Eating in Winter

This ground has given us so very much this year. Four years ago when this was just a vacant piece of earth to now it's an extraordinary transformation. Spring and summer we've been harvesting from the market garden, from the potager, the flowers, the plants, the animals. We've had an abundance. It's fun to look back and just to remember all that this was able to give us because now we're looking at a different picture. Continually astounded that on our two acres of land we're able to feed our family. As the seasons do they change and here we are a time of cold, of ice, of snow, of no gardening. Though we have fun in the first snow the landscape just beckons you to go inside and eat. Look at all the things that you've filled the larder with and think of all the ways that you can use that and enjoy it. The land right now it's not for production really in any way other than growing little lambs and growing little cow and of course milking the dairy cow. But the land outside the landscape now is cold and it's purely for enjoyment. The summer work is not lost. No this is where it all pays off. I mean even though we enjoy the fruits of our labor in summertime the work of preserving and of storing up I mean this is the time where you just get to cash in. This is where we get to go grocery shopping. That's right. It means for us here in the wintertime is that we're able to eat through meat that we grow here on the farm. We're able to eat the cheeses and the frozen fruits and berries, the fish and the chickens that we've put up through the summertime. So every week I make my little romp up to the barn and fill my basket and bring back the week's meat. Then below the kitchen is where we have our walk-in cooler and this is where we keep all of our fermented vegetables. Some of the root vegetables like our carrots and parsnips and beets. It's where we keep our leeks and our mushrooms. So much like I shop for our meat I go down with my basket at mealtimes and I gather up from the bounty. Throughout the winter and into the early spring it's kind of funny you can just watch the shelves start to empty and you you get a little sense of I don't know preparing yourself to do it all over again and I can just imagine the holes that are going to be left in these pantry shelves. I hope so. I hope we eat through everything we've put up. Onions and shallots, garlic and potatoes are all kept outside of the cooler. These are just kept on the dirt floor really of our root cellar. This is where I also keep things like dried herbs from tea or jams and jellies that we preserve. This time of year all the work just transfers it seems like to the kitchen and to the house and you just spend so much time making the inside during the wintertime as inviting and enjoyable as the outside is during summer. Yeah that's true. I never quite thought of it like that. It's good to remember these moments too because you know making something like thumbprint jelly cookies in July when you're making the cherry jam you don't always remember how good that's going to taste in December and then you get to eat it and then it's so worth it. All the labor especially in the summer heat it makes the inside that much more inviting and delicious. So eating from the root cellar in the winter really means a form of submission to what the season has to offer and winter does have a lot to offer but if you expect it to be summertime you're going to be sorely disappointed. So rather it's accepting it as it is celebrating it for what it is and enjoying it in that moment. Yeah winter has a discipline all of its own. I feel like in summer you're disciplining your body just to do the work and in winter there's a bit more of disciplining your spirit to accept you know what's there and grateful for what you have what you've stored and all the flavors and all the difference that it is and celebrating that right? Absolutely.