Iced Kale
January 29th, 2008 Posted in FarmWell we all run out of produce from time to time. Which we did. So I conveniently have a field full of overwintering produce. Overwintering….that means sitting there until the spring when it grows again? Well not necessarily. We have been able to harvest through the winter for ourselves. The produce is not always the prettiest, but you just cut a part off here and there, and you’re good as good. So today after the cold weather we’ve been having and the snow (6-9 ” of it in this field) I wondered how much I’d be able to harvest. Quite a lot actually.
I filled up a big shopping bag with Kale, one with Collards, and one with Chard. Greens in the dead of winter are incredible. They’re unbelievably sweet!
I think this next season we’ll try a small patch in our own backyard and then cover it with a small hoop structure in mid to later October. I’m thinking of planting a small 4 x 8 foot plot and see what I can fill it out with. It’s fun having commercial scale fields but it’s also pretty cool to have your own backyard project going as well.
We’ve started to fill our backyard with fruit trees and will probably start filling out more perennials in the understory over the next several years. There will always been room for annual crops to overwinter. Pretty exciting to think about the future food forest in our backyard.
