Winter Greenhouse Systems Part I: Reemay Revisted

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How can you grow vegetables in the winter?  Don't you need to burn a ton of fuel to keep the greenhouse hot?  These are some of the questions I often hear when I tell people I work on a farm in the middle of January.   I think one of the most interesting and common misconceptions about winter greenhouse farming is that the greenhouse needs to use a lot of heat to grow food.   The truth is plants are incredibly resilient and creative organisms that find ways to not only survive in cold temperatures, but thrive in changing environments.  Spinach and carrots for example go through a process of converting starches to sugars to adapt to the fewer hours of sunlight during peak winter months.  This produces a healthy plant and creates an even sweeter taste that is more attractive to people.  What I find most incredible about the greenhouse I work in at Stone Barns is that even though the soil is directly in the ground and not in soil pots or benches, the deeper soil levels naturally maintain a temperature roughly in the 45 degree level where as the ambient temperatures can reach below freezing if not heated.  Understanding these basic soil facts allow us to work with earth's natural heat to create an ideal growing environment while maintaining a very low energy input usage.  We are attempting to produce produce that is best suited for the natural environment we are growing in and by keeping the surface levels of the soil just above freezing, we can grow fresh food all winter long.  So how do we keep the soil levels above freezing if the ambient temperature can drop below freezing?  Last year we discussed the benefits of...

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"But I can only show you the door.  You're the one who has to walk through it"

What's Your Favorite Vegetable?: Winter days with spinach

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One of the most enjoyable parts of winter farming is the pace, although only a fleeting moment, the December/January growth slowdown has offered me an incredible opportunity to not only observe, but to truly dwell in my relationship with the greenhouse.  Upon further reflection, it's amazing to think about how much I overlooked during the summer, between getting acclimated to this new lifestyle and simply trying to keep up with the summer burst of life, there were many times when I forgot to really look.  Obviously I saw and experienced an incredible amount, but as Fred Kirschenmann, President of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture references in his book of essays, "Cultivating an Ecological Conscience," "it is not by looking at things, but by dwelling in them, that we understand their joint meaning."  The summer was a blur, although I was working with many different plants and plant families, it was difficult to create a solid relationship with any one plant since every bed required so much attention.  Now, here in the dead of winter, I have started to dwell and build these relationships.  After 7 months as an apprentice on top of a year and half of volunteering/Beet Reporting, it can be easy to take for granted the incredible information that opened my eyes to the extraordinary world of plants in the first place such as our method of harvesting spinach.  During this year's winter months, the greenhouse is covered in spinach.    Every week I spend a few hours cutting spinach leaves for local restaurants Blue Hill restaurant, Sweetgrass, Tomatillo and the occasional winter green market.  As illustrated in the picture above, we can clearly see that the spinach leaves get smaller as you get closer to the center of the plant.  What does this tell us?...

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Fire in the sky