community garden under snow cover

These are clips of my community garden, the Belmont Victory Gardens, that I took from a vimeo by David Sprogis: Rock Meadow. Rock Meadow is a 70 acre piece of conservation land in Belmont that includes the Victory Gardens. It's a really beautiful vimeo of the area taken from the air.



My garden plot is right in the center of the lower photo.

game day chili with Jacob's Cattle beans

I heard that Americans go through some huge amount of nachos and chili on Super Bowl game day. We're doing our part. I bought some really nice Jacob's Cattle beans at a winter farmer's market a couple weeks ago.

I'm following a recipe I made a few years ago: Jacob's Cattle Bean Chili. (I'm using the last of my homegrown canned garden tomatoes.) We'll pile the chili onto chips with guacamole, cheese, salsa fresco and sour cream, then open the beer and turn on the game.

The Jacob's Cattle beans I got were grown by a small farm in Maine that grows only shell beans. They had a great table at a recent farmer's market. I told the farmer I wanted to grow some of the beans and eat the rest. He showed me the package with the darkest freshest beans. I love the color and size of these beans, though they do fade when cooked. The farmer also told me that Black Turtle beans are about the most productive variety to grow. Those are my other favorite shell bean to grow.

snow

We had about 8 inches of heavy wet snow yesterday that stuck to tree branches. It looked beautiful, but there were many power outages and sadly, a couple people died not too far south from here from being hit by falling branches. It's our first real snow of the season. What a storm.

The photo above is my backyard. Taken at 7 am, the sun is low in the east, shining across the pond onto snow-covered trees. The roof of my garden shed is visible at the right and my vegetable garden is in the middle. A cluster of birch trees by the pond is bent down to the ground.

my vegetable garden - panorama photo

I took this photo today by running along the edge of my garden and trying to hold the camera steady on its "panorama" setting. A crazy perspective - I really don't have a curved garden. But I think this will be helpful as I draw up a plan for this year's garden. I'm working on that now. I have extra space outside the raised beds to fill up. I'm imagining it overflowing with flowers and vegetables this year.

mid-winter garlic

I checked the garlic growing in my garden today. "Music" (pictured) is up an inch or so above the salt march hay mulch. The tops of the plants look weather burnt, but underneath they're green. "Late Italian" is up about 2 inches above the mulch. "Duganski" isn't up yet. Our forecast is now saying maybe we'll get some snow next Tuesday. The garlic would prefer that. Gardeners at my community garden have been concerned and have been adding more salt hay to cover their garlic.

I'm now eating supermarket garlic. :-( I'd normally have my own still in February but I had a problem with rot last year :-( So, I'm chopping up these big, pure white supermarket cloves. I assume it's CA garlic. Maybe from Gilroy, the garlic capital. I was surprised by its flavor. I find it very strong and sharp. Pshew! I remember someone saying homegrown New England garlic doesn't have much flavor. Now I understand. In comparison to this, it's very different. But I find that our local garlic has nice complex flavor, without the strong sharp taste.

I saw local garlic at a winter farmer's market in Wayland MA last weekend and almost stocked up. However, it was small and $1.75 a head. I'd eat 10 of them in a week I think, so I didn't get any. I'm glad they get such a good price.

chickens out for a walk

My chickens went out for a mid-winter walk today. No snow left here - they had lots of scratching to do.



In the middle of their walk, Ginger the brown Auracana all of a sudden jumped up, left the group, ran for the laying box and left me that blue egg. I'm getting 2 or 3 eggs a day now. Only Bertha, the big white Brahma isn't laying yet.

where did winter go?

It's in the 80's in the sun now! Where did winter go? A high of 57F is officially predicted this afternoon in Boston. My bees are out and about. Garlic is sprouting. I've been opening my greens tunnel to the sun the past few days. We've had a week-long stretch of very mild winter weather. I'm tempted to think spring is around the corner, but I was reminded that last year, most of our enormous snowfall came in February. Nevertheless, I think this is turning out to be a very mild Boston winter.