An Autumn Beginning with a Winter End in Mind

Our very presence on the farm is attribution to Stephen Covey's axiomatic 2nd habit of "highly effective people":  begin with the end in mind.  Comprehending how dependent our food system is on cheap and plentiful energy, I began to wonder what will happen in the very likely eventuality that one or both of those factors goes away.  The only conclusion I could reach was that I was going to get hungry.  Any contrary result would be predicated on my learning how to grow food on different terms.  Hopefully, by the time the draconian eventuality becomes reality I will have learned enough to ward off starvation.

Similarly fore-thoughtful and surrounded by the garden's quietude, I began to think about the coming season and its abundance of tasteless and well-traveled vegetable options.  Present weariness or no, that winter day will eventually come when a fresh salad would taste profoundly good.  And I intend to satisfy that hunger...which means setting in motion the winter greenhouse garden.  Travel conflicts last year delayed the sowing until November 1.  By that time the late autumn cool slowed germination to a crawl and it wasn't until the New Year that anything had matured to the point of harvest.  Fully six-weeks earlier this year I have planted a first round of seeds --

Deep Purple bunching onions
Carmel -- Savoyed Spinach
Winter Density Green Bibb Lettuce
Mache VIT
Rouge D'Hiver -- Red Romaine Lettuce

Yesterday, with that first round already well in sprout, I sowed a second round consisting of more of the same.  Hopefully the time-spacing will insure multiple rounds of harvest.  As long as habitable weather extends I plan to leave the boxes on the deck.  Eventually they will settle into their winter home inside the greenhouse, nestled beneath row cover fabric for warmth.  By that time I will have drained the rain barrels and stored the jugs of water for winter hydration.  If the past is any prediction, eventually I will have to shovel a path through the snow to reach the door.  But if the vegetable gods have chosen to smile on me, the frozen trek will be rewarded, once inside, by leaves of this and that anxious to satisfy the longing palettes of two hibernating gardeners huddled inside by the fire.

That, at least, is the "end in mind" with which I have already begun.