Spinach at New Year's

It was warm enough to harvest some of the spinach left under cover in one of the greenhouses. It was so so good. Tender and sweet and earthy. Spinach at new year!!!

What we did on our winter vacation

We try to take off, or at least scale way back, working on the farm every year from about Thanksgiving to Christmas, just for the mental health of it all. You may have figured this out from the lack of posts!!

We had an awesome break. We did some traveling and lots of visiting with family. Here's a shot of the Thanksgiving pageant at Nana's house.

I've had some great walks and snowshoes through the woods and fields. Here's the entrance to my favorite woods path

And some brussel sprout stalks sticking up through the snow.

We also celebrated Christmas in style.

With Santa

Sledding

and gifts - here's Henry in action with his new hammer

Speaking of hammering, we did do some work. We're putting up another greenhouse.

This one is half size. Mostly so that we can get the tomato seedlings out of the basement and into the light a little earlier while also postponing heating the full size greenhouse for a few weeks. We're going to heat this one with wood pellets, instead of oil, too, to be more sustainable.

And there is some greenhouse maintenance that has to be done all winter. Here you can see the snow piling up above the hip boards.

Once it gets that high, it won't shed off the roof any more, and if it piles up on the roof, the whole thing can collapse. In this case, however, high winds a few days after this photo was taken took some small rips and turned them into plastic ripping giant rips, so Peter had to go up Christmas afternoon and the following day to get it all off before it blew into our neighbors yard. The plastic needed to be replaced anyway.

But still, the best part of our winter vacation was just hanging out: Henry dancing in the kitchen, Waverly staying in her pajamas all day, Peter and I having actual conversations about life, the stars, the many things we have to be grateful for! Even Captain Jack and Rainbow, our normally very hardworking barn cats, got in on the hang out in the house act!