Cooler Salad

I should have titled this post, 'colder than-all-get-out' salad! Its a nippy 3° outside, but with the sunny afternoon today, the high tunnel was downright balmy! It is supposed to get down to -15° tonight, so I will likely loose what's left in the high tunnel. Ah well, it's about time to freeze it off anyway.

However, I want to take salad to the Prairie Spinners party on Friday night, but temps like this call for special harvesting techniques. Basically it means taking a cooler out to the HT, letting it warm up to the inside temperature and then harvesting directly into the cooler. Before leaving the HT, I sealed the top and bustled back to the house. Without some serious insulating, the salad would have frozen by the time I got back inside. Its kind of a goofy process, but it means we will have green salad with swiss chard, spinach, lettuce, beet greens, baby beets, carrots and violas for Friday. For fresh greens at this time of year, I will do just about anything.

Salad 'a la Coleman Cooler'

A refreshing Solstice

Yep, we are enjoying a high temperature today of -3° here on the first official day of Winter. The wind is adding to the excitement with Wind Chills of 30° to 40° below zero. The good news is that starting today, the days will begin to get longer. The plants still in the High Tunnel (carrots, beets, spinach and chard are now in stasis and wont change much at all for the next month, but by the end of January, we will start to new new, measurable growth. Its amazing what the increasing day length will do. But for now, tuck in ya'll we're in for a cold winter's night.