January Harvest

In this squirrelly, unpredictable new kind of winter, we get some 50 degree days in southern Indiana.  Last weekend on a warm day my friend Steve announced he was planting spinach and chard.  For my part, I have been overwhelmed in talking the talk - lots of talk -- but not necessarily finding the time to walk the walk.  I had not even taken down last summer's tomato vines, though I had planted some Chinese cabbage last fall which survived the big post-christmas snow storm.

I am a real advocate of growing your own food, buying local food, growing year round -- but often, I lack the time and the back strength to really carry on in my own garden. Excuses!  So when it was warm for a while this weekend I went out and pulled out all of the dead tomato plants, weeded the old (still living ) weeds, and turned over the soil.  In doing so I found some little surprises: a few tiny potatoes, a very few small beets, odds and ends of arugula plants, green onions, a teensy daikon radish, a small carrot.  Nothing better than buried treasure!  It made a sweet little supper.

What I want to do is actually grow food year round.  It is more than possible here in southern Indiana.  I have seen that it is possible in Maine (see Elliot Coleman's Winter Harvest Handbook), and an old classmate of mine is attempting the same (in unheated greenhouses) in Homer Alaska.  These things inspire me: as ideas, as visuals, as a new way to approach my life.