Port Potager

The big story of the end of the year is the weather; specifically, the frigid temperatures that we’ve been forced to endure for the past several days. It’s been a struggle to get out of the single digits this weekend, and the cold snap is expected to last well into the New Year. By the time it warms up again, we’re likely to have ridden out 12 days in which the highs didn’t crack 20 degrees. This arctic blast means that our carrots and parsnips are well and truly frozen underground, and all of our greens are probably done for. Even kale will struggle under cover with that type of deep freeze, though it will begin to put out new leaves as soon as it warms up a bit. I’m not sure about the leeks, but the underground bulb will probably be fine once we are able to dig them up again. In the meantime, we're staying inside as much as possible!

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It’s been a very difficult autumn for us this year, and I just haven’t had the time, energy or inclination to write much about the garden — or to actually do much in the garden. We’ve let a lot of things slide, and have only just gotten around to raking leaves and doing the general post-frost clean up today (even though said frost was almost a month ago now). We have, however, diligently done our duty for the living creatures here, including the bees. Somewhere around Halloween we got the hives ready for winter by closing up the extra entrances and protecting the remaining door with hardware cloth so mice can’t get in: We’re not at all sure that our hives have enough food stored to make it through the winter, even though both seem pretty strong. When our original hive swarmed over the summer , the ones that left ate all the honey in the original hive to be ready to make the journey. That meant that both the original hive and the new one were basically starting from scrat...

Last night temperatures here dropped into the low 20s overnight — and for many hours. That’s officially the end of the growing season, as you can see by the state of this butternut squash vine: It was quite a cold morning, and the frost stayed on everything well after the sun came up. It was quite pretty, too: We had already picked our tender fruits last week in response to an (unwarranted) frost warning, so all we had to do last night was put up a few last tunnels over some of our greens : We tossed an old army blanket over the beets and cut a last harvest of Swiss chard. I left the celery alone, and it doesn’t seem much worse for wear this morning — it’s pretty tough. Still, we should probably bring it in by tomorrow, since the cold looks to be getting worse before it will get better.  After a very warm fall, it looks like fall is here to stay.

Earlier this week we had a frost advisory. I didn’t think we’d actually have a frost — and I was right — but it’s still a good idea to bring in the last of the tender crops just in case. This meant bringing in several ripe eggplants, along with the remaining bell peppers, jalapeños, and anchos. We also ended up pulling out the last broccoli and cauliflower plants this week, since they are completely spent and have succumbed to aphids (ditto on our Brussels sprouts, which is total bummer — we didn’t get any). We also brought in what was left of our tomatoes, which are in varying stages of ripening. We may just wait for them to turn red, or we could make a green tomato pie . It seems a little silly to bake anything with 20 pounds of a trick-or-treat candy haul lying around, but you never know.  We also covered over our green for winter though those tunnels are open again now. It was actually quite warm for the rest of the week, and we had a pretty visitor: ...

When I was still teaching, I was faced with getting an obligatory master’s degree. All public school teachers in Massachusetts have to do this eventually to keep their licensure up to date, but it’s an awful lot of work to go back to school while still teaching school. And for an English teacher (which I was for eight years), it’s kind of a nightmare. No one works harder than a high school English teacher. It’s a never-ending cavalcade of shit in the form of a bottomless stack of (terrible) papers to grade. When you layer additional coursework and research papers on top of that, you might as well kiss your sanity goodbye. So I thought that choosing the Creative Writing concentration of an English M.A. would at least make it more fun and provide a layer of personal fulfillment to the mix. As long as I had to shell out thousands of dollars and hours for an advanced degree, I might as well enjoy it, right? So that’s what I did. It was still a shit-ton of work, but when it was over ...

We’ve had a bumper crop of small but serviceable Gala apples this year, but this is not a variety that stores for very long. That means we have to make a whole lot of applesauce and find other ways to eat them up before they become a fruit fly infested mess. Enter the apple cake: Last weekend Kirk made this cake courtesy of his friend Tressa’s recipe, and it is delicious. It’s like a nice, dense pound cake with layers of lightly spiced apples throughout: The photo above is of my breakfast leftover portion, but the original was also served with some vanilla custard poured over the top. It’s the perfect fall treat!  Tressa’s Apple Cake Ingredients: 2 tsp. cinnamon 5 Tbsp. sugar 3 cups flour 1 3/4 cups sugar 3/4 cup vegetable oil 3 large eggs 2 1/2 tsp. vanilla 3 tsp. baking powder 1/2 cup orange juice 4-5 large apples, peeled, cored and sliced Directions: Stir together cinnamon and 5 Tbsp. sugar. Sprinkle mixture over sliced apples and ...