Winter farming in a nutshell: Sundown, New Year’s Day 2017, checking up on the greenhouse after a rattler of a windy night. The snowdrifts, the low-riding, fast-falling sun captured by plastic over hoops of steel – it’s all still here! :)
Year: 2017
Seedlings in January!
The earliest ever tomatoes experiment begins… Parts of the plan include a proven super-early variety, multiple seedling start dates, and the unheated greenhouse!
Won’t give in to the cold
Lettuce, under a hoop-supported layer of medium weight row cover in the unheated greenhouse, is crisp, colorful, and fresh as daisies. This lettuce mix was planted in October, and some of it cut once in December, and now it’s waiting out the winter. Outside low so far: not bad, around -22°C. Kind of the same picture every time – dead or alive – but still always exciting when you’re there… (:
It’s a snake eats toad world
Spring is here, the air is mild, birds are madly chirping, and the intricate interplay of life at ground level is back in full swing. Exhibit A: a snake eating a toad! It takes a long while, could be hours, for the toad to get swallowed alive and eventually die by suffocation. Seems extremely unpleasant for the toad, but in Nature’s grand scheme of things, a snake has got to eat like the rest of us! We humans do the same with oysters, minus the big swallowing challenge.
Cutting greens
Harvesting salad greens: bin, harvest knife, hands. This has never been one of my favorite things to do—doubled over one 50′ bed after another. A while back, we made a seat on wheels that straddled the bed so you could sit, pushing yourself back with your feet. It worked pretty well, but it became one extra thing to lug around and faded out of service. The greens—lettuces, arugula, mustard, mizuna, other brassicas—at this time are maybe the best of the season, growing before full summer heat. In the background, the goldenrod, native residents of the field, are thriving, towering over all the crops. I don’t think of them as weeds, because they don’t
Carrots front and center
Some of the veggies at today’s farmer’s market. The intense orange of rinsed off carrots tends to really pop, like some sort of neon beacon, especially in the flat light of overcast, grey days. Here they’re flanked by mixed bundles of curly, flat-leaf, and strap kale—the trifecta of kale—flat-leaf parsley, and…beets!
Wild turkeys in a field
Wild turkeys foraging in a field. I see them all over, all seasons, always looking quite alien as they dart across the road, make their way in a straggling line across fields, take off on short bursts of flight for whatever reason. They haven’t bothered the veggie garden over the years, so I think of them as fellow travelers, their own separate tribe, in a near orbit that hasn’t intersected with mine. (I do hear their meat is excellent, lean and flavorful, though I haven’t properly tasted it, only in homemade meat pie.)