Ix-Nay on the Arket-May for Feb. 23rd, by Melinda

You all surely have gotten the email from Angela that the Winter Market we'd planned for tomorrow, Saturday, February 23rd, has been cancelled (see post just below) due to overly bitter lettuce and not enough of everything else to warrant a market.  Ole Man Winter's temps (see left) have been just a bit too frigid for a bit too long to foster the amount of greens we need to keep you supplied tomorrow. BUT, the next Winter Market will be Saturday, March 9th, when there should be a significantly greater quantity and variety of tasty greens available!  And that's just a couple weeks before the Spring Equinox (Wednesday, March 20th), when the amount of daylight and darkness are equal. After that, the days gradually get longer than the nights, which gives our hoophouse lovelies exactly the boost they need!

Mini-Winter Market, Feb. 23rd, by Melinda

Les Tres Riches Heures, February

This Saturday, Feb. 23rd, from 10 to 11 a.m. is our next Winter Market.  As Angela said in her email, "'twill be a small one," but we have hot & spicy arugula (!!!!), spinach, lettuce mix, and celeriac (celery root).  We really are in the deep throes of cold weather, so it's not surprising that fewer things are flourishing, but isn't it wonderful that we have these tasty goodies at least?  Life wants to live, and it's amazing that even in our harshly cold weather, these terrific greens "keep on truckin'," as we used to say back in the 60s and 70s.  By the way, I love Angela's poetic way of putting things when she writes--how many people do you know who pepper their writing with words like "'twill"???!!!  We're so fortunate to have her as our farm manager! And we're lucky to have Devorah as Winter Farmer too, and we'll be sorry to lose her when she leaves in the springtime. But at least until then, during our Persephone period, we will have a wonderful bounty of goodies from the hoophouses, a bounty that will expand in scope as winter loosens its grip.  (Hey, Punksutawney Phil, what's up with your forecast of an early springtime?)

Among notable events from history on February 23rd are the publication of the Gutenberg Bible (1455); the start of the Battle of the Alamo in Texas (1836); the secret arrival of Abraham Lincoln in Washington, after escaping an assassination plot in Baltimore (1861); the invention of the Tootsie Roll (1896); the first written description of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (1927); as well as the births of Samuel Pepys (1633), the Baroque composer Handel (1685), the American civil-rights leader W. E. B. Du Bois (1868), the silent-film actress "Musidora" (1889), and a zillion more!

Image credit

In addition, the 23rd is the Feast Day of St. Serenus the Gardener, a 4th-century Greek-born gardener and Christian who emigrated to what's now Yugoslavia.  While there, he reprimanded a lady for walking through his newly planted garden; unfortunately, she was the wife of a Roman Imperial Guard, who hauled Serenus in for questioning. While he was found innocent of insulting the lady in question, when the court found out he was a Christian and he refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods, they beheaded him anyhow!  Sheesh!  It just goes to show that you shouldn't mess with gardeners, nor with farmers, nor with the wives of Imperial Guards in ancient Roman provinces, for that matter.

Image credit

For a recipe for a simply scrumptious White Pizza with Arugula, written by "A Couple in the Kitchen (the Couple that Sautes Together, Stays Together)," check out this link by clicking here.

Winter Market, February 9th, by Melinda

Wintering Out, by Anthony Forster

Hooray, another Winter Market!  This one's on Saturday, February 9th, in the hoophouse, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.  We're featuring kale, arugula, spinach, Komatsuna (*so* sweet, noticeably so, as Devorah noted in her most recent post about winter farming), Tokyo Bekana, Yukina Savoy, celeriac, braising mix, cilantro, and rosemary.  Who'da thunk, in the middle of winter??!!!--all this goodness!  For a nice article about winter growing (with some recipes) that I found on Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch's website, click on this sentence (the article is a PDF). And here's a little factoid from that article that you can drop into your next cocktail-party conversation:  coastal Maine, where Coleman and Damrosch farm, is on the same latitude as Saint-Tropez on the Riviera!  The significance of that, as Damrosch notes, is that southern Maine has the same winter day-lengths as Saint-Tropez, and day-length is as important a factor in successful winter farming as temperature!