Definition of
larder according to Merriam Webster dictionary:
1: a place where food is stored : pantry
Larder. I like this word. It seems to encompass the idea of a real food supply. Today, pantry most often means a few shelves of boxed mixes and canned foods. A larder is food security. A larder gets you through. A larder is independence. A larder is a rebellion against processed food and the industrial food machine. Heck, a larder is a revolution. Every time a big snow is expected, people run to the store to buy frozen pizza and milk. We hunker down and eat real food.
The larder is complete here at the farm. A lot of hard work, planning, sweat, and tired limbs went into this year’s larder, as always. The payoff is well worth it and the process is even more worth it. My larder, a back porch taken over for food and equipment storage, with the addition of a chest freezer in the garage, is full to the brim. Tomatoes, peaches, apples, blueberries, cherries, tomatillos, cider, grape juice, pears, relishes, pickles, beets, peppers, myriad jams, and more line the canning shelves. More canning jars hold dehydrated food and herbs. Mesh bags are full of onions, garlic, potatoes, apples, flint corn, sweet potatoes, and butternut squash. Other staples that can be purchased locally like honey and buckwheat flour are in there too. The freezer is full of berries, roasted and peeled poblano chili peppers, lamb, pork, chicken, and beef. Other staples have been purchased wholesale–like rice, oils, various flours, and nuts.
The majority of our food for the year is here right now. I certainly will not buy meat until next fall. We are still harvesting from covered outside beds and the high tunnel. I am picking broccoli, radishes, lettuces, spinach, Jerusalem artichokes, kale, chard, dandelion greens, mizuna, collards, mustard greens, celery, carrots, beets, arugula, parsley, and pansies. I am pretty sure my fingerling potatoes are at a harvestable size, but am letting them keep growing while we enjoy our summer potato crop. We are still eating the last of the cherry and slicing tomatoes as they slowly ripen on the counter. When they are gone, we won’t have another “fresh” tomato until next summer.
Winter meals are pretty easy when you have an organic supermarket in your house. Today we had roast chicken with home-grown root veggies, home canned peaches, homemade biscuits with chocolate cherry jam, and just picked broccoli. Home is the unifying word here. I know what was in everything because I made it all. With the exception of the biscuits, and some of the jam ingredients, all of it came from our farm. A meal like that is more than food, it is sustenance. It is a meditation on self-reliance. It is a celebration of life and honoring of the dead.
The pictures show the farm as it is now, heading into winter. For the first time ever, we have really cleaned up the outside gardens. They have all been cleared, mulched with a mixture of compost and garden mulch, and seeded with cover crops to reduce erosion and improve tilth. We planted more fruit in our orchard as well. We added a fig, cherry, and Asian pear trees to our orchard as well as 2 more grapes. that brings us up to 3 apples, 2 cherries, 2 pears, 1 fig, 2 peaches, 8 grapevines, 4 blueberry bushes, 2 aronia bushes, strawberries, and too many raspberries and blackberries to count.
Small Wonder Nutrition 
