Spring already?
A bout of warm weather has come early in Knoxville. It is only February and we have already seen highs up in the 70’s. Due to the warm weather spring buds are starting to appear. The tender shoots of the irises we have in the front yard have sprung up. There are the tiniest of tiny flower buds on our beautiful dogwood tree. The bright yellow flowers of our forsythia bush are also starting to bud. But it is all too early!!! There is snow predicted for later next week which means everything will frost over and the tender buds will be ruined. We will do the best we can to cover them when there is a frost, but covering only does so much.
Bryan has a taken a second job helping a local hobby farmer tend to his massive array of vegetable and fruit plantings. The great thing about this job is that Bryan is getting paid to learn more about gardening. Woohoo! Today, as part of our Valentine’s Day date, we went to one of the local greenhouses and seed stores and bought some cold weather vegetables to plant. We are hoping for some sunny weather tomorrow so we can get out into the garden and start planting. This afternoon, I noticed that our brussel sprout plants produced a few more sprouts. They were hidden under the top leaves, but they look delicious. I think I will pick them and serve them with the pork tenderloin I am cooking for tomorrows dinner.
Speaking of pork tenderloin, Bryan and I found this great local farm (Laurel Creek Farms) that raises chickens, pigs, cows, goats, lambs, and ducks for meat. They set up shop in the parking lot of a local church and sell their delicious, pasture fed meet every Friday afternoon. This is the third week we have bought meat and eggs from them, and so far we are very impressed. I also recently found that there is a local dairy farm (Cruze Dairy Farm) that sells its milk at the local co-op that we shop at. We drank some of the whole milk this morning. WOW … it is so crazy deliciously good. I think it is the fact that the milk is not homogenized. Yum Yum!!! Ah … it feels so good to be buying locally raised and produced foods and supporting our local economy. Soon we’ll be eating super local … vegetables right out of our backyard!