Dec 2010

December 2010

Low Tunnel After an abundance of pleasant fall weather, December brought winter in a hurry and we struggled to acclimatize our bodies to the chill. The first few days of December I harvested armloads of kale and chard from the garden but the onslaught of cold finished off everything that was unprotected. Here are my low tunnels covered with row cover and plastic. One has more mature plants while the other was planted mid October and the seedlings are about an inch tall. From my white barrel cold frames I harvested a large bowl of spinach for a family gathering but the snowstorm on the 13th left them buried in snow and I'll probably not check them till March. Until then, my main winter harvesting will come from the 10x20 greenhouse. With the temperature at 12 degrees with severe windchills I went to the greenhouse to add row cover as an extra blanket for all the plants. I actually picked two partially opened calendula flowers before I covered things - the last bouquet of the year on December 13th. With a slow down in fresh picked foods, I started sprouting radish seeds and a clover mix and will begin using from our store of frozen and canned foods. We are also savoring some of the lacto-fermented goodies I made in the new Pickl-It jars, dilly carrots and kim-chi. Broth rich soups are another winter staple that we are enjoying plenty of and mashed potatoes seems to be the other often requested winter staple.

Goat With outdoor things put to bed, we are feeling the urge to hibernate with a few good books and a couple seed catalogs. Thankfully there is more time to do that this time of year as well as making music, sewing and other leisurely pursuits. Olin is working on tweaking my website and learning some new tricks to use. If you are in need of a website for your farm or small business, now is a good time to contact him about what he can do. We did have time to create some fun Christmas cards using our stash of dried flowers and leaves plus made lavender scented angel ornaments to go into our family Christmas cards. We also gathered for a family Christmas picture... out in the barn since Jesus was born in a barn. Our attempt to include a menagerie of barn critters in the photo was a bit riotous and the goats (obviously!) were much happier as the center of attention than to stand quietly and smile with the rest of us. Needless to say, the only "critters" that ended up in the final photo were our children.

Christmas Cards Though there are no more veggies available for sale, we do have some unique, local gifts available for Christmas or other winter gift-giving. One of them is a local foods basket including our Local Choices book. Another winter idea is to host a learning class and there are a number of topics available from papermaking to cheesemaking. Details on these and other gift ideas are listed on the store page. You can also watch my events page for classes I'll be teaching at Local Roots Market in Wooster this winter plus I have several other winter speaking events in the works. I am excited to be part of a planning committee to create a mini Family Farm Field Day in Kidron this spring focusing on spring planting. Carlisle Press accepted another book proposal from me that I will hopefully get a good start on this winter. It is more of a booklet (50-60 pages) focusing on Gardening Around the Calendar and I will attempt to put my planting schedules into readable form. Watch for my garden journals on a monthly basis during the deep winter months, see you in the New Year.