Tasty salad fresh from the garden in February is worth a trek in waist deep snow or bitter cold for a hardy Hekkla couple.
When greens are on the menu – and other folks are heading to the grocery store – John Dixon and Holly Southwell are heading to the garden 100 feet from the back of their farmhouse, to harvest the lettuce.
"It's 20 below, it's blowing and snowing, you check the greenhouse (thermometer), it's seven above, you go out to the greenhouse, cut your lettuce, shove it up under your coat and run as fast as you can to your house with a big smile on your face," John explained.
John and his wife Holly eat lettuce, spinach, kale, arugula and Swiss chard straight from their winter garden rather than picking up their salad greens from the grocery store shelves during the cold months, or the rest of the year.
The owners of Sweetgrass Farm in Hekkla keep a corner of their one acre garden protected with a greenhouse, and plant a melody of leafy vegetables between late summer and early fall for harvesting throughout the winter months.
With a wet and overcast 2009 fall, the crop wasn't as thick as it had been in the past, said John, but the greenhouse floor was still completely covered with knee-high greens at the end of October. Inside the greenhouse, it was 11.2 C while outside is 2.1 C with a biting wind.
"We'll be eating off these greens until the beginning of July," said John, standing amongst the produce he and Holly tend. "In May, when you're starting to put your (garden) in, we're feasting."
Winter gardening provides more nutritious, tasty salads than those made with produce from the grocery store that may have travelled great distances, from countries where pesticide laws could be more lax, they said.
"Fresh, organic produce is generally classified as more nutritious," said John. "Nutrition and taste really work well together. You can taste the nutrition to it. It tastes good. If not, it has that cardboard (crap) taste."
Two layers of a special plastic over a metal frame, with air pumped between the layers, adds insulation to the greenhouse. Instead of heating it, they cover the produce with a tarp and keep the south-facing side free of snow so the sun can do its work and let snow pile up on the north side. No weeds grow in the winter and straw is laid between the rows so they don't have to tread through the muddy earth. The system works so well that sometimes it can be minus 25 C outside and plus 28 C inside.
"(The plants) may get a little wilted if it's minus 30, but when the sun comes out they pop up again," said Holly.
When the greens freeze, Holly and John merely wait for the greenhouse to warm up enough to defrost them before harvesting what they want. Greens cut when frozen, turn to mush. They don't pull the plants from the earth, but leave the roots in, only cutting off what grows above ground. In March, when the ground warms up, everything grows back.
"If you have many days of it frozen, it might wilt beyond use, but the roots are still good and it'll come back in the spring," said Holly.
The couple only grow salad greens, storing root vegetable from their summer garden in the pantry and preserving other fresh produce.
"Carrots will grow, but why? You can store your carrots," said Holly.
Holly and John didn't grow up farming. The exact opposite is more accurate.
John grew up in Toronto, where Holly spent her teenage years after moving from Quebec. In 1996, they fulfilled a dream and bought the Hekkla farm, where they have fields of hay and pasture for horses, maple syrup, and unregistered organic produce. The farm allowed Holly to continue her lifelong work with horses and for them to live a life as self-sufficiently, and with as little impact on the environment, as possible.
"Holly is sensitive to a lot of chemicals so she has to eat organically, and the only way we can afford that is growing it ourselves," said John.
Returning to natural food goes beyond their winter garden. They collect seeds from one year's harvest for the next year's garden – that fall day there was a broccoli plant in their sunroom maturing for seed use. Or they’ll buy Heritage seeds. The couple is also reverting from tractors to real horsepower.
It's a lifestyle they're hoping to open up to more people, through Community Supported Agriculture and winter farming lessons.
Through Community Supported Agriculture people pay the farmer for produce ahead of time and pick up seasonal goods. So, in the fall there's potatoes and in the winter there's salad greens.
"It's to encourage more local farmers, so people aren't getting food from the other side of the world," said Holly.
"I'm afraid of where (food production) is going," said John. "We can only say to our clients, this is what you're getting. (Unlike) say with stuff from California, it might say product of California and it might be shipped in from Chilli."
Winter farming isn't just for farmers, they said.
"Pretty much everyone's house has a south or a southwest wall they could put a lean-to or greenhouse," said John. "Everyone can do this, if you garden now you can do this."
Anyone interested can contact John or Holly at sweetgrass30@yahoo.ca
Winter agriculture
John Dixon and his wife Holly, are shown inside the greenhouse located behind their home full of Fresh produce ranging from broccoli to spinach.
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