Fine feathers

All four hens finally finished the longest molt in history. They now are stepping out in fresh new feathers, and look beautiful! Now, despite the long nights of winter, we are getting eggs again. Only one or two a day, but that is pretty good for 2 year old hens in the dead of winter. Here they are this morning, eating fresh, although frozen solid, collard leaves from the garden. With all the greens they eat, their egg yolks are gorgeous dark yellow. I made the most amazing eggnog on Christmas eve!

The beauty from the beast

It has been beastly weather here over the last few days. Bitter cold (for us here in coastal NC, I know that cold is a relative term!), with temperatures near or below 20 at night, remaining below freezing during the day. It felt especially harsh because we had such a short time to get acclimated to the cold. Remember, we still had basil and peppers in the garden just two weeks ago!
The garden was hard hit, but, in some ways beautiful. Here is a red chard leaf, frozen solid. The colors are so bright and deep, and the surface shiny and clear. It reminds me of stained glass, and was just as hard and solid. The bed of young mixed greens is not so pretty. You can see how many of the plants have been knocked right to the ground by the freezing weather.
So, what will recover and what is now gone for the year? It is too early to know. The broccoli certainly looks bad, and while the kale is drooping, it doesn't seem as hard hit. Will the chard spring back? What about the young plants? Maybe. When this snap passes, and we get back to more typical weather, I will know the long term impact.

In from the cold

Sure enough, we had our first freeze this weekend (no prior frost at my house, just went straight to a freeze this year). There were two things in my garden that had no hope of making it through the freeze intact: a number of hot pepper plants and one, huge basil. Here you see the box of mixed hot peppers. I have no idea what I am going to do with them! Most of these are HOT. For now they sit, looking beautiful, in a box on my counter. Maybe stuff them in a jar and fill with vinegar that I can use in future bbq sauce?

The green basil leaves are a reminder of summer, and were lovely. I say were because I was so lazy that, even though I broke off the branches and brought them inside, I let them wilt on the counter until they were too sad to consider. Shame on me! For punishment I have to wait until next summer for fresh basil flavor.

One more treat that ripened this weekend, the three tangerines that my tree set. Remember last year when the tree had over 150 of these beauties? Well, last year's record cold killed back the branches to only about 10 inches long each. This was followed by record summer heat and drought. The poor tree is sturdy and green, but had to spend the year trying to survive and recover, and there were very few blossoms. These couple of tangerines were wonderful, and hopefully are just a taste of future, big yields.

Last, but not least in taste: I harvested one of the radicchio plants, doused it in olive oil, and seared it on the grill. I found one butterhead lettuce plant hidden under the arugula. The grilled radicchio and fresh butterhead lettuce made an amazing salad. You have to love a garden that gives you these tastes in early December during exceptional years.