Back in the Fall, I showed you our new winter gardening system, a series of four low tunnels. In these new winter beds we planted leaf lettuce, spinach, spicy greens, bok choi, kale, onions, carrots, turnips, cilantro, and parsley. On this last day of February, everything is still alive, having survived several nights near -10 Fahrenheit. Our harvest totals more than 20 pounds of food collected during the coldest months of the year.
There is nothing quite like eating a salad you picked from the garden in mid-February. Combined with our strategy of storing foods from the summer and fall, and eggs from our chickens, we've managed to put some homegrown produce on our plates nearly every single day. Here's a taste of what we've been eating, month by month:
November
One of my goals this year was to serve a Thanksgiving dinner featuring exclusively homegrown vegetables. Our menu consisted of:
Fresh salad with candied walnuts, stilton, apples, carrots and turnips
Fresh baked baguette with herbed compound butter
Potato-leek gratin
Cider-glazed duck
Cubed Butternut squash with maple and sage
Garlic mashed sweet potato
Brussels Sprouts with American filbert, shallot and bacon
Apple green chile cheddar pie
We washed all this goodness down with homebrewed apple cider.
December
Ah December, month of holiday craziness. We were able to bring a giant salad and deviled homegrown eggs to my grandmother's for Christmas dinner, and we enjoyed latkes made from our own potatoes at Chanukah. We also started drinking the hard cider we made back in the Fall; giving us a special treat to bring to holiday gatherings.
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