egg

We thought we’d taken our last load of vegetables down to the restaurant before New Year’s: a huge pile of sweet, frost-bit kale and collards. We took a gamble with our late carrots, hoping we could get them to last one or two more days in the ground before the ground froze, because the longer they stayed in the sweeter they got. We lost that bet: the carrots are still in the ground, their shoulders frozen hard against a crust of dirt. They’re as fixed in place as pilings in cement, and it’s a minor heartbreak to know we’ll never get to eat them.

But yesterday Krissy pulled back the brittle row cover that still flaps over the turnips and found a surprise: the freeze had heaved a couple dozen turnips the size of goose eggs up to the surface. They’re unblemished and delicious and will soon end up sliced and pickled on a plate at egg, giving us one last bite to tide us over until spring comes.

To speed the arrival of spring, we’ve just taken delivery of a greenhouse frame for a tunnel almost exactly the size of the restaurant. So as soon as we can get a shovel in the dirt and bolt metal together without freezing off our opposable thumbs, we’ll have a little space to get a jump on summer and start our tomatoes and peppers early.