A month ago, we were under 2 feet of snow with night temperatures in the single digits. This week we garden in short-sleeve shirts and harvest mache, baby lettuce, just-emerging sorrel, baby arugula, escarole and… spinach - lots and lots of spinach. Finally!

The spinach was not planted in the hoophouse but outside. Last spring we simply did not have enough spinach, not having planted any the prior fall. So this past fall, I did 2 separate sowings, a small one in September to give us some fall spinach, and three long rows in November. We covered the bed with wire hoops, and Reemay. The bed was buried under snow for several weeks, the hoops crushing in the process - they’ll have to be reshaped. Yes, the larger leaves of the spinach are somewhat tattered (but fine enough for the chicken who are happy enough for anything green), but the 2nd planting - much smaller plants - did very well and is starting to grow again. Happily so, too. With enough water, that should provide us with spinach through May. Maybe I’ll even have enough to freeze some later this spring. Read more »

It does roll good off the tongue, doesn’t it? or is it just me?… “a gross of tomatoes”…

Except of course, they are not yet tomato plants, just 144 seeded cells with the promise of 144 seedlings. Seeded on Februray 22 (although the labels read 2/21 because I meant to do it on the 21st but did not get to them until the 22nd, and then was too lazy to change the labels). Hard to look at that one flat and think that’s a potential of 144 tomato plants. Hard not to go and seed an other gross… it seems such a long time away until we can pick tomatoes. Especially when the wind is howling outside.

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Seasonal madness has started. Seed starting madness that is. There is still snow on the ground - although slowly melting, but this is the time of the year to start seeds for earlier crops.

In late January (1/25), I started a few Red Cherry tomatoes, as well as 2 flats of peppers. Four weeks later, Wetsel Red Cherry (2009) has had excellent germination. With true leaves showing, most of the seedlings have been transplanted and moved to the greenhouse 10 days ago. I purposefully did not transplant a few seedlings because I need them to demonstrate transplanting techniques in my upcoming Seed Starting Workshop on Saturday Feb 27. Cherry tomatoes are the easiest thing to eat, freeze and dry. They are simply wonderful in winter green salads. Can’t have too many of them. Every year I start a few plants extra early so we can start eating garden-grown tomatoes in June.

Not surprisingly, the fresher pepper seeds are doing a lot better than the old ones:

Pepper Seedlings Under Light

The spicy hot peppers have had good germination. They are about to be moved to the greenhouse for transplanting in individual cells: Read more »

We may have two feet of snow on the ground, but the early tomato seedlings have germinated.

I do like to pick my first tomatoes in June, so I plant a few seedling in late January. They germinate in early February, and I keep up-potting them into bigger pots until it is time to plant them out. I will put a couple in a cold frame come April, and I may this year - space allowing - plant some in the hoophouse.

What are those super early babies? Wetsel Red Cherry. I love cherry tomatoes for salad, fresh salsa (especially mixed with other veggies or fruit like this Grilled Peach Salsa) and for drying. Dry cherry tomatoes are simply wonderful tossed in a green winter salad - a burst of sweet-acid tomato taste. Of course, it’s also easy to freeze bagfuls of fresh cherry tomatoes.

Cherry tomato start to produce earlier than the big ones, and by starting them in January, and keeping them happy (that’s the key), I will have tomato in June. My earliest is June 14, and that was prior to the hoophouse. Can I beat that?

So can’t say I am “dreaming” of tomatoes - after all I am consuming plenty in the form of soup, sauce, paste, confit etc from last summer canning. But I am certainly planning my tomato crop. This year I am getting more of the non-red tomatoes, and I am planting more of the canning tomatoes too. That is, those tomatoes that were bred for little pulp so that they would not give off too much liquid. They are also called paste tomatoes, processing tomatoes or sometime Italian tomatoes.

Last year I had three different paste cultivars: Amish Paste (at noon in the picture - new to me then), Roma (at 4:00) & San Marzano Sel el Redorte (at 8:00). Amish Paste is very meaty and some were longer than my hand (it was a dry summer and I don’t water that much so the specimens below were not that large). Great for sauce and paste. Roma, which I decided to try again - was fine for crushed tomatoes. San Marzano was good also for sauce and paste, to can whole and to make tomato confit - and Tomato Tatin.

Those, as well as the slicing tomatoes and more cherry, I will be starting from late February through mid-March. Trying to time the determinate paste tomato harvest for September, you know… so the ambient temperature is a little more conducive to canning.

What are your tomato plans this year? Any you can’t do without? and why?

PS: the first pepper seedlings have been emerging over the last few days. Hot pepperts up first, followed by Round of Hungary. Still waiting for the bell and Italian…

100 feet to clear of snow to the chicken coop cum compound…

… or 1/4 mile up an unplowed dirt road and then 1/4 up the hill - plowing as you go, and don’t forget the gates - to bring hay to the cattle?

Makes you appreciate all the hard physical labor, planning, resourcefulness & ingenuity it takes to be successful farmer.

Also makes one appreciate much better why so many of the old farm houses are pretty close to the road (not 1/2 mile over a remote hill) and the tightness and efficiency of how the buildings were grouped.

More snow is falling sow, fat flakes falling straight. We certainly have had precipitations this winter - the winter I decide to leave the dahlias undug outside. Let’s hope for an abundant morel season come April (will be somewhat of a consolation from having to buy so many new dahlia tubers…)

Cost: $100 (mostly recycled materials).Value? priceless.

After a hard day of trampling paths up & down the hill or shoveling the 22″ of snow that have graced us since Friday (or plowing snow for Keith, including the road and the driveway of several neighbors), we have worked quite an appetite. Tonight dinner is homemade pizza (the dough was rising while I was - of course! - shoveling snow; canned tomato sauce from last summer) and a big mix green salad of lettuces, arugula, mache, parcel, frisee endive - freshly harvested at 4:00 pm today. Dessert? Quince fool (canned quince from last fall). We may even try the quince liqueur. That’s probably still too rough though, so we may have to settle for strawberry liqueur instead… sigh…

Like El at FastGrowTheWeeds, I see my pantry as the traditional dry pantry, the freezer and the fresh outdoor pantry that the hoophouse is. Not only do we eat fresh, but the chicken get to have something green too. Rather precious at the moment. And you know, chickweed grow really well in there, really really well…

It’s a good thing we build the with metal arches - PVC would have collapsed - and we put the arches closer than suggested…

I trudged up through the snow to clean it off the hoophouse before the thaw and freeze cycle started. I mostly had to clear by hand. For sure I got exercise today! The garden was blanketed by 20″+ of snow, but inside the hoophouse, it was as beautiful as ever… and smelling so good…

To go or not to go?

She went.

She is - after all - partly Turkish Van.

A dish of oxtail soup is a thing to share with those you love. Or not. (depends how much you love them)

What’s not to like about oxtail?

It’s traditional farm fare, a simple country dish with robust complex favors - many parts of the world have perfectly succulent ways to use oxtail as a matter of fact. It’s a slow simmered dish, perfect for cold days. It’s a dish that can be made in advance and in quantity. Reheating it makes it even better.

Never had oxtail? If you like osso bocco, you are simply going to love oxtail. It might take a little looking to find them, although they are becoming more popular. It used to be a throwaway part of the animal - and used to be very inexpensive. But chefs in search of robust flavors obtained from slow traditional methods and the new-again emphasis on eating from nose-to-tail, is making oxtail almost trendy. So more expensive. It is one of the few cuts that I buy retail: there is after all only one tail in cattle, so when I buy a split beef half, I get - at most , if I am lucky - one tail. Hardly enough. The farmer I buy it from sells it for less than burger meat, typically the cheapest cut. So, still a pretty good deal.

Maybe oxtail is intimidating because people think of it as offal and are grossed out. Technically it is offal, but it is not an organ. Not that that would stop me from eating it if it were. Or maybe people are intimidated because they do not know how to cook it. It’s simple really, it should be cook slow. Very slow. A day in advance if possible so it has a chance to sit and mellow even more. Read more »

Can you guess which one is the river and which one is the road (and that’s less water running through than early this morning)

No matter, we are stuck here! And the rain’s not over yet.

First order of the day was to move the chicken to higher - and drier - pasture, since the one where they were is under water.  While they did not like their coop moved (while they were inside), they certainly don’t seem the worse for it and are now joyfully attaching fresh grass. Lots of chicken butts to see.

And one of the big advantage of an electronet is that you can move it fast and easily. Also it catches leaves and straw debris from the running water. At least I get to keep some of my organic materials.

Although I am sure the water will leave debris behind too.

Isn’t that how the Nile Valley used to be fertilized?

They love insects, worms, caterpillars, maggots, larvae, meat if they can get it. They do need animal protein for a balanced and healthy diet - which means also chicken and eggs healthy to eat - and delicious.

If anybody ever doubted that chickens are not vegetarians, they should have been here a few morning ago, when I broke through the frozen top layer of the small compost pile housed in the current chicken area. It has been so cold that the compost pile surface has frozen. Inside was warm enough though… Of course, as always curious, they follow me to see what I am up to. Plus I had the fork, and they know it’s the tool I use to lift rocks or dig out perennial weeds (all of which bring up all kind of good food to the surface).

So, as soon as I started to turn the pile, the race was on! Get that worm, girl! and that one! here! another! quick!

Vigorous scratching that sends clumps 4 feet away, heated conversation (yes chicken do converse), diligent industrious pecking, excited chatting and calls about a tempting juicy plump cache of worms… that’s what happens. And worms and other bugs just get gobbled up, fast and methodically. I love watching the chicken being chicken and expressing their joie de vivre through being able to do what chicken evolved to do.

Bugs the hell out of me when I see “vegetarian feed only” on boxes of supermarket eggs.