First Winter Share

From SHF 2011

A bit smaller than we planned for, but it should all be tasty and I'm really looking forward to some vegetables right now. We managed to keep the deer away from enough of the red savoy cabbage to give out a small head to everyone. Keeping with the small theme we planted these on tight spacing to force them to make smaller heads, and for the most part it worked. They were little ice balls this morning, very cold on the hands. We also dug scorzonera (and a little salsify) out of the partially frozen ground.

From SHF 2011

Scorzonera is very similar to the salsify we gave out earlier in the year, and can be used the same way. It's sticky and browns quickly when peeled, but if you put it in acidulated water it prevents the browning, or you can just cook it right away. Sauteing or boiling both work well. To round out the share we pulled a few more leeks and these will be nice on their own, or in conjunction with the other two items.

The shares are smaller for a few reasons, mostly just because winter is unpredictable. There's a great article on this that I read yesterday by Courtney Cowgill that explains some of this. There are a lot of things that went wrong with some of the crops we were hoping to give out. The voles ate a lot of them, we're working on that problem. We were short on transplants when we went to plant due to poor germination, which was probably due to seeding during the only really hot weeks we got this summer. The list goes on, but really we're doing ok and we should even have enough for at least another harvest or two, or even more, this winter.