We love growing food in the winter! It feels like we’re cheating nature into being able to eat fresh food even when it’s frozen outside. We grow salad greens in our three high tunnels, which are unheated greenhouses warmed only by the sun. The sides roll up and down so that we can regulate the temperature and increase air flow when it’s warmer out. We also grow directly in the soil, unlike a greenhouse where we grow in trays on tables. Here are some of the main reasons why we love winter growing!
It brings us back to our roots as a farm! We started our CSA program in the winter of 2016 - 2017, and if you can believe it, some of our members have been with us since then! We moved onto our first farm in the summer of 2016, and we did a Kiva crowdfunded loan in order to build our first high tunnel. From there, we started growing some of Bryan and Nick’s favorite winter greens bred at the farm where they learned to grow - Even’Star Organics.
It feels good to eat it! We enter these salad days after a summer full of juicy tomatoes, and it often feels like my body is craving something green by September! Eating a salad made with flavorful greens, while sounding virtuous, does fundamentally make me feel fantastic.
It has boundaries! On a farm, there’s always something that needs doing. While the winter doesn’t completely change that, the cold weather does limit your options significantly. I find this nice a lot of the time - you just have to go with the weather, do what you can, when you can, and then stop and go inside!
It tastes incredible! We grow hearty and flavorful Asian greens, crunchy lettuces, and new this year, we’re trying to grow herbs like parsley and cilantro, plus bunching kale and Swiss chard! It’s fun to experiment!
It’s not just greens! Technically this isn’t part of winter growing, but it’s a big part of winter eating. Lots of what we grow goes into storage for the winter so that we can eat it during the cold months, like butternut squash, sweet potatoes, radishes, beets and turnips.