Growing Food

With the increasing demand on food markets, energy, and the destructive impacts of global agro-business, we have decided to grow as much fresh organic food as we can. Being potters and living in a rural community we have a clear advantage. Our property's southern exposure gives us maximum sunlight, which is so crucial to growing in the winter months.

One of our goals is to have a four-season harvest of fresh greens. We determined that a number of different growing techniques should be experimented with to ensure a continual harvest. We started by making our own plant pots and collecting discarded windows for greenhouses.

We ended our '07 fall garden by digging up an established basil plant and putting it in one of our ceramic pots. We placed the potted basil in the sunniest spot in our house and it took off. This simple act brought the flavor of summer days into our kitchen every day this winter. It was such a treat to wake up to a foot of snow and still have a daily harvest of basil.

We found several double pane glass doors in the dumpster and received a number of smaller windows from a friend's home renovation. On a sunny day in January we leaned the glass doors against the southern side of the house. Underneath was a garden bed with established but dormant strawberry plants. We plugged the sides of the green house with straw bales which enabled the greenhouse to retain its heat. The greenhouse was then heated by opening the window from our woodstove heated house to vent the excess heat into the greenhouse. The average low temperature in the greenhouse is at 65F and the average high is 90F.

The warm temperatures gave us our first daffodil blossoms on February 14th.

A couple weeks later our daffodils were in full bloom. We decided to put in lettuce and arugula starts .

One morning in late February I looked in the greenhouse and saw that the strawberry plants were flowering. I screamed with amazement, my expectations were blown away.

	Ripening strawberries on March 23, Easter morning.
	March 30, we eat our first strawberries the day after we get 8 inches of snow.

We tapped our maple trees for the first time and have found another great use for hot fires. We collected the sap for three days filling about 12 of our large clay jars. We ended up with a half gallon of rich dark syrup after seven hours of burning. It is a great reward for a night around the camp fire.