January 2008

The New Year was brought in with a fresh picked salad (complete with a few edible flowers) Winter Salad from the greenhouse and a stir fry of grass fed round steak, snow peas from the freezer and bok choy also from the greenhouse. For the special occasion we enjoyed sampling some of our lacto-fermented grape cooler - delicious and refreshing. Lacto-fermented pickles and sauerkraut are other tasty meal additions that give us the raw goodness of our summer produce. My winter "garden" also includes growing different kinds of sprouts in the kitchen that add crunch and flavor to salads and soups. I am still dreamily looking through seed catalogues and noting new things to try, I'll have to whittle that list down to reality when I'm ready to make orders in early February.

This more relaxed season of reading and dreaming led me into a conversation with a friend that sparked the wild idea that we should write a book on local foods that could speak to "ordinary people." I guess when two homesteaders are bored, interesting things can happen and we are in the midst of working on a book proposal and outline. We devised a questionaire to send to potential contributors and it has been a pleasure to read the passions and dreams others have for increasing local food systems. To me it confirms that this "movement" is alive and growing and gives us encourages us in our farm planning for the coming year. I am also watching grocery store trends (eggs prices are soaring) and rising oil prices and wondering how these will impact the necessity of local foods.

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