Digging In December

The eleventh of December. Must be a great day to... harvest vegetables from the garden?

Okay, maybe it's a little late, I'd usually have done this more like Thanksgiving week, but this year I was not only away during Thanksgiving week, but the autumn weather held unusually warm right into the first week of December. Even now it seems a bit unseasonable -- in the high twenties at night and high thirties to low forties during the day, ideal for my cold frame crops which are so lush they are threatening to push the lights right off the tops of the cold frames.

The ground has a light dusting of snow at my elevation, and a thin crusty frozen layer -- but under that top layer the ground remains loose and yields to a gentle tap on the shovel. Weather predictions for later in the week are looking like single digits at night though, which will push that frozen layer deeper, so now is the last window of opportunity for garden digging.

I dug up the last short row of Belgian endive root, to bring indoors in a bucket of sand to sprout for winter salads and braised greens. Up came the last of the beets, Lutz Long Keepers, about ten of these, each maybe 4 inches in diameter, sweet and luscious. The the last few Gilfeather turnips and about a half-dozen rutabagas.

I dug out one short row of carrots and may run back out to dig another; there are about six or eight 4-foot rows out there, mostly small as I've been using the bigger ones through the fall, but once that ground freezes I won't be seeing them until spring. Since they last so well in the garage or vegetable bins in the fridge I figure I may as well get quite a few in now.

I also dug up the last half-dozen leeks, not very big, this was my first year growing leeks but I'm a complete leek convert now and will start some leek seeds good and early next year -- yipes, I mean in just a couple weeks. I rinsed those and stuck them straight in the fridge for use in the next couple days.

Finally I cut down the last of the lacinato kale, stripped the leaves and stuck those in a bag in the fridge. I pondered what to do with the few big green bursts of stir-fry greens and celery which are looking rather sad in this cold weather, but I'm not sure I would be able to use them in the next couple days so I'm opting to leave them just a bit longer, knowing I run the risk of losing them.

The hardy kales out there I'm not concerned about -- Winterbor and its cousins will be just as happy under the snow, while the dwarf Scottish kale is thriving in the large cold frames along with sorrel, radicchio, mache, arugula, frizzy endive, beet greens, turnips, broccoli raab, italian dandelion, chard, and a half dozen other things I'm forgetting.

Christmas shopping -- well, I've barely begun that. But getting the food in, well, that's taken care of for the moment.

Want to learn more about growing vegetables mid-winter? Check out Eliot Coleman's two essential books, Four Season Harvest and The Winter Harvest Handbook. Great winter reads!

Out Go the Lights!

The power went out Wednesday afternoon. We'd had a bit of a snow/ice storm in the morning, nothing drastic, about 6 inches of snow, and the precipitation had petered out and it was turning warm, rather strangely warm, which must have had something to do with the wind picking up. Soon it was beyond blustery, with trashcans and various other items flying around the block. Suddenly there was that freight-train-like roar, and that bone-crunching crack of heavy tree trunks snapping, and the groan of roots letting go of the ground. They say it was a wind shear -- kinda like a tornado without quite the funnel. When it was over the power was off -- over 20 utility poles were ripped out of our main road just around the corner, and many others were down in other yards. For several hours we could not get off the block, with huge trees across the road in either direction; various practical men with chainsaws were soon out tackling the problem and we could leave the block... but with no where to go. Live wires were across the road out in both directions. By the time I had to leave to teach a class in a town 40 miles to the south, there was only one small road open, and that was northward. I drove 10 miles north, dodging trees hanging from lines and falling on the road as I went, then back 50 miles to the College of St. Joseph for my Business Communications class, last one before final exams. Three hours later, I took the same route back north, then had to talk my way past firefighter road blocks to get back into my neighborhood.

But while being on the road dodging wires was a bit hairy, being home was fine. The woodstove hummed happily, with soup bubbling away in a cast iron pot and a huge vat of stock simmering on the side shelf. We had plenty of candles and lamps with lamp oil. We are on town water, and although we have an electric water pump it seems to only come on for the hot water -- not entirely sure how that works, but somehow our water continues to flow out of the faucets, albeit cold, when the power is out.

By first light the neighbors were all out strolling the block, stopping in on one another, offering food or heat or an extension cord to a generator or use of a hot shower, seeing if all was okay, gawking at the damage (trees right through a few roofs and sheered off one neighbor's porch; trees sitting on other roofs with some shingle and fascia damage), jokingly guessing how many cords of free firewood were now down in everyone's yards.

There was conversation about how long stuff in the freezer would last, and there was admittedly a lot of ice-cream eating going on (couldn't let it go to waste, could we?).

I thought alot about other disasters we've heard of in the news over the years, in large urban places, and about my various friends' apartments in those urban places, with nary a bite to eat in the kitchen except maybe a leftover bit of Chinese take-out. I can comprehend the panic in, say, Manhattan, when the power goes out -- how will you get out of your apartment? How will you eat? It doesn't take too many hours of cold and fear before your stomach starts growling, but when the power's off and the stores and restaurants close, where will those kitchenless apartment dwellers find food?

Food security and the practical skills of our neighbors meant that this display of Mother Nature's force remained in the realm of quite interesting, or at worst merely inconvenient, rather than terrifying or anxiety-provoking. Everyone made sure everyone else was okay, and everyone was warm and dry and had plenty to eat. By late Friday afternoon, there were no longer downed trees but neat stacks of new firewood, and the hum of chainsaws cave way to the buzz of borrowed leaf chippers turning the last of the brush to garden mulch.

Then, of course, we all had to drive out to buy more ice cream.

Snow Equals Soup Stock

Despite the effects of global warming, we could not put off winter forever. Today is the year's first snow day, schools closed, wind howling, wood stove radiating that wonder bone-soaking warmth. It is, of course, the perfect day to make soup stock.

I throw all my onion peels and ends, carrot ends, celery leaves, fresh herb stems, and the like into large freezer bags and toss them in the freezer for months on end. I don't include many brassicas -- cabbage, broccoli etc. -- because I find they give my stock a bitter taste, but some people don't mind them. I also have to remind myself to go easy on including the hot pepper bits...

When the right day arrives, when the wood stove will be cranking away all day and night, I pull out my largest stockpot, pour a coating of vegetable oil in the bottom, and dump in the frozen veggie scraps. I throw a little sea salt in on the theory it will help break down the veggies and get them to melt faster (not sure if it's true or not, it just seems appropriate), put the lid on the pot, and set it on the wood stove. I let the veggies thaw, then cook down until they are good and brown and stewing in their own juices.

Then I add fresh water enough to just cover the veggies by about a half-inch, put the lid back on and let this simmer away, usually overnight. I check the pot from time to time and add water back up to this level if necessary. Eventually when the stock seems nice and rich, I take the pot off the woodstove and set it on the stove to cool until it can be safely handled.

Pour the stock off through a colander into another stock pot -- but be sure to remember the other stock pot! I'm so used to pouring things into the colander to recover the veggies, not the liquid, that I have to admit I've poured a batch or two of stock down the drain then wondered why I was standing there with a colander full of bedraggled remains of overcooked vegetables.

After squeezing all the liquid out of the vegetable corpses and depositing them in the compost, I usually run the stock back through a finer mesh strainer, or even cheesecloth for a very clear stock. Then I freeze it in two-quart square freezer containers, as this seems to be the right size for most of my batch soup recipes, but I'll also put some in pint or even small cup or half-cup containers for making gravy or thinning down sauces or any number of other recipe uses.

I sometimes make special, more specific stocks like a tomato stock or, when I can find a large batch of nearly-gone-by mushrooms on sale at my local food co-op, a mushroom stock. My vegetarianism does have occasional lapses into pescetarianism, and I have been known to make a fish stock to ensure that I responsibly use up all the leftover bits and bones from a once-or-twice a year fish-grilling event, or if a friend has been fishing (I toss the rest of the fish waste or the post-stock remains into the compost). I also save the canning liquid left over from salsa making and can or freeze that up as stock for chili making.

But in today's howling snow, it's plain old mixed-freezer-vegetable stock, which will hold me through a winter's worth of soups worthy of other, bigger snowstorms yet to come.

Fry Oil

I was in Rome for a week with my daughter over the Thanksgiving school break. Everyone asks, instantly upon hearing this, How was the food? The answer is... well, good, but honestly, we weren't much focused on eating, but rather spending 12 hours a day in museums, historical and archaeological sites, and churches. We loaded up on granola bars, fruit, and yoghurt at the supermarket for breakfast, and we'd stop to share a pizza or plate of pasta for lunch, take a gelato break mid-afternoon, then grab another light bite for dinner or, gasp, even a plate of fries at the Scholars Lounge Irish Pub right around the corner from where our hotel shuttle bus was picking us up. The food was freshly made from simple ingredients and fabulous cheeses -- but I have to admit, we are spoiled here in Addison County, as all of our food is like that. So I'd have to say the food was good -- just about as good as it is at home. (Except the gelato--sorry, Italian food fanatics, but Ben and Jerry's or better yet Strafford Creamery ice cream is really much better than the over-sugared sticky stuff being served from downtown Rome gelato shops. This may not be the case elsewhere in Italy, outside the tourist mob circuit, and I suppose if we weren't from Vermont maybe we'd of been more impressed.)

Truth be told, I didn't think alot about the food, until we stepped off the plane at JFK. The minute we stepped into that corridor that the hook up to the plane door---I smelled fry oil. We weren't even in the airport yet, but the overwhelming smell of cooking oil permeated every molecule of air. That's when it hit me that the food in Italy--and at home--really was good, and that (other than running into the McDonalds next to, of all things, the Pantheon, to use the bathroom) I hadn't experienced this fry oil smell in over a week.

This, then, is the essence of American cuisine which greets visitors arriving from all over the world, and welcomes Americans home: burger grease and french fry oil.

Just something to ponder. Speaking of which, I've been pondering used fry oil cars lately... more on that tomorrow.

December in Vermont

Last night we ate a wonderful salad from my garden and cold frames -- mache, arugula, radicchio, sorrel, young kale, chard, and beet leaves, shredded carrots, accompanied by pickled beets, grated black radish, and corn relish. For an entree, carmelized brussels sprouts and oven-roasted root vegetables.

The long, warm fall means many things are still standing in the garden. I had dug one row of belgian endive roots back in September when the garden books said they should come in -- but even in the coolest corner of the garage they promptly sprouted, so we've been prematurely eating belgian endive. But there's another row in the garden I've left as long as humanly possible -- now that light snows have arrived it may be time to dig those for January eating.

Chard is still green out there, as are several kinds of kale and a few more stalks of brussels sprouts. I've left turnips, rutabegas and Lutz Long Keeper beets in the ground, figuring the longer they can stay out there the better. Pansies are still blooming under straw despite the light snow.

This is the first real test of the large cold frames and so far they remain full of greenery -- green onions, beets, mache, arugula, endive, broccoli raab, dwarf scottish kale, sorrel, chard, turnips, radishes, all growing happily. I've insulated one of the larger cold frames with foam board, but did not get to the other one, so we shall see the extent to which this makes a difference.

Meanwhile we continue to enjoy an abundance of fresh-from-the-garden vegetables.

Invest in Seeds in 2009!

Happy New Year everyone! Just stumbled on this fantastic article -- the best 'investment' article I've ever read! Finally someone in the financial commentary world recognizes that 'investments' doesn't just mean buying stocks and bonds, it means every step that you take today to build a positive tomorrow.

But not only that -- this wise writer also recognized PLANTING SEEDS as the major investment that they are. I only think that he vastly underestimated the return on investment from gardening, especially from seed. Even the simplest purely ornamental flowers generate enormous rewards. A seed packet for, say, Cosmos or Marigolds will cost you perhaps $2.00. That seed packet will start dozens and dozens of plants for less than you'd probably pay for a six-pack of the plants even at cheap supermarket-sidewalk prices. So for $2.00, you can fill your own yard or windowbox with sunny joy -- and have plenty to share with your friends and neighbors as well. Which means you can also swap for other flowers. Flower gardeners are often obsessive about swapping and sharing -- so your $2.00 packet of seeds can easily leverage into filling your whole yard with annuals, perennials, and bulbs, worth tens or hundreds of dollars if you bought them as plants from a nursery.

Then there's that unquantifiable joy factor -- having something lovely to look at and bring a smile to your face is -- I hate to say it now that it's become and advertising cliche, but it's true -- priceless. Happiness improves your mental and physical health both short term and long term, so who knows how much that seed packet will save you over a lifetime of medical costs! And if you plant varieties from which you can save the seeds -- then that $2.00 packet is the last time you'll ever spend money on flowers! I've saved my seed over from Scarlet Runner Beans and Marigolds and Calendulas among others for years and years running.

And that's just a simple pack of flowers. Plant some vegetables, and you get the same aesthetic returns and ability to trade and network with other gardeners, but the grocery bill savings are enormous, and eating home-grown fresh produce for as much of the year as your home climate will support provides extraordinary peace of mind and contributes mightily to your mental and physical health. Then there's the physical benefits of the gentle exercise of gardening itself -- digging, walking, stretching, lifting, just being out in the sunshine soaking up that vitamin D.

Decades ago I recall reading an article in one of the Rodale Press publications which said gardening returned about $6 an hour in direct economic benefits, i.e., money invested in tools, seeds, soil amendments etc. versus produce generated. That was about twice or more the minimum wage at the time I read the article, and I am certain that figure is up many times over by now.

Last year I spent about $125 on lumber for new raised beds, some topsoil and compost for those new beds, and some new perennials, and about $200 on a massive spread (over 1000) of spring-flowering bulbs, which was quite a chunk of money for me to spend on the garden, especially for 'just flowers' that I can't eat. But in addition to armloads of cut flowers, I have eaten only my home-grown organic produce for 8 months now, canned over 350 jars of fruit and vegetables, and still have a freezer full that will last me the next 4 months until it starts all over again. That's many thousands of dollars worth of organic, locally grown food.

INVEST, in seeds, in your garden, in yourself! And have a joyous happy healthy 2009, regardless of what the stock market is doing.


http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/106399/Small-Investments-With-Major-Returns