw with no blanching: wash, slice, lay flat in a bag, done. For something better, char a big batch under the broiler, steam them in a covered bowl for 10 minutes, peel, and freeze the roasted flesh flat for winter sandwiches, pastas, and soups.

The rest of summer tapers off fast. Sauvie Island sweet corn usually hangs on into October, eggplant keeps producing until the nights turn cold, and the last melons are worth grabbing if you see them. If you want corn for the freezer, don't wait: blanch shucked ears for two minutes, cool them in ice water, cut off the kernels, and freeze them flat in bags.

If summer belongs to the berries, fall belongs to the orchards. The Hood River Valley, about an hour east of Portland, is one of the biggest winter pear districts in the world, and its orchards grow apple varieties you will never see at Safeway. This is the one fall category where a day trip genuinely pays for itself — our Hood River Fruit Loop guide will help you plan it.

The summer guide promised that the real apple savings come in fall, and here they are. Early-season apples are pricey for the same reason Hood strawberries are: short window, high demand. Once the storage varieties come in during late September and October, supply floods the farm stands and the per-pound price drops — especially if you're willing to pick them yourself or buy by the box.

Pro Tip: Ask every farm stand for "seconds" or "juice apples." They're cosmetically dinged — a hail mark, an odd shape, some weird blemishes — and sell for a fraction of the display fruit. For applesauce, pie, or apple butter, you will never know the difference. And pick varieties by job: Honeycrisp and Gala for eating, Granny Smith and Braeburn for pie, and whatever's cheapest for sauce.

Save & Preserve: Apples are the easy button of fall preservation. Firm, late-season varieties keep for one to three months in a plastic bag with a few holes poked in it in your crisper drawer — just keep them away from your vegetables, because the ethylene gas they give off speeds up spoilage. For the seconds box: cook it down into applesauce (it freezes well and, since apples are naturally acidic, water-bath cans safely), slow-cook it into apple butter, or slice, toss with lemon juice and cinnamon, and freeze pre-measured pie fillings. Dried apple rings — thin slices in a cooked in a 200°F oven for a few hours — make a cheap snack that keeps for months.

The pear is Oregon's state fruit, and Hood River County is the world's leading producer of Anjou pears. The winter varieties — Anjou, Bosc, Comice — are where the value is in fall, and they're one of the few fruits you can buy a whole box of without a plan, because they keep for weeks when stored cold.

Pro Tip: Pears ripen from the inside out, so squeezing the middle tells you nothing. Check the neck instead: press gently near the stem, and when it gives, it's ready. Pears are picked mature but hard on purpose, so buying them firm isn't a mistake — it's the point.

Save & Preserve: Keep firm winter pears in the fridge and pull out a few at a time to ripen on the counter over a few days. That one trick turns a single box into a month of perfectly ripe pears. When you do end up with a pile of overripe ones, pear butter, pear sauce, or pears canned in light syrup all use them up. Bosc holds its shape best for baking and poaching.

Italian prune plums are the Pacific Northwest's quiet fall stone fruit: small, dark purple, egg-shaped, and freestone, which means the pit pops right out. Old backyard trees all over Portland drop them by the bucket in September, and farm stands sell them cheap.

Pro Tip: Look for "jam grade" bins at the market — soft, bruised fruit priced for immediate use. And if a neighbor has a prune plum tree, ask. People with prune plum trees are almost always looking for someone to take them.

Save & Preserve: Halve, pit, and sheet-freeze for winter baking — Italian plums hold their shape better than most. They also dry well into, yes, prunes, and make an excellent plum jam or a spiced plum sauce for pork.

Portland's fig trees are more productive than you'd think, and local figs are so fragile that you'll almost never see them in a grocery store. See if a neighbor is willing to let you pick from their tree, or buy them the day you plan to eat them.

Save & Preserve: Fig jam is the move for a surplus, and whole figs also freeze on a tray for smoothies and baking.