The long dark days of winter are upon us and it always feels hopeful to know we've passed the winter solstice. Days will slowly lengthen but the chill of winter will continue. After a stretch of single digit temps and biting wind, we are now enjoying some mild sunny days as December draws to a close. The pleasant days are great for hanging out laundry and digging root crops like carrots, beets and Jersalem artichokes before the weather turns chilly again. The low temps were a little hard on the greens in the coldframe but the mache and spinach still are flourishing and we are able to eat small salads several meals a week and stretch them by heaping on the broccoli and radish sprouts. One gusty night, one of the coldframes didn't fair well and ended up in heap in the orchard. I'm salvaging the crops by covering them with extra barrels till it can be repaired. We are thankful to be able to eat abundantly from our freezer supply of fruits, veggies and meats that we raised this summer. Pictured is our traditional Christmas breakfast of blueberry pancakes with maple syrup made with our own blueberries that were carefully tucked away in the freezer before they were gobbled up straight from the bush.
Winter also brings time for sewing projects. Here are comforter patches we are working on sewing together. The patches are all from old clothing, some cast offs from our closets and some from the discount rack at the nearby thrift store. Making comforters from old clothing requires a sense of creativity beyond using large amounts of perfectly matching new material. I like to think of it as "compost mentality" where you take something headin for the garbage and repurposing it into something beautiful and useful. It takes a slightly demented mind to see apple peels and coffee grounds and picture rich compost that will fertilize the next crop of lettuce. The same goes for other cast-offs. Our next comforter top will be my daughter's and the pile of used clothing she has gathered includes several variations of brown, a solid red, a red plaid and more. That should keep our minds stimulated till gardenin season arrives.
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