Each year Ken has early greens from hoopettes or greenhouses. We always celebrate this move from the germination cabinet’s shoots and winter salad mix to the green house. The spinach is usually the first to pop up. Ken picks leaf by leaf for a multiple harvest per plant at first. Later he will pull out the whole plants to thin and then as they fill in the spaces, whole larger plants …
Usually we have some late hatch cockerels that are too small to butcher in fall. So we watch them and the weather and when everything comes together it is “chicken population reduction day.” We also take out some older hens so there are enough birds to make the preparation and process worth it. Just before I left to visit my parents we butchered 20 chickens. Here is a photo of the final step of the …
Each year Ken plants onion seeds in February. When they come up, they are bent. And then like a magical green Rockettes kick line, they unfold. This, our first full season crop planting signals spring is coming. It makes me smile to see those onion shoots boing open each year. I am grateful – for the onion, for Ken, and for the lengthening days.
