A Ground Hog's Day and Winter Local

It started out sunny with shadows, Ground Hog's Day, then the temps dropped, a lot, and the snow came. At least the ground was warm so the roads were ok until I got the barn fed and myself home.

At home it would seem our cow is in estrus. Which would mean that she isn't pregnant. Which I'd like to point you to Leslie at Pocket's of the Future's recent blog post about crazy crazy cow times. Really, you should follow her blog -- it is one of a very few farm blogs that I really read because she has something to say. And she happens to be not that far up the road from me. So, if you know of a cow confirmed pregnant (they can do this via palpation or ultrasound) or in milk (with or without calf), reasonable, ummm, could you let me know? Our cow will be hamburger sooner rather than later it looks like. We've become accustomed to a milk economy, and want pigs this year too, and do not want to do without.

At least the little goat looks primed to drop in the not too distant future, and we will be milking her to supplement us.

Ah, but what I'd meant to write about was way back in the previous cold time in January. You see, we generally "store" our potatoes in the ground, un-dug, and dig them as we need them, except we try to get them out by March because they do start sprouting. When it was predicted to be lows down to zero and less, we knew some would be lost to freezing (some but not that many usually, depending on how deep they've grown, and this year the potatoes were not laying on top of the ground) so we went to dig as many as we felt like it. That ended up being

these. Those are two five gallon buckets full and the muck tub not full. These sit (significantly lowered) in our kitchen to this day. This is how potatoes really look -- all shapes, sizes and dirty.

Now, it is easy to talk about local food when the salads are in, or the tomatoes and corn are flowing, but what about in the dead of winter?

The single easiest answer is the potato. Significant quantities of potatoes can be grown in small, scatted plots (no need for vast expanses of arable ground or any expensive carbon emitting equipment), the various varieties provide for short and long season options, you can save your own seed potatoes, and they are supremely nutritious (and balanced nutritionally) to boot. We eat them baked, roasted, as french fries, mashed, boiled, in stuff, around stuff, and every sort of way. There is no end to variety in the potato.

Other answers include cabbage and all its hardy relatives (kale and collard especially). This is your winter green and it makes a wonderful raw winter salad. And winter squashes which give you your orange veggies.

To enjoy fresh during the winter, you either need to be on a first name basis with your local produce stand proprietors (and ours recently had fresh sausage and salt middlin's available too!), or know how to store them yourself. Potatoes stay well in the ground around here, although you'll have some freeze and mice damage. You'll have some damage no matter how you store them by the way. If you dig yours, they need to be kept dark and cool and damp. Cabbage can be holed in the ground or stored in a root cellar, cool and damp. Squash, on the other hand, need to be warm and dry.

Our main grain we grow is corn, and we eat plenty of corn bread year round. It takes many forms -- pones and cakes and gems and tortillas and hominy and masa. Beans form a home grown staple -- canned green beans, canned green shelled shelly beans, dried beans, shucky beans. These are all grown in the summer and harvested and processed adn stored for later use. Corn mostly just has to be dry, like the dried and the shucky beans, and then the only challenge is to keep the bugs out. And of course, anything else that you grew and harvested and processed and stored is appropriate for winter too. Our wealth of July blueberries is being much enjoyed in our oatmeal, on our pancakes, and in cobblers and pies. We dried them and froze them. We dried a lot of fruit. And don't forget our stash of jam! All sorts of other things can be successfully stored fresh (unprocessed) too -- primarily other root veggies like carrots and turnips, but even fruit like apples and maybe pears.

If you don't grow and store these things yourself, they are still what ought to be eaten in the winter. They are healthy, whole, local, and delicious.

But also remember that the occasional banana won't kill you or the planet.