Since I haven’t been quite as busy as usual with the harvest due to this summer’s cool weather I’ve been thinking ahead. I’ve created a seasonal calendar so that I don’t miss things like blackberries this year! I hope you find this helpful, or at least entertaining. This is the rhythm that I follow as I try to eat seasonally from the fruits of mostly my own efforts and those of like-minded local farmers.
January
- Preserve lemons
- Make lemon, orange and lime marmalade and freeze cubes of juice for summer jams
- Start seed lists
- Order seeds!
February
- Start tomatoes and cole crops indoors
- Start new cover crops and chicken forage in garden
- Make onion jam
- Make applesauce and apple jelly with any apples starting to dry out
March
- Make enough soap and lotion to last through summer
- Take inventory of canned and frozen goods
- Host spring barter
- Make IPA
- Equinox!
- Get new chicks
- Start potatoes, peas, claytonia, sorrel, purslane, arugula, raab, spring lettuces outside
April
- Pickle or ferment asparagus
- Make rhubarb jam
- Freeze rhubarb juice for summer soda
- Move tomato starts outside under protection
- Start carrots, parsnips, radishes, dill, cilantro outside
- Fertilize flowering strawberries
- Hill potatoes
May
- May Day!
- Start squashes, beans and corn
- Dehydrate spring herbs and tea leaves
- Make herbal extracts
- Order lamb, pig and cow
- Pickup first chicken package
- Buy tuna from St. Jude
- Start mushrooms
June
- Make strawberry jam and dehydrate strawberries
- Pickle ginger shoots
- School out!
- Pickle or freeze peas
- Make raspberry jam and freeze berries
- Celebrate solstice!
- Start winter crops in trays
- Pickle and ferment beets
- Buy salmon
July
- Take out pea vines and feed to goats
- Dry mustard seeds
- Pickle and ferment remaining spring carrots, drench beds with beneficial nematodes and start winter carrots
- Make crab apple pectin
- Make applesauce from early apples (ginger gold, king or lodi)
- Dehydrate and can cherries
- Can peaches and peach salsa, dehydrate apricots and make preserves
- Beach trip!
- Direct sow remaining winter crops
- Braid garlic, dry onions, harvest early potatoes
- Dry mint, lemon verbena, lemon balm, chamomile, Echinacea, elderberry and jasmine flowers and raspberry leaves for winter teas
August
- Forage for elderberries and sumac, make syrup
- Make zucchini relish, bread and butter pickles and kosher dills
- Can, ferment or freeze eating beans, dry shelling beans
- Freeze or dehydrate blueberries
- Harvest late potatoes and peppercorns
- Can or dehydrate tomatoes, tomato sauce, ketsup and ferment salsa
- Go blackberry picking and make blackberry jam or syrup
- Make plum jam and dehydrate plums
- Plant turnips, rutabagas and cover crops or chicken forage
- Pickup last chicken package from farmer
- Pickup lamb
September
- School Starts!
- Dehydrate hardy ginger blossoms
- Ferment or can pickled or roasted peppers, red chile sauce, hot sauce and fermented green tomato enchilada sauce.
- Make beet and carrot kvass, sauerkraut, and kimchee
- Take out zucchini, beans and tomatoes plants
- Store winter squash, potatoes, onions and garlic in garage
- Amend strawberry bed and cut down fruited raspberry canes, compost and fertilize
- Make apple cider
- Can grape juice and dehydrate grapes
- Make kiwi jam and dehydrate kiwis
- Dry and store almonds and hazelnuts
- Press sunflower oil or dry flower heads to save seeds
- Order olives for fermenting
- Make elderberry syrup
- Equinox!
- Pickup pig and cow
- Make and can bone broth
- Stuff sausages
- Cure bacon, ham and prosciutto
- Smoke butt and other cuts
- Render lard
- Make cheese!
- Smoke feta and chipotles
- Attend fall barter fair
October
- Cure olives
- Make winter soap and lotion
- Make beeswax candles
- Forage for rose hips, make rose hip jam and honey
- Mulch strawberries
- Plant new fruit trees and vines
- Store apples and pears in garage
- Start Christmas Beer
- Make chow chow
- Make mustard
- Plant crocus for saffron, garlic, shallots and onions
- Make apple butter
- Move red wiggler worms inside
- Start indoor meal worms for winter chicken feed
November
- St. Martin’s Day – eat goose!
- Roast, puree and freeze winter squashes
- Make pumpkin butter
- Prepare Thanksgiving Feast
- Make gingerbread houses
- Make Christmas gifts
- Host Jul Gift Barter
- Forage for medlar, make paste or jam
December
- Go Caroling!
- Grandma arrives for two weeks – visit Santa, Candy Cane Lane, decorate tree, make cookies and candies
- Bake Lucia Bullar and celebrate Santa Lucia
- Solstice!
- Prepare Jul foods ahead of time: pickle salmon, make meatballs, prepare Johanson’s frestelse, make crackers and bread
- Midnight mass
- Glad Jul! 12 days of Christmas begin.
- Enjoy, knit, quilt, read the rest of winter away
