Inspiration for a "Four Season Harvest"

"Four season harvest is based on a simple premise. Whereas the growing season may be chiefly limited to the warmer months, the harvest season has no such limits. We enjoy a year round harvest by following two practices: succession planting and crop protection." 

I have to start out this entry by thanking my in-laws, Mike Stratton and Cathie Blumer. They gave me a book for Christmas titled Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman. I have just recently picked it up but I am most certainly already inspired. Most of the ideas in this post will have come from or been inspired by that book.

Under this blanket of snow and ice that is called Michigan right now (not a complaint, merely an observation), I am starting to get antsy in anticipation for spring and the new dawn of the gardening season. This book is teaching me that I don't have to be mercy to the elements in order to garden. Part of me has already known these things. I am and have been very much aware of green houses and cold frames. I just have not been motivated enough to really invest the time into really making these things a reality. No more. The motivation has kicked in.

There are too many ways to create spaces that will grow cold hardy and tolerant vegetables to ignore it any longer. There are also many beneficial reasons to do so as well. Freshness, variety, quality and simplicity are all reasons to make a four season harvest happen.

As I read through this book and obtain even more inspirations, I will no doubt be sharing them with you. Until then, I will share this quote which struck a note within myself as a truth not to be denied.

"In our grandfathers' day, people celebrated the seasonality and variety of the home garden. They knew that one cabbage tasted best fresh in June and that another made the best sauerkraut. This was the pea for eating fresh and that one for drying. They were familiar with fifty different apples and twenty kinds of pears. They knew when these were ripe and which blended best for cider or complemented the flavor of this or that cheese. We can recover such civilized living again."