Winter reading

A friend lent me (Cheryl) her copy of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year in Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. I started it last night. I had gotten to bed a little later than usual, and wanted to just read a few pages then put it down and drift off to sleep.

What was I thinking??????

I couldn't put it down! I kept going until I got to the end of the first chapter! Then, I absolutely forced myself to put it down to get some sleep. (After all I had to work today, and our little girl is a morning person!)

I had heard from so many people that this book is good. Well, I don't know how it ends, but the beginning is right on. This author has a knack for saying what I'm feeling about the whole "Locavore" issue - we should all be one!!!!

So, even with only one chapter under my belt, I wholeheartedly recommend this book. And it's a good time to be reading it - there's snow still on the ground!

Enough snow, we're ready for spring!

Snow, ice, cold (very cold) weather - it's enough to make us think it is winter out there! We've been going through the firewood this last week - temps in the single digits (and below zero).

But, we do have some pea shoots growing in the basement - nice to have a tiny little taste of spring. Charles planted them to see if the seed is viable. These are pretty old seeds, and some were left out in the greenhouse last summer/fall. So they got hot, then cold, and were ignored in a corner on the greenhouse transplanting bench. But nature is wonderful, and at least half the seeds germinated!

The greenhouse is set to keep our strawberry plants from freezing - so it's pretty cold in there too. We'll be firing it up around the end of the month, to start our early plants. Our first market starts Saturday, May 2 in Morgantown. In the spring, when it is still pretty cold and the days are still short, it takes plants longer to mature. So a lettuce that is supposed to be ready in 50 days may take 70 days.
We've ironed out most of the logistics in our new (and improved) CSA Vegetable Subscription Service for 2009. We're making some major changes (some back to the way we started, some new ideas). Watch the website for details - we should be posting them soon and I'll try to remember to do a post here to let you know when we finalize everything.

Our 4-year old loves playing in the snow - and has been "partaking" every chance she gets! So if you drive by the house, you will not see a pristine, glistening, perfect blanket of white snow on our lawn - you will see zillions of little footprints, plus as many snow angels as she can muster the strength to make. (Do we care? NO!)

Hope all is well with you and yours this new year. My New Year's resolution is to post here much more often in 2009. Feel free to "bug" me if you see I have forgotten! In fact, that's the reason I'm writing today - someone "bugged" me last week...you know who you are! ;)