Harvest Monday - Feb 2014

It's February. All I can show you is the state of my garden beds:

Yeah, that's a whole lot of window screen. Sorry about that. But you can see my beds and trellis are just shrouded with show. It's beautiful. No good for planting and harvesting, though. We received one foot last week, 7 inches another week, 8 inches in the week before that, and 6.5 inches in the week before that. Tomorrow, we get three inches. 

Instead, I try to harvest other things in winter. Ongoing creative projects, my relationships with others, and probably even more importantly with all the hours indoors, my relationship with myself. 

Creative projects include crochet, knitting, jewelry making, embroidery, weaving, sketching, and writing.

I crocheted a set of fingerless gloves using soft, warm angora wool. 

I have another project on the loom. 

Let's not forget the bounty of food. This is a wheat berry and pinto bean soup made with the last of the potatoes from the garden, and a homemade peasant bread. Though I have started growing parsley indoors, this fresh bunch is purchased from my local Trader Joe's. 

This week I will start some onion and cole crop seedlings, and I am looking forward to it. Pretty soon, my Harvest Mondays will have more green.

Snowpocalypse and Chickens

Snow is my favorite part of winter. And did we get hit with it!


This is our backyard. The coop is almost covered. Our bench is that thing sticking out of the snow to the left, almost fully engulfed. I had to shovel a path out to the coop. As I got close, I called out, "I'm coming for you, chickens!" I was greeted with clucking and squawking.



We had 35 inches of snowfall. The door to the coop is right there. The girls heard me shoveling and started clucking again.


The bird netting tore beneath the weight of the snow. That'll be a new project next weekend to keep the hawks out.


There they are! The girls are not happy with this weather.

Snow got into the cage portion of the coop. I scooped out a bunch of it, but the wind blew quite a bit right back in.


Billina didn't seem too bother by all the hubbub.


Minerva on the other hand kept giving me looks of incredulity.


Camilla likes eating snow.


There's Lover shoveling his way to the shed!

All in all, a fantastic blizzard. I kept leaving the house to beat snow off of a favorite bush in the front yard so it wouldn't snap beneath the weight. I am looking forward to some snowshoeing travels tomorrow. The chickens have access to a heated waterer, and have plenty of food. I even made them a mid-morning meal of eggshell omelet! (Eggshells are a great source of calcium for the hens, and eggs provide protein.) So they had something warm to fill their bellies. Lover and I have plenty of food ourselves, and hot cocoa. Our power stayed on. I have had plenty of time to finish crocheting one baby blanket, and am about a third done with another. Seedlings are sprouting beneath the grow light in the basement - cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, thyme, brandywine tomatoes, and indigo rose tomatoes. I look foward to starting more seeds this week, even as the winter carries on in her fashion.

Happy Snow Days to those who can enjoy them!