Out with the Old!

Spring fever is building to an outright buzz! Trees are leafing out and buds are about to burst open with color and pollen. The Farmer's Almanac suggests planting before the end of March. As the planting season arrives it is necessary to clear the remaining winter harvest to make room for the spring garden.

It is truly amazing the amount of food that was harvested over the weekend from the family farm! We collected approximately the following:

4 heads of Cabbage
10 crowns of Broccoli
8 Kohlrabi
8 bunches of Kale
6 bunches of Collard Greens
8 lbs of Carrots
3 heads of lettuce
6 lbs of Turnips
2 heads of Swiss Chard
2 heads of Calabrese and Cauliflower
And at the "home research unit," we harvested
5 bunches of Kale
3 bunches of Collards
4 bunches of Mustard greens
young purple onions
leaf lettuce

It is truly rewarding to see five large bags overflowing with fresh vegetables at the end of the season's harvest. Many veggies had been picked and eaten over the past several months too.

We are now tired of all of these yummy types of winter vegetables. They have been roasted, sauteed, used in salads and soups, even tried baked kale! To overcome the doldrums of these now familiar flavors it is wise to put them away for future use! The Kale, Collards and Mustard greens were cleaned, blanched in boiling water for 2 minutes, placed in ice water for a minute, drained and divided into quart and gallon sized Ziploc bags and put into the freezer for later. The kohlrabi will be made into pickles, the cabbage chopped into one last slaw and the broccoli steamed for baked potato topping. It was quite a feat to clean and put up all of the harvest taking almost six hours.

The freezer is now stocked with all of the types of greens which will be easy to enjoy throughout the summer when we are hungry for their flavor again.