When the Garden Vegetables Dry Up

This is the last cabbage we harvested… also known as the only cabbage we harvested. It seems odd to say this now on an 80-degree February day, but about a month ago we had a freeze that wiped out the mustard and the broccoli and the cabbages. Well, all of the cabbages except this guy.

We had covered the mustard but heavy winds blew off the plastic. The cabbages were simply neglected and forgotten… and then died. We did manage to grab this guy before the most recent freeze, however. My first thought, of course, was sauerkraut. But one cabbage makes little kraut and when I asked Stewart he thought a slaw sounded good. It made sense, since we’ve been short on salads the last couple of months (and aren’t we still eating through the delicious turnip kraut anyway?).

When I cut into him he actually looked and felt more like a head of iceberg lettuce. Maybe that was the cold temperatures or large variations in water it had been receiving. Either way it made a delicious salad with just lemon juice and olive oil. (With a hand held firmly in front of her, Annie declared “Nothing else, that is just right!” when I asked her if it needed anything.)

Previous to about a year ago, we had more dry spells than not in the garden arena. This past year has given us fresh vegetables for much of the year and we have waded through the dry spell by eating lacto-fermented vegetables (mostly turnips this year) as well as canned and dehydrated vegetables from the garden. To fill in the gaps we usually purchase organic carrots, cabbage, and onions… and start planting again. The boys have planted some cold hardy greens that are still babies and we are prepping for larger plantings of starts to get a jump on the growing season.

I have really come to appreciate fresh vegetables since moving off-grid. No longer are their many farmers selling their produce at markets and CSAs in our area. No longer am I able to stash a week’s worth of produce in a refrigerator and stack our plates high with salads and stir-fry all week long. Instead, we must make do and wait… for foods to be seasonal or infrastructure to be built.

And it seems I appreciate things a lot more when that is the case.