Satisfying, and beautiful

Hi! I tried to stop in here on Friday, but Blogger was having some kind of meltdown, so I couldn't. I wanted to tell you that the first farmers' market of the season was Saturday morning at eight o'clock sharp in Orleans, and that I was looking forward to seeing you there. I hope you made it.

If you didn't, though, don't worry. Barbara and Gretel and Lucas and the gang will be there every week from now on, and the Provincetown market starts this Saturday. There's also a new farmers' market on the block, starting up this Wednesday at the brand-spanking-new Preservation Hall in Wellfleet. I'm not quite sure who will be there yet, but I'm planning on going, and I promise to report back. It is so nice to have a fridge full of local greens and spring carrots and hothouse tomatoes (!) and cucumbers (!) and Ron Backer's asparagus. Finally! It makes me a little giddy.

It is also a good reminder that there are, believe it or not, other food groups besides rhubarb & Meyer lemon desserts. Between the rhubarb pie testing my mother and I have been doing, and last week's attempt at this Shaker Lemon Pie, and the rhubarb-lemon cobbler we talked about two weeks ago, I find it hard to fathom, but according to the Little Caesar lettuces and the French Breakfast radishes, it's true.

And I have to say, it feels pretty good to step back into the salad world. Yesterday, Alex and I had one of those hugely productive Sundays—tidied up, did the laundry, finished the house budget, picked out paint colors, planted squash, planted melons, planted tomatoes, went to the dump, scrubbed the guest room!—and mid-day, we stopped for a quick rest at the kitchen table. We didn't have time for a long break—there were still way too many spiders living in the baseboards—but I wanted to make something a little bit elegant, something pretty and simple.

I pulled out a nice china salad bowl, and three bags of greens from the fridge. I did a little mix-and-match—some of Barbara's butter lettuce, a handful of spicy mustard Mizuna from Rod and Darnell, and a whole bunch of Lucas's baby braising mix. Then I chopped up a tomato, sliced a carrot and cucumber and two radishes thin with the mandolin, and crumbled some goat cheese and gorgonzola on top. It was hardly fancy, but it was satisfying, and beautiful, and with a few slices of baguette and butter, it did the trick.

If you're feeling anything like I am these days—hungry, and busy, and a little too interested in gardening to sit down and make anything terribly fussy or complicated—I highly recommend giving it a whirl.

FIRST OF SPRING TOSSED SALAD

This is hardly complicated enough to count as a recipe, but it's what we've been eating all week, and it's also delicious. Tomatoes and cucumbers are not normally things I associate with spring, but with Ed and Betty's hothouse in full operation, maybe they'll move up permanently on the calendar—keep your fingers crossed, and who knows.

1/8 cup balsamic vinegar

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/2 teaspoon whole grain mustard

a pinch of salt

freshly cracked pepper

1/2 pound mixed spring greens

1 spring carrot, trimmed and sliced thin

2 French Breakfast radishes, trimmed and sliced thin

1 tomato, chopped into half wedges

1/2 cucumber, sliced thin

a handful of crumbled gorgonzola

a handful of crumbled chevre

Whisk together the balsamic, olive oil, mustard, and salt and pepper to taste in a small pitcher. Be sure to whisk for at least 30 seconds; it takes the mustard a little while to bring the vinegar and oil together and get the whole thing to emulsify. Set the dressing aside.

In a large salad bowl, toss together the greens and other vegetables. Crumble the cheeses on top, dress, and toss well. Serve at once, with a hunk of crusty bread to mop up the extra cheese and dressing and veggie juice.

The Local Food Report: E & T Farms

Ed Osmun is shy—that much we have in common. The first day I showed up with my microphone in tow I could see it in the way he bowed his head. But just as much as Ed is shy, I am determined, and today, finally, we got his story out. It starts with tilapia—ready for market, and fat.

These tilapia are the main event on Ed's farm. They arrive tiny—half a gram—from New Mexico. A breeder there selects for uniformity and growth, which makes Ed's life easier when it comes to culling and the eventual harvest. The fish spend their roughly nine months of life in nine large, half-dumpster size tanks—growing up in shades from orange to black into weights a pound and a quarter and on. As they live and eat they of course create waste, but Ed has a system in place—a growing method called aquaponics—that allows him to use this waste instead of throwing it out.

It works like this: in the water, there are big drums filled with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Next door—adjacent to the fish tanks in the farm's roughly 8,000 square foot indoor growing area—is a greenhouse space. Nine tubes, one from each of the fish tanks, feed nine hydroponic systems, with the water full of nitrates constantly filtering out from the fish tanks and into plastic tubes beneath the rows of salad greens.


Eventually, what solid waste the greens can't take up is filtered out along with old water, and new water is filtered in. It's a fairly ingenious system, although Ed says he can't take any credit. People think the idea may go as far back as the ancient Incas, the Chinese, and even the Aztecs. If you think about it, it's actually a very natural system—the whole world runs on aquaponics in one way or another. But the modern system was the brainchild of the New Alchemy Institute—the place that inspired Arthur Teubner to include growing space in his living space. The researchers at New Alchemy published a series of articles on irrigating garden vegetables with fish effluent in the 1970s, and the idea took off.

Ed says he's been interested in controlled environment growing for at least as long. His wife tells him he was talking about it when they were dating; they've been married now 37 years.


Of course, the upshot of all this is food. Ed sells tilapia to local chefs (he's hoping to start selling retail to fish markets soon, too) and his greens go to local stores, restaurants, and farmers' markets. They're sold under the banner of E & T Farms, which Ed runs with his wife, Betty. They also produce honey and beeswax candles, and in the summer, they expand their growing outside and offer goodies like tomatoes and cucumbers. But even now, all year round, they have salad mix—plump plastic bags filled with baby lettuces, Swiss chard, arugula, and even a few nasturtiums.

This Saturday, at the Marstons Mills Farmers' Market, if you have a second, introduce yourself. Ed may be shy, but he's always willing to talk aquaponics.

The Local Food Report: warm, lush

Arthur Teubner lives in Truro. His roommates include one fig tree, one taro plant, a rosemary bush, a whole bunch of rainbow chard and spinach and arugula, and a potted banana plant. As you can see, it's very cozy in there.

The coziness has a lot to do with glass, and the sun. In the seventies, Teubner volunteered at the New Alchemy Institute in Hatchville, and he got very into the idea of incorporating growing space into living space. The Institute was a research center studying organic agriculture and aquaculture and bio-shelters, and it created an indoor eco-system called The Ark. The basic idea was to build a greenhouse for both shelter and food, and to populate it with species that would compliment and regulate each other as they grew. It was very successful, and Teubner took the idea with him.

He built his house about a decade later, with his own plans and hands and a lot of recycled materials. He designed it to sit on a south-facing slope overlooking his garden (which has since turned into a farm, First Light Organic Farm), and an orchard of fruit trees. It was an upside-down home with three floors: on top, a master bedroom and bathroom and study, in the middle a kitchen and dining room and living room, and on the bottom, an extra bedroom and an attached greenhouse. By building the greenhouse onto his home, he reasoned, he could grow warmer-climate crops or over winter native crops by regulating the temperature in conjunction with his living space. This seemed more sustainable to him than having a separate, independent structure that he would have to supply with nutrients and heat.

But that isn't even the cool part.

The cool part is that the way he did this was to incorporate the air from the greenhouse into his home. He cut power registers and ducts into the walls and ceiling of the greenhouse, so that if the sun creates excess heat, he can pull it into his home. He created heat sinks in the form of brick flooring and dark earth growing beds, and he built a row of cylindrical water columns to act as solar heat sinks. He also added a indoor fish pond that connects to an outdoor fish pond, so that the protein he raises can swim in or out depending on the weather or temperature or just what sort of an adventure it feels like taking that day. When the fish have been swimming and eating for a while, he takes the nutrient rich water from their pond to water the vegetable crops.


Finally, he planted grapes—Concords and a few other leafy varieties—along the east and west sides of the greenhouse. He trained them to grow up along the sides and over to cover the top, and in the summer, they leaf out. The greenery blocks the sun in the summer, keeping the greenhouse cool and shady. In the fall, the leaves drop, and the light is allowed back in.

There are clearly a lot of good features to this indoor growing space. For starters, when he's cooking dinner, Teubner can sneak downstairs in his socks or even bare feet and pick a whole meal's worth of chard and arugula and thyme.


He can also grow plants that normally wouldn't survive in this climate, like figs and bananas, because they spend the winter protected, inside. Lastly, and sometimes he thinks most importantly, when it is February or March on Cape Cod and the weather report says GREY for the seventy-second day straight, he has a warm, lush, almost Costa-Rican place to go. This insanity salvation, he says, is almost better than the fresh figs.

Of course, most of the year, his food production in the greenhouse focuses on leafy salad plants. The figs and grapes and whatnot come in a big September-October whoosh, and from there it's herb and cold crop time. The day I visited, last weekend, he had Swiss chard, arugula, lettuce mix, spinach, and Dinosaur kale going on. It actually looked a fair amount like what we have in our not-so-toasty, unattached greenhouse right now, except that everything was bigger, and a bit healthier, and not looking quite so desperate for heat and sun.

By the time I got home, I was trying to figure out how we could build a greenhouse onto the south side of our house and whether or not I would rather have a fig tree or a banana tree, or maybe even a lime tree, or if maybe I should just fill the beds with oregano plants. Of course, I was getting a little bit ahead of myself. In the end, I drew a lot of pictures and researched green design architects online and made myself a pot of barley and winter greens soup.

A Costa Rica Room would be nice, one day. But in the meantime, the soup turned out to be cheap, and tasty, and a very good second best.

SO FRESH AND SO GREEN (!)

[I am so, so sorry for the bad pun title. Hopefully Outkast will forgive me. And hopefully you will forgive me for discovering the Lala Song Player and, yet again, giving you a link with sound.]

As for the soup, it's excellent. It's adapted from a recipe I found the other day in the Feburary issue of Bon Appetit, now that I (ahem), finally got it back from my sister. Anyway, it's for a barley soup with kale, chard, spinach, fennel, lemon, and dill, which, as soon as I saw it, I knew was for me. I changed a few things, but the idea is the same. This soup is bright and light and hearty all at once, and in a much more wholesome way than the song, really and truly very fresh and very clean. There is something almost squeaky about it, in the same way that, say, lying in a mud wrap with cucumbers on your eyelids is. Best of all, it is an excellent first use for our brand new, New England grown ( ! ) barley.

2/3 cup uncooked barley
8 cups chicken broth, preferably homemade
4 cups water
sea salt
2 tablespoons butter
3 medium onions, chopped
1 teaspoon dried dill weed*
1 teaspoon dried, crushed fennel seed
1 teaspoon dried, crushed basil
freshly ground pepper to taste
1/4 cup dry white wine
8 cups Swiss chard, rinsed, coarsely chopped, and packed**
8 cups spinach, rinsed, coarsely chopped, and packed
1 cup cilantro, coarsely chopped, for garnish
4 ounces feta cheese, crumbled, for garnish
1/3 cup scallions, thinly sliced, for garnish
1 lime, cut into eights, for garnish

*The original recipe called for fresh herbs. If you're making this soup in the summertime, when fresh dill, fennel, and basil are readily available, I would certainly recommend swapping them in—1/3 cup each to replace the dried measurements.

** The original recipe also called for kale in addition to the Swiss chard and spinach. I think you could probably use any combination of winter braising greens you like—the more the merrier—with success.

Bring the barley, 4 cups of the chicken stock, the water, and 1 teaspoon of sea salt to a boil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pot, and leave the barley to simmer for about 45 minutes, or until tender.

Meanwhile, pull out a skillet and heat the butter up over medium-high heat. Add the onions, stirring frequently, and cook for about five minutes. Sprinkle in the herbs, and season with salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Continue cooking for about three more minutes, or until the onions are soft and translucent. Deglaze the pan with the wine, cook for a minute or two longer, and turn off the heat. Set the onions aside.

When the barley is tender, add the remaining stock and the onions to the pot. Add the chard and the spinach, and simmer for about six minutes, or until the greens are tender. Season the soup with salt and pepper, and pour it hot into bowls. Put the cilantro, feta, scallions, and lime wedges on the table to use as garnishes. (The cheese doesn't matter too much, and the cilantro and scallions are sort of personal decisions, but whatever you do, don't skip the lime juice. It brings out the flavors of the greens and brightens the barley and the broth.) This soup is good on day one, but even better on day two, so don't be afraid to let it sit.

The Local Food Report: green, in February

Green, in February, is a very welcome sight. It is especially welcome when it comes in the form of Chinese cabbage and pak choi and pea tendrils and crispy crunchy salad mix, and when it finds its way through a shower of creamy balsamic dressing onto my lunch plate. When it does that, it feels a lot like an August house guest who washes their own towels and sheets and makes the bed and empties the dishwasher before they leave. As in, it's a you-can-stay-forever-if-you-like! sort of a thing.

Generally, I'm a sucker for brighter colors like reds and yellows and oranges, but this time of year, I think they're a little overdone. Greens are the new heirloom tomatoes, or the new juicy peaches—that kind of thing. You know, at least they aren't winter squash. I think everyone can agree on that.

Not that winter squash is such a bad thing. It's just that, especially in leap years when Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow and you're going to have not just six more weeks of winter but actually Six Weeks And One Day, anything with the word winter in it starts to get a little old. Which is why it was nice that when I went to the Plymouth Winter Farmers' Market a few weeks ago, Silverbrook Farms had a good supply of greens on hand.

Actually, one other stand—the one I mentioned the other day, Allen Farms—had greens as well—pea tendrils—but those were the only two. (Everyone else had important things like storage onions and carrots and granola and bread and cheese and potatoes and winter squash, which I probably should have bought more of since the greens lasted all of a week, but sadly I did not.) Instead I picked up a bag of pea tendrils from Allen Farms and then headed over to chat with Bianca Meleo who was standing in front of the pak choi and lettuce mix and Chinese cabbage over at Silverbrook Farms. It turns out the greens were sort of a last-minute, fast-growing thing for them—something they've experimented with in the past, but that they just started seriously for the winter market this fall. Bianca's the farm manager, and the one you see at the markets alongside Andy a lot, and she's also a newly converted winter greens nut. After the terrible growing conditions in June and July, this winter's actually been better than the summer was for things like lettuce and cabbage and spinach, she says. She was telling me about how they keep they crops warm—how they plant them inside in greenhouses, but without any heat, and then cover them up with frost clothes to prevent moisture from landing on the leaves. This is what kills them—this getting wet and freezing. It actually isn't the cold temperatures, unless it gets so chilly that their roots freeze, which is pretty rare.

We also spent a lot of time chatting about what Bianca likes to do with the greens, which recently, has been very much focused on a pak choi-chicken combo, with avocado spread on sandwiches and peanut oil in stir-fries. She says it works because the pak choi is a little bit nutty, but also a little bit sweet. We talked about pak choi for so long, in fact, that you might have heard us talking about it on the radio today, right before my producer said something about me having a recipe for chinese cabbage and pak choi stir-fry for you today.

I do not.

Following a rather disheartening mishap involving a box of cornstarch and waaay too much white powder dumping into my wok and a tearful meltdown that I'd rather not discuss, that recipe is still a work-in-progress. So instead, what do you say we talk about that creamy balsamic dressing I mentioned up top instead? Because that has never let me down, and it is an equally good way to dress up your plate with green.

In fact, beyond Bianca's winning description, I don't know why I ever mentioned anything about pak choi stir-fries in the first place, because this dressing has been on my plate every day at noon for the past fourteen days straight, ever since I stocked up on greens at the Silverbrook Farms and Allen Farms stands. It takes all of about three seconds to make, and best of all, it is so good and so simple that drizzled over a bowl of top quality, sweet, winter greens, the two make a salad without any need for anything else. It isn't at all fussy, and it certainly doesn't involve a wok or any cornstarch.

Instead, it gets its thickness from heavy cream and a sweet, oozy balsamic glaze. The only other ingredient is olive oil, preferably a green, spicy, newish variety like the one we brought back from Italy, and then if you like, a pinch of salt. You mix everything together with a fork, the cream acts as an emulsifier and binds everything into a light brown, creamy river the exact color of a nice pair of suede boots, and that's it. You're done.

So the next time one of these winter markets is open—the one in Plymouth, or the new one starting this! Saturday! in Marstons Mills, or even if you live a little further afield the well established one in Providence—keep your eye out for the little green patches. Then buy out the supply as quick as you can and ask in your most fervent tone for them to Keep On Planting More.

CREAMY BALSAMIC DRESSING

This is so simple that I am a little bit embarrassed to offer it as a recipe, but what it lacks in grandeur it makes up for in taste. The important thing is to make sure that your base ingredients—since there are only three of them—are of top notch quality. The olive oil should be a greenish, almost spicy extra virgin, the newer the better. The balsamic glaze is that thick, syrupy balsamic you see at specialty food stores that costs an arm and a leg but is worth it because it goes a really long way. (We use a brand called Acetum that we found at Phoenix Fruits in Orleans.) As for the heavy cream, don't do something silly like substitute half and half. The consistency will be all off, and the dressing won't emulsify like it should. If you get the ingredients right, though, it's very hard to go off track. The measurements below are just approximate, so go ahead and experiment with the proportions until you get it to taste. I tend to do it by eye, so it changes every day.

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1 tablespoon balsamic glaze
salt to taste

Combine the first three ingredients in a small measuring cup, and whisk them together until they form a thick, creamy dressing. Add a pinch of salt, taste and adjust as necessary, and once you have the dressing where you like it, pour it over a big bowl of salad greens. Toss well, and serve at once.

The Local Food Report: the proof is in

Would you like to see something beautiful?

That is a salad I made on Saturday, January 23rd entirely from Massachusetts foods. The green curls are pea tendrils, from Allen Farms in Westport. The maroon slivers and chunks are pickled beets and onions leftover from a big batch our friend Tracy made for our wedding at the end of October, with veggies from her very own garden. She made the pickled carrots, too. The white blobs, believe it or not, are actually not marshmallows, but little Hannahbells. Oh! and I saved the best for last. Those little golden things? Real, live greenhouse-grown pear tomatoes. Debbie Barrett is very proud of those.

If anyone tells you it's impossible to eat locally in New England in the middle of January because you're going to contract scurvy or starve to death or accidentally stab your neighbor for his Florida orange, well, the proof is in the pudding, people. Or the salad. Or whatever. The point is, that rainbow dish up there should get them to pipe down.

Also, our area now officially has two—TWO!—winter farmers' markets. One in Marstons Mills slated to start next Saturday, February 6th at 10am sharp, and another already underway on the third Thursday of every month from 3:30 to 6pm at Plimoth Plantation. When I first heard about both of these, I did a little dance in my seat. The best part it, the Plimoth one even has an online ordering shop so that if you're going to drive all that way, you can make sure you get what you want.

When I first heard about the online store, I was actually a little bit wary to tell you the truth. I was at the annual Cape Cod Buy Fresh Buy Local meeting, sitting in the back drinking my friend Jessie's homemade cranberry syrup-seltzer infusion and trying not to make too much noise eating smoked bluefish, and these two very smart looking women from Plymouth pulled a computer and a laser pointer out. While they talked about the software, and how the farmers submitted what they had, and then got a report back after the customers had ordered about what to bring, I realized that the whole idea made me just the slightest bit nervous. The thing I like about farmers' markets, after all, is that they are by definition very low tech, and rather than involving computers and telephones and wireless internet and e-trading, they involve people and wicker baskets and carrots and dirt. I had this flash-forward nightmare vision of the local food movement going the way of Big Organics, and for a second my mouth got so dry I had to push away my plate.

I thought about their presentation a lot over the next few weeks.

Eventually, I decided that the only way to get over it would be to call them up and see if they might want to talk. And so I did—I got in touch with Barbara Anglin, the market organizer, and Sasha Purpura, one of the farmers—and last week I ended up walking around with my recording gear and my camera and a big bag of fresh carrots and Chinese cabbage and homemade granola in the Plimoth Plantation parking lot. Then I went inside, and the more we talked, the more I was convinced that online ordering was a good idea after all. Here's how they got me convinced.

For starters, they said that their main goal with the online store is to give more people better access to local food. That isn't really a mission statement I can argue with. Secondly, they pointed out that there are a lot of working parents—mostly mothers, so far as they've noticed, but fathers too—who work during market hours, and therefore can never, ever make it there to do the household shop for the week. Even if they have the money and are into it and are willing to pay the price, they either can't get there at all or get there so late that the eggs and the greens and the grapes and all the good stuff have completely disappeared. Also, Barbara and Sasha argued that the online store has the potential to eventually expand what the market has to offer, because Barbara gives all of the farmers a print out every week showing them who put what up and which items sold like hot potatoes and which ones didn't. The vendors will start to see holes or overlaps, Barbara very reasonably predicted, and then they'll start ramping up new varieties and scaling back in places where there's too much overlap. Ultimately, that could lead to a lot of new foods on our plates.


But the most convincing reason they offered is this: Even though the store is geared toward busy, working parents, and even though they estimate that ninety percent of the people using it are busy, working parents, after these busy people pick up their boxes, they still stick around to shop. They wander through the stalls, and say hello to the farmers they ordered from, and usually buy a few other things. In other words, it's the guarantee they're looking for, not a whole different experience. They have time to say hello, but not to arrive ready for a week's shop and find out nothing's there. That's a wonderfully reassuring thing.

As it turns out, a lot of other people think the online store is a good idea, too. There are a few other places using the exact same program, which was put together originally by a market in Plymouth New Hampshire. The New Hampshire folks were the first people to do it, back in 2006, when the Plymouth Area Renewable Energy Initiative decided to brainstorm ways to get people to buy more local food. The thought was that this, in turn, would decrease these households' overall energy use—and a group of local farmers suggested an online marketplace. That's how the first Local Foods Plymouth was born. Right now, there are about six or seven markets in Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, including the one in our Plymouth, using the software. There's also a different online ordering model—Massachusetts Local—at work in the western part of the state.

It's hard to say whether or not the idea will catch on out here. But based on how well it's doing up north, if I were you I'd take a peek.

By your hair

Sometimes I've wondered what it's like to be a vegetable that comes up by your hair. Can you see the hands when they're coming? Is the moment of picking precipitated by terrible dread?

I know I probably shouldn't admit this, but these are the sorts of dilemmas I like to mull over in the garden as I weed.

I went out to the cold frame to weed yesterday—believe it or not, (yes!) there are weeds—and found myself wondering over this as I contemplated pulling a radish. I gauged the size of the greens—nearly a foot high, and leafy. They looked full-bodied enough, though I knew there was

 likely to be little in the soil beneath. But I was curious, and so I pulled and was delighted with the little root I found.

This first root was a small radish—a very small radish, to tell the truth. But it wasn't so small as those wisps of carrots you sometimes pull; it had, at the very least, some girth. I took it inside and washed it down, pulled the dirt and snarls from its toes. I yanked off its hair in one swift grip, and scrubbed it down to a nice white coat.

I'd picked some greens outside too, and a pair of purple scallions, and discovered that between the three we had the makings for a salad. I washed the lettuce carefully, mixing a four season red with leafy green, sorrel, and mache. They were baby greens, roughly the length of my fingers, but they had plenty of flavor and good color. Next went the scallions, sliced into tiny, ringlet bites.

Finally, it came time for the radish. I cut off its roots and then its hair, and the body I chopped into slivers. A distinctly fresh smell filled the kitchen, an earthy scent with an air of minerals about it. I threw the tiny slices into the salad, crumbled a bit of goat cheese on top, and dressed it with salt and pepper and a bit of vinaigrette. Greek olives topped it off, and on this second to last day of the year, we sat down to eat our very own green salad.

YEAR'S END SALAD

Serves 2

2 cups mixed greens (red and green lettuce, mache, spinach, and sorrel)

1 small radish, sliced thin

2 scallions, sliced thin

2 ounces goat cheese, crumbled

2 ounces greek olives, pits removed

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon very sweet vinegar

1 tablespoon cider vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

Mix greens with radish and scallions in a medium size serving bowl. Top with goat cheese and greek olives. Mix oil, vinegars, and salt and pepper into a dressing, and drizzle over the salad. Toss and serve fresh. (This is excellent with winter soup.)

A shelter from the cold

Did I mention that there's a greenhouse outside?

I should have said something sooner, I know, but I'm just as surprised as you are. It's been a long time coming—since that crazed Saturday in August when I began planting for winter—but still, every time I glance outside, I can hardly believe it's there.

There were a few setbacks, to be sure. A tree fell on the garden in the midst of clearing the way; Grower's Supply sent the wrong size plastic, and a very short door frame, too. Damp leaves squashed a row of scallions; the carrots were planted too late; and the Vietnamese cilantro succumbed to cold before it could be ushered in.

But for a first try, I have to say I'd call the experiment a success. The spinach sprouts new leaves every day, the lettuce has begun to spiral, and the kale, though small, shows promise. The surviving brussel sprouts are just about ready for picking, and the radishes are gaining inches and leaves at an exponential rate.

Part of this, of course, is thanks to the seeds. The lettuce is a four season variety, the spinach a winter bloomsdale, and the radishes cold-loving nero tondo. But the stretch of plastic helps, too. On those nights when the temperature dips into the 30s and 40s, the garden sits warm beneath its watch.

We aren't quite there yet—next year, I'll plant with more organized walkways, I'll start the seedlings earlier, and I won't worry so much over density. I'll seed directly in the greenhouse for the more delicate plants like scallions and spinach, and I hope we'll have a real door. But all in all, for $800, I'd say it's an investment bound to pay off. In a January salad, that is.

BUYING & ERECTING A GREENHOUSE/COLD FRAME

We bought our kit from Grower's Supply. I can't say I'm raving about it—they got most of our order wrong, and then charged us extra for doing so. But, in the end, when we got the right pieces, it was quite a good kit. If you order from them, be sure to double check EVERYTHING on the phone. And order far in advance, and check the parts when you get them, before you start to build, just in case. That will save you a lot of frustration.

The construction is not a small project. It will take 2 able bodied people at least 2-3 days to complete. But once the frame is up, it's up, and taking the plastic on and off as the seasons change is easy.

Don't expect to erect the greenhouse over your plants. We did manage that, but I recommend putting it up in the spring, before you plant. Then you can plant your early seedlings inside, remove the cover when the weather gets nice, and put it back in place when it starts to get cold again. Winter seedlings (except the fragile ones) can be planted in trays, and then moved into the greenhouse once the summer plants have run their course and been pulled up, and the soil composted.

As for options besides plastic, there is a company called Moveable Greenhouses that makes gorgeous glass greenhouses out of Rockland, Maine, but they carry a hefty price tag. If I could afford to buy one, I would, but they are most certainly out of the range of the average grower. Someday, perhaps—it never hurts to dream.

Until then, good luck and happy planting!