Opening an earth pit, and some pictures...

After a couple weeks, I take my pen (or rather my keyboard) in hand to show you the opening of one of our earth pits. I've mentioned them before, but haven't shown pictures, so here goes. But first, today the sun tried breaking out from behind the clouds......

Standing in the north field, shooting WSW.

The clouds gobbling up the blue(ish) skies....

While the sun was trying to peek out, and the fluffy cotton candy clouds were cruising by, it would have been fun to lay on my back and watch them sail along. But I don't like to lay in a snowbank, so was content to crouch down by the chainsaw and wood pile (had been cutting this fall's firewood), and watch for a while as one of the kiddos ran for the camera. Shortly afterwards, a few snowflakes started falling.......

Now on to the earth pit. Lots of root crops like to be stored in cool, dark, moist places. Not being one to buy beets and rutabagas and spuds and such when they are so easy to grow AND store, we squirrel some away for family use during the long winters. My lovely wife Janice had mentioned we need beets and rutabagas, so off to the "store" we went. Greater love hath no man for his wife than this, that he would go slipping along over the snow in the middle of the winter, to dig some stored veggies for her meal-making out of a hole in the cold ground. :) Well, in this case, I didn't have to actually do the digging, one of my stalwart sons did the hard work, so I could take pictures to share with y'all, as my sister-in-law from Texas would say. :)

Just above the hole in the snow, there is a mound. Can't really see from looking at it, but it is a slight mound.

See the mound? Probably not, but it is there. :)

Now you can see it better, to the right of my son James' foot.

Good meals in waiting....

He dug and chopped around until he could get an edge of the now-frozen "cap", and pried it off. Often the cap on these pits will be frozen, but no worries! 

Underneath the frozen cap is nice fluffy dirt, which he dug away until the ferns we put down over the veggies started showing.

We're gettin' there...

We usually add a layer over the vegs before putting the dirt back over them. It's nice to kinda have a buffer so you don't have to sort through too much dirt right away, and you know to stop scraping with the shovel so hard, lest you end up with cut beets before you want them cut up. :) I like to use old dead bracken ferns which grow in abundance here, or dryish dead leaves. Straw might work, but might mold faster, which might impart a moldy flavor to the food. I say might, because I usually just use whatever we have around, and straw we don't produce ourselves, so don't have too much actual experience with it. Tried using hay once in an apple pit, but it got a bit moldy and even the apples that weren't moldy still tasted like it. The animals didn't mind, though, and ate them right up. Anyhow, pull back the ferns, and lo and behold.....

FOOD! Beets and rutabagas!

Parked in there mid November, if memory serves, and this coming on the end of January, still in great shape. A few little sprouts at the top, but firm as firm can be, and ready for cookin', after a really good scrubbing, of course. I meant to write a note to myself what's in each pit, and scratched some notes for a couple pits, but never got the rest of them done. No big deal, even if we don't know before digging what's in there, we'll find out when we dig, and if need be adjust menus accordingly. Kinda like opening a present, or not knowing the sex of a baby before it's born. The surprise of not knowing and then finding out is more fun. :)

Here's how the beets and rutabagas were looking. They weren't all this nice and shapely, of course, some smaller, some a bit more ugly, but all are tasty and ready to feed us.

"Winter Keeper" beet, keeping well through the winter.

Helenor Rutabaga.

Yummy!

Getting to the bottom....

The bottom! Thanks for keeping our food for us.

We put them in an empty chicken food sack, and took them into the house where it was warm and bright.

Pretty, ain't it?

If you are intrigued by ways to keep your harvest, and avoid as much reliance on the grocery store as possible, I want to encourage you- you can do it! If you have a piece of dirt, you can store your own root veggies. Plant an extra row or two (or ten) in your garden, for storage. Usually, it's best to do a bit later planting for winter storage, Johnny's Selected Seeds has not only great seeds, they have lots of info too. On their website, you can find charts and calculators and other helpful things, to show when to plant what for each season.

When you are ready to park your veggies for the winter, wait until the weather is really cooling in fall, but not too long; they won't last well in the pit if they are frozen solid, for instance. A few good frosts aren't usually a problem, and actually help the flavor of many crops. Then pick a location that is not in a low spot, you don't want them sitting in water. Dig a hole, we usually dig a foot and a half or so deep. Pile the veggies in the bottom, how ever much you want and can eat up in a couple weeks or so after digging. Then put down a layer of material as mentioned above, load the dirt back on, mound it up and pack around the edges to keep out soaking fall rains, and let them wait there until you need them. Just figure out a way to find the pits under the snow. Use a GPS, stick a stick by the pit, walk so many paces due north of such and such tree, or whatever. You don't want to have to snowblow the whole yard (or wherever you put them) to find the root pits. :) If your garden is in a higher location, right there in the garden would work too. Just be mindful that digging that deep is going to bring up some lower soil, and put some of your precious topsoil deeper down.

I'd like to end with some colorful pictures from the past- in a season dominated by gray and white, I like to see color, even if it is just staring back at me from a stupid mindless computer monitor. :)

Sunrise over Keweenaw Bay.

Same morning a couple minutes earlier.

Looking south down our little country lane.

I think this was at home here.

Well, I gotta run. Y'all take care now-

Winter.........

It's been a while, not much to talk about, but I wanted to share a little of what's been doing around here, and some pictures. Like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and that is really helpful, especially when there's not much to write about anyway. :) The holidays are over, and life is slowly returning to normal. We got to see the sun on New Year's Day, which is a treat in the middle of the winter in the U.P. 

The north field, on New Year's Day

The north field, about a week later. 

Here's another shot of the sunny sky, on New Year's Day. 

Glorious evening sunshine

And here's the herb gardens I wrote about last summer, under a nice blanket of snow, with the seed starting greenhouse in the background. It's hard to believe on days like this that it'll be busy in the greenhouse in about 9 weeks. 

Waiting patiently for spring........

For readers out of the area, we've had a really cold, snowy stretch, with very little sunshine. My lovely and gracious wife, Janice, is a native Oregonian. Central Oregon (a bit north of Bend) has plenty of winter sunshine; the lack of it here in the U.P. was a big adjustment for her, after marrying yours truly and moving up here 18 years ago this coming March. Getting married, pulling up roots, and moving to another state to start a new life takes a lot of grit, and I have the highest regard for gals who do so.

We've also been working on next year's wood; like I tell the boys, we gotta get working on it, it's gonna be snowing again in 10 months. :) Right now it's being stacked in the spruce grove north of the house, and when the woodshed empties from this winter, we'll stack it there. Right now it's serving another purpose as well. We're stacking it between the trees around the hay which is for the sheep; the pesky local deer thought I had bought it for them, and were helping themselves to it. 

Lots of hard work.....

But it has to be done, if we're gonna enjoy this next fall.....

The living room woodstove, cranking out the heat.

On the homestead food front, the root crops we put in pits for winter consumption are doing fine. Last night's supper was fresh-dug parsnips and carrots, and storage spuds and onions from the basement, rutabagas from one of the pits, and a local roast.

May not look the fanciest, but it was tasty. :)

Tonight was pork steaks from the pigs we raised last summer, along with baked spuds, and beets from the same root pit the rutabagas came from.

Those (bloody) beets...... were good.

One of the things I can do with regards to next year's planting season, is start working on seed orders. Two of my favorite seed companies are Johnny's Selected Seeds in Maine, and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, in Missouri. 

Johnny's has great seed, and great customer service. I recommend them highly, and encourage my fellow gardeners and farmers to check them out, if you order in your seed. And Baker Creek has a wondrous array of heirloom varieties to try. I like trying them out, although the heirloom varieties tend to be a bit less dependable. Oh, and for the record, neither of these companies pay me to say this. I say it because I believe it. :)

Well, that's about it for now. Happy trails! :)