On the path to freedom from the big box grocery store
I finally moved about 2000 digital photos out of my iPhoto and onto a couple of CDs last night. I edited out the many, many duplicate shots of food and plants and in the process took a wonderful trip down the memory lane of this past growing season. Such a treat remembering the many ways our hands stayed busy all summer long and to see proof again when right now when it’s 17 degrees out and the world is encrusted in ice and snow, and it feels as if nothing will ever grow again. It’s SO good to review all we have put in place so far to become less dependent upon the grinding commercial food industry and to gain inspiration for growing that independence even more in the coming season.
I picked this first hand full of Vermont Cranberry beans too early because I grew impatient with the lack of sun on the pods and the weeks they took to even begin to blush.
I had a big helper in the garden all season and I thrilled to see Lila grow more conscious of what her hands should and should not do while moving in and out of the plants. She was my number one cherry tomato harvester.
Between my garden and the farmers’ market, I set out a giant bowl of fresh salad at just about every dinner we ate last summer. Next summer I’d like to learn some more homemade dressing recipes, I relied a little too heavily on Newman’s Own vinaigrettes which is fine but a little boring. If you have a favorite salad dressing recipe, please share!
Pinch me again! I almost forgot that these black raspberries grow wild right behind the gardens next door, and if we get some early summer rains, they’re plump and juicy just like the ones in this bowl. Mercy, they were so good. I can’t even find words to describe the wild berry explosion that occurred after I popped each one in my mouth. Heaven?
I won’t need to buy any seed potato in the spring because the harvest sprouted in the basement much faster than I thought it would. I guess it’s a little too warm down there, and I’d like to look at eventually turning one corner into a true root cellar by blocking it in with cement blocks.
In about six weeks I’m going to replant the greens boxes and then try not to stare out the window at them to make time move more quickly and bring us back around to that lush, glorious green of high summer. I’m still working on my seed list and narrowing down what to buy. I’ll be planting in the oversize cold frame that Chris built as well — the one with the much too high back and the big bay window that’s too heavy to lift and has a frame so flimsy that it feels as if it will shatter in mid-air. But it’s salad greens real estate and maybe I’ll figure out a way to modify it so it’s less deadly.
Looking back is such an inspiring way to examine the here and now in order to set forth the plan for the future, don’t you think?
"In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses and feelings, which are all for action, and must wait commonly for the stillness and longer nights of autumn and winter before any thought will subside; we are sensible that behind the rustling leaves, and the stacks of grain, and the bare clusters of the grape, there is the field of a wholly new life, which no man has lived; that even this earth was made for more mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the hues of October sunsets, we see the portals to other mansions than those which we occupy."
~Henry David Thoreau
January 24th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Oh, so beautiful! I am hungry just looking!
I will send you (email) a couple of dressing recipes, but the one I almost fall back on is a basic vinaigrette, never measured: olive oil, a splash of vinegar (sometimes balsamic, sometimes one of my homemade herbal brews), a pinch of sugar, a sprinkling of black pepper, and on special occasions, a clove of garlic, crushed or finely minced. Oh yum.
January 24th, 2008 at 8:55 am
I can also email you some vinaigrette recipes when I get home tonight. It is one thing I can improvise well, but I have a really lovely one from a friend that is super easy.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Just beautiful. And planting season is approaching so quickly and you can do it all again!
January 25th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
yum…it’s about 13 degrees out but we’ve got our seeds ordered and vin’s talking about maybe getting a new light and building a bigger seed table. violet’s also excited to help out planting this year and we’ve been talking about the food we eat and where it comes from….so nice when i can look at our plates mid-winter and see chard from the freezer, tomatoes and from the cellar, peppers from both. it’s the most wonderful time of the year when those seed catalogs start turning up and I find them tucked in every reading corner of the house…enjoy this moment in between to reflect and enjoy
January 27th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Yes, very inspiring! Your bounty is beautiful. I love to make salad dressings with homemade yogurt - yogurt, mayo or sour cream (not much), dijon, splash balsamic vinegar, garlic and onion powder, salt and pepper, and if you feel energetic some fresh chopped parsley, chives, or whatever herbs you have in the garden.
As for all those cute little potatoes, I’ve found the best place to store them is in the ground - even in raised beds, even in our Missouri heat, even when it gets down to freezing in the fall. I leave them in the ground for months and only lose a few to bugs or rot. In the hot pantry or (relatively) cool root cellar, they would have shriveled up and sprouted in a matter of weeks. Plus sometimes you get a whole new batch of baby potatoes! : )
January 28th, 2008 at 7:32 am
Jen, I realize I’m long overdue for a chat with your hubby about the coming season! We haven’t had our seed starting talk, or our seed buying talk, or any of it…dang. I can’t let the whole thing pass by without at least one good talk.
January 28th, 2008 at 7:34 am
Susan, thanks so much for the dressing idea! That sounds heavenly. I like to mix a creamy something with a vinaigrette something in my salads… yum!
Do you mulch the potatoes over if you leave them in for winter? I lost at least one giant potato off of each plant by leaving them in the ground an extra month in the summer…so I’m not sure that would work for me, and we have very sandy soil in the garden beds next door.
Hmmmm…food for thought!
oh, and I added Kohlrabi to my Fedco seed order last night!
January 28th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
What did we ever do without digital pictures? I know we didn’t spend six cold months looking at last season’s harvest and grumbling when we paid $4 for a head of Romaine in February.
January 28th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Oh, it all looks so good and inspiring. In this crazy traveling year I just can’t wait to find a place to be and start another garden!
January 30th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Just the inspiration I needed for these cold gray days!
I’ve been debating whether to do a greens box again this spring, since we might move, but you’ve convinced me.
January 30th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Hi, I just found your Blog and thought I would comment. My favorite dressing recipe is a table spoon of Jam, white balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Any kind of jam works, but my favorite is red currant or blackberry jam.