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Field Walk…
Reason #28 to Eat Seasonally:
Most greens LOVE this cold weather.
I can't explain the reasons why, but the crops we're pulling out of the fields now thrive in this cold weather. Last Tuesday the fields were white with a hard frost. Leaves were frozen solid. Even under the protective row cover, leaves were touched with ice. We had to wait a few hours for the sun to thaw out the ice in order to harvest at all. The spinach you're getting was frozen hard. And yet, they love it! For reasons I don't yet understand, most greens "sweeten up" after hard frosts. Carrots and beets sweeten up. It defies logic, especially when most crops, like beans, basil and tomatoes, curl up and die at even a hint of frost.
Some of you have expressed surprise that we have anything at all much less that everything tastes so great. This is the way of autumn. Colder temperatures have knocked out the last of the summer crops, like cucumbers, squash, and beans, which comes with a sense of sadness that summer is gone. However, in comes the rich green wave of mid-fall nutrition packed into the tasty morsels of autumn leaves and roots. Just in time for Halloween and Thanksgiving, we get a boost of abundance from Jack Frost.
Our bodies and minds thrive on seasonal diets. As hints of winter come slowly but surely, we need the anti-oxidants and vitamins that the season provides. Autumn is heavy on greens like kale, chard, spinach, and all the greens that make our salad mix. Roots are abundant, like carrots, beets, turnips, parsnips, and rutabaga. Unfortunately, parsnips were another victim of the excessive heat of late spring and early summer, and we lost a lot of our beets to the August Flood, but there's a ton of roots nevertheless. We have carrots all over the fields, as well as turnips and more beets. These roots are amazing in their ability to survive harsh conditions. Once they germinate and become established, they'll survive almost anything you throw at them. In fact, up north, gardeners will "store" carrots in the ground where they grow. They'll chip them out of the frozen ground when needed and enjoy the best of the season.
In short, eat food "in season" and you'll love every minute of it!
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