Springtime in December

A record breaking high temperature today of 70 degrees, windows on the house open, only 9 hours or so of daylight, the sun extremely low on the horizon, and no chirping insects or birds. Quite an interesting combination for the middle of December, though I'll repeat that continuing to harvest fresh outside greens is a very nice treat. This will be the final week for lettuces, however, because the mature heads did sustain some frost damage whenever it was actually cold enough to do that and their quality is going downhill. Fear not, though, because kale, arugula, collards, cabbage, spinach, and a few other fresh greens are still looking grade A and harvestable. I do wonder if we will ever have an actual winter this year and we must, right? Can we rely on that consistency, or will this season fully blend into next season without an end to the growing season? I see in the news media that leaders from around the world got together to figure out the climate change issue and perhaps devise some way to curb global temperature rise at 3.6 degrees fahrenheit. Right now that feels relevant but last year at this time when the northeast US was the only place in the world with below average temperatures I was definitely wondering.

The greens in the high tunnel are holding their beauty. Meanwhile I show Gabriel how to harvest mixed greens.

Here on the farm we're mainly focused on growing crops organically (only certified by you) and trying to improve and sustain soil health and quality while also attempting to limit our fossil fuel reliance. We don't use draft horses yet but Dana does keep bringing that up. In a perfect world it would be nice to farm completely in balance with Mother Nature but someone will have to define for me what that means exactly. Let's all do our best to keep the planet healthy for our kids and theirs.