Gildrien Farm

We had a big storm a few days ago, with so much wind that we lost power for a while and thought were going to lose the plastic off our greenhouse. We went running outside to tack down the roll-up sides, pack snow around the bottom seam, and tighten up the ropes along the sides. It held together, but we were scared for a minute.

Temperatures have been dropping like crazy, but the broccoli in the greenhouse and the chard in our cold frames are still going strong. We finally set up the heat lamp in the chicken house, for which they seem to be very happy. We decided to get light-less infrared lamp, which just produces heat. Since it's infrared, it only heats the chickens, not the air, and hopefully is therefore more efficient, since their roost is not very snug. To keep their water from freezing, we bought a magnetic oil-pan heater which we stuck to the bottom of their galvanized waterer. It seems to be working really well so far.

People keep telling us that there's going to be a lot of snow this weekend, but the local forecasts and radar don't seem to agree. We'll see!

We got our first real snow of the winter yesterday! The chickens are not happy about it at all - they've stayed in the coop since it started accumulating. Hopefully, they'll venture out at least a little bit today. We've been lucky, with such a mild November, that they've been able to keep foraging and grazing so late into the year. Once the ground freezes and the snow sticks, their diet becomes much less interesting. We feed them some of our kitchen scraps, which they really enjoy (they especially like corn bread and kale), and we'll grow some sprouts for them so that they have good green food all winter, but they'll be lacking in bugs and grass, which they definitely love. They like their grain pretty well, too, though - I don't think they're too upset.

We've been reading Eliot Coleman's new book The Winter Harvest Handbook, which is, as it turns out, all about winter harvesting. And winter growing, too. He faces most of the same challenges as we do on his farm up in Maine, and he's been farming for a long time, so I'm inclined to listen to what he has to say.

He has a lot to say about winter gardening. His approach is all about the low-tech solution - he is not talking about growing hothouse tomatoes in February, though there are some folks doing that up here. He's talking about modifying the conditions just enough that cold-adapted crops will grow - things like spinach and leeks and greens and carrots. For most of them, you want to plant in the fall, and then they grow until it gets really cold, then sort of hibernate before starting up growth again in the spring. We didn't get our greenhouse up and covered until just a couple of weeks ago, so we missed the planting dates for most of his suggested crops.

But not carrots! Today, on December first, we seeded our first bed of winter carrots. Theoretically, these carrots will grow slowly all winter and be ready sometime in May. And theoretically, they will be some of the sweetest carrots that anybody's ever tried.

We aren't betting anything on these carrots, since it's our first time growing them, but I sure am excited. We're planning a bunch of other winter experiments for the greenhouse, as well. I really like the idea of working within the boundaries of the season, but playing with them just enough to have something growing all year round. Fresh greens all winter! Just think! We probably won't succeed at that for this year, but next year we're hoping to.