Winter Around the Homestead

It's winter on the ol' Williams homestead and we're still producing some garden veggies. We've been blessed with quite a bit of pickings from this year's fall/winter garden. It's just like our main summer garden: some years we grow more than we do in others; it all depends on what is going on and what we want to plant. With me having a baby in December, we didn't plant all that much, but it did fill in the gaps of balancing out our food budget.

We planted kale, lettuce, and spinach. Unfortunately, it was ready for picking right about the time of Abby Lou's birth and we were not really able to pick like we wanted. Sadly, we had a warm spell and the bugs came out and had themselves a grand feast. {{sigh}}

We have a few cabbages planted, but none are ready for picking just yet.

We had some nice sized turnips to come up this year. Turnips are my all-time favorite fall/winter produce! I wish we'd planted more.

My favorite way to eat turnips, is to boil them like potatoes until fork tender, drain, and then toss in butter, black pepper, and sea salt ~ yummy!!!

We had several broccoli plants and a few cauliflower plants as well. 

Broccoli and cauliflower are rather peculiar plants that can be quite finicky to grow in the South. They are super easy to attract pests and need just the right temperature.

Our favorite way to cook broccoli and cauliflower is to roast it in the oven with spices and olive oil. In this batch of veggies we added some of our bell pepper that we froze from our summer garden.

 And then we've got our little chickies which have slowed down their laying, we're averaging five eggs a day ~ which is pretty good to me. We try to let them free range a little each day. When we have our gardens in full swing, it's not as easy to let them free-range because they will eat our plants. We are just limited on space, but do the best we can.

The ol' homestead isn't all that quiet this time of year, but it's definitely a time to regroup and plan for the coming 'main' garden season. It won't be long before we're tilling up the soil and planting away. We're currently making our seed & plant wish lists and focusing on eating from the larder so we have plenty of space in the freezers and jars to fill.

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer