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Farm Table in Winter

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images-1Seems like a cosmic lesson: I’ve just fallen in love with eating food right out of the ground — that broccoli! those beets! — and now there isn’t anymore?

Seasonalism is a great adventure in nourishment and discovery, moving from the May rows of the garden through the November rows like a progressive dinner party where you want the recipe for everything they serve: Oh, the asparagus of it! Fundamental cauliflower! Blissful conjunction of sun and soil and purest water!

And then it all just stops. January comes and I’m supposed to eat, like, Swanson imagesfrozen dinners? My large intestine isn’t down with that. Not to mention my idealism. Talk about a slap in the self-image!

But wait: you live in Virginia. Even normal winters here aren’t very cold, and this year? My daffodils are coming up already.

Turns out that eating in the neighborhood doesn’t have to mean a winter of potatoes. Here are three ways to keep your love alive in winter:

images-3Cover your garden. Spinach, kale, chard, turnips, beets, carrots, and parsnips will all defy the power of frost without your help, and with a cold frame or a floating row cover, they’ll grow right through January nights with temperatures in single digits. In fact, freezes actually sweeten kale and spinach so you hardly even have to dress them in a salad — just add walnuts and a little feta.

Farm in your living room. Germination unleashes enzyme activity that no other stage of images-5development can match, and it doesn’t last very long, so new-born plants are like the veal of veganism. Sprouts, shoots, and microgreens grow easily in jars and trays that don’t require annexes or dedicated thermostats. A few square feet of floorspace near a window or a corner of your kitchen counter will keep you in tender delicacies all winter.

Support intrepid farmers. Some small growers in Northern Virginia work their beds all year. With high tunnels, green houses, and carefully-scheduled planting, they can fill the truck and go to market even in January and February.  The Leesburg Farmers Market operates straight through the winter, and stalwarts such as Quarterbranch Farm, Shenandoah Seasonal, and Honey Brook Farms are there every Saturday, keeping the love alive with fresh neighborhood food.

So take courage, give thanks, and keep eating. There’s still food out there.

GCF Kale Watch Week Three: Spinach

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Spinach roots convert starch to sugar when temperatures drop below freezing, so the stems, which are close to the roots, taste especially sweet.

I picked the spinach in that bowl on February 10, which is the dead of winter on the Blue Ridge, but the leaves I pulled from the ground were not dead. The big leaves with the red streaks on their stems had probably been alive for three or four weeks, during which time the temperature had dropped as low as 12 degrees now and then, and the little crinkly ones were basically newborns — that is, they had emerged from rootstock during a few hours on Monday and Tuesday when temperatures crept into the forties.

To express my wonder at the resilience of those leaves, I was going to write the harvest date on them in dark balsamic vinegar and then photograph them — their life deserved commemoration — but by the time I had poured the first two digits, I realized that the full date would hide the subtle spinach flavor under too much vinegar, so I stopped pouring and covered the numbers with sunflower seeds and a couple of Craisins.

That was dinner.10982337_10153129121134185_2853593772418185950_n

“These leaves,” I told my dog, “shouldn’t be able to grow in an open field at this time of year.”

He quivered in excitement at the natural phenomenon the spinach represented.

“I’m not saying it’s a miracle that they’re alive,” I granted, “only that they shouldn’t be, and yet they are.”

He inched closer to my chair, closer and closer, in flagrant violation of established dinner table etiquette, believing I suppose that the meal we shouldn’t be able to eat would nullify such trivia as behavioral covenants.

And why not? How often does a meal of food that shouldn’t exist show up on your table?

IMG_0948Well, three or four times a week, if you have access to the spinach patch at Great Country Farms, but my dog lives in the moment, so I offered him a leaf.

He snatched it from my hand and ran into the kitchen, where he skidded to a halt, shook his head vigorously, and spit the leaf out on the floor.

It had a lot of vinegar on it. I hope he doesn’t associate that flavor with miracles.

Temperatures this weekend are supposed to drop to three degrees. If the spinach survives that kind of cold, I’m going to pick as much as I can and offer it to the sick, the forsaken, the broken-hearted, and the bored.

Maybe I’ll take some to Martin’s and sprinkle it into the bins on the salad bar.

Because either everyone deserves a miracle or no one does.

GCF Kale Watch: How Long Will It Grow?

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winter kale

winter kale

It’s cold out here on the Blue Ridge. At night we fill the woodstove with quarter-rounds of seasoned oak, and we keep our dogs close to the house. Last week I saw ice floating on the Shenandoah River — not much, but some. So I figured our kale would be finished. You know how greens look after ice breaks open all their little cells? Slippery and gelatinous? That’s what I expected.

This is what I found: IMG_0901

The older leaves have thickened and darkened. Their center ribs are as thick as licorice whips, and their edges have tightened into firm crinkles. The new leaves are a lighter green, and they’re crinkled so densely that they look like coral, and they’re stiff like the wool on the back of a sheep.

It’s often said that cold weather sweetens kale, and I taste that sweetness in some of these leaves, but most of them are more green than sweet. A modest green, with overtones of blue. The younger leaves begin with a flavor you might call nutty, and as you chew they give your tongue a little tingle. There are a lot of recipes out there for kale, but I’m eating it right out of the bag and wondering why you’d bother turning it into chips or soaking it in dressing. Maybe that’s because I just picked it.

How long will I be able to do that, I wonder?

IMG_0845Mark says we can probably pick it all winter. Some people don’t pick it at all until the second frost, apparently, and one source claims that kale can handle temperatures as low as 5 degrees Fahrenheit. How can that be? Not enough water in the leaves to freeze?

I’m inspired by the pleasure of this kale — and the mystery of picking it in the middle of December — to make a commitment: I’ll walk out to the kale field every Friday and pick enough to make a meal. And I’ll report on what I find and how it tastes.

Let’s see how long it lasts.

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