Well, tonight we wished our community garden “good winter,” taking our very final harvest of the season! It’ll likely be our last time visiting the garden, at least until next spring!
We gathered some kale as our final harvest, which was just beginning to show the signs of stress after experiencing quite a few hard frosts. But, it holds up exceptionally well. One of our favorite “end of the season” dishes is Colcannon, an Irish style dish that’s hearty, homey and perfect those late fall and early winter days. Though its more traditionally made with cabbage, we sub in kale all the time and think it’s a better dish.
We mentioned several weeks ago, but we leave most of our garden’s detritus for clean up in the spring. This allows things to break down over the winter, the majority of which we pile back into our beds for good, natural nutrition. Plus, it’s just way easier to clean up after the winter’s had its way with our garden.
As you can see, our weather is devolving quite quickly. What was recently hard frosts have rapidly developed into actual snowfall. As we talked about a month ago, late frosts almost always mean rapid descents into winter! And, here we are!
Sometimes living in the subarctic is tough. Though we were mentally prepared for this, it’s still kind of disheartening that its here. We’re well used to our short summers and long winters by now, but it doesn’t keep us from wishing for better weather! We’ve seen those lovely Octobers that act like a “real” fall up here, we could definitely use more of those!
As we expected weeks ago, it looks like we’ll be doing our “last and final” harvests in the snow. We’ve got one more big push to preserve stuff this weekend and afterwards we’ll be putting all of our gardens to bed for the winter!
We’re almost done with all of our winter prep, just a few more minor things to take care of and we’ll be completely ready for whatever winter brings. These last few weeks have been a mad dash, tackling our final harvests and our winter preparations simultaneously. We just aren’t going to get to some things, but none are absolutely critical for our winter survival. But, in case you’re feeling a bit behind this season, it hits a lot of us!
Hope all you northerners are ready for what’s to come! We’re, of course, living on the edge here at 65 north. But, it’s coming to a town near you, eventually!
