Spring Is - Actually - Here

 

Last night at midnight, I was outside, once again, trying to wrestle enough wood into the house to fill the woodstove full enough to produce heat through the night. Our furnace is still non-functional; and as is my wont when I’m out rangling firewood in the dark and very cold hours, I was audibly swearing about how that inanimate object – which was not so very inanimate as I was trying to move it – was not cooperating, and mentally cussing out the Husband who had, once again, gone to bed without bringing in anywhere near enough wood.  His enjoyment in playing pioneer man in our furnaceless house has fallen off significantly in the past six weeks, and with it, his enthusiasm about hauling in firewood. 

And my pioneering spirit, which when I was younger enjoyed such a challenge, never kicked in this winter – instead, I’ve just been cold, and crabby, and crabbier, and thinking a lot about crying. 

Then I heard it: a woodcock, buzzing his mating call, in spite of the cold air and snow still covering the ground. Suddenly I didn’t mind being out in the cold and dark – a woodcock buzzing means  Spring is here! – until I’d finally wrestled the wood indoors and my back started its post-wood-hauling ache.

But it made me think. If the woodcock thinks there’s enough bare ground to build a nest…and it’s been as warm as it has been lately…and the snow’s off the two raised beds next to the house on the south side…then maybe…just maybe…possibly…I could dig the parsnips.

Morning routine: Cats come up to my bedroom and yowl until I wake up, open the door, plop Catman onto my bed, and fish the plastic baggie of Catman crunchies out and hand out snacks. By the time they’re happy and leave, I’m thoroughly awake. I try reading myself to sleep again because it’s really quite early, but usually have no luck. I get up, dispose of the crunchy detritus, head downstairs. Let the cats out. Start the woodstove fire. Cuss the Husband out mentally, because there’s still only the couple of sticks of wood leftover from what I hauled in last night. Put some clothes on, go haul some more. Rue my aching back.

Let the cats in, hand out pills (treats and real pills for Catman, treats I call “happy pills” for Biscuit), refill stove-top water pot, vaporizer, and water a few dry plants. Get the cats their breakfast. Down cellar: clean out cat litter boxes (four, always needing clean-out, morning and night – Catmandoo is a true man, and you wouldn’t believe what he’s capable of producing), fill the plastic containers I use to carry birdseed out to the wart – two of sunflower seed, one of mixed nuts and fruit, one of cracked corn, one of scratch feed for the turkeys, if they show up again – and head back upstairs and out onto the wart to pour out seed onto the railings, and scatter the scratch feed on the ground below. 

This morning, a little brave little chipmunk was sitting on the wart stairs stuffing his cheek pockets as full of nuts and seeds as possible as fast as possible. This is another sign of Spring – chipmunks semi-hibernate in winter, waking on and off to eat food they’ve stored in their burrows before dropping back into sleep. If a chipmunk is up and out and eating birdseed in the still-cold air, hibernation is over, unless the weather changes radically, and Spring is arrived. 

I grabbed my hand trowel and headed down the steps, causing the chipmunk to scoot off. 

This is the first time the hand trowel has been out since late fall, and I’d abruptly dragged it out of its hibernation and it wasn’t sure it wanted to go. The first raised bed is just steps from the wart stairs. I tried plunging my trowel into it, but no – it was frozen solid except the top inch, and my arm, and trowel, bounced back. Hmmm. Grumph. The raised bed next to it, however – all around the edges closest to the cement blocks that are the walls of the bed - the earth was soft and I could move it. And in a moment, I was able to reach in and grab a parsnip and wrestle it out! And then another; and another; all around the happy edges. Two inches closer to the center, the ground is still hard as a rock.

I gathered my large handful of parsnips by the roots and stood up, then covered the two parsnip beds with old screens to keep the cats from getting in and digging their own holes, for their own purposes. I noticed that my aching back was suddenly feeling at least 50% better than it had been before I started parsnip-wrestling. 

While moving old screens to cover this bed, I did the first of this year’s weeding – there are strawberry plants gone wild in my garden beds that have to come out. For a moment, I let myself wonder whether, in a week or two, I’d dare risk planting the cold-weather crops, long before their usual time: beets, broccoli rabe, lettuce, peas, fava beans, more parsnips. Hmmm.

Took my treasure into the kitchen, rinsed off the dirt, and sorted them into two piles, one to take to Mom who will be as surprised and thrilled as I am at the early harvest.

I considered saving our share for supper, but no – these were breakfast! 

I don’t even peel them, just scrub and scrape off the tiny air-rootlets, cut off tops and bottoms, then slice them the long way, into matchsticks. The way to cook overwintered parsnips, which become sweet and lovely in their frozen beds, is to sautee them in butter – lots of butter – until some get crispy, and all get soft and a little golden. Then grind some salt over them – don’t sprinkle, grind, or use flakes – and try to keep from inhaling them so fast you can’t really enjoy precious bite of them.

Over-wintered parsnip harvest is brief and mysterious. One never knows what will be there – big roots, little roots, crooked roots, straight roots, no roots, or roots nibbled and gnawed away by chipmunks and mice? One has to keep checking the ground and grab them out before any other critter who also loves sweet root gets to them, and before they put all their energy into making new foliage, which will, surprisingly, show early growth when you pull away the old dead leaves, even when the roots are frozen solid in the ground. Once the foliage is fully into production, the roots get hard and bitter. If you want to keep your own seed, you must sacrifice some of your harvest to this new growth and the flowers and seeds that will follow.

If you buy seed, you must sow it in hope and faith and ward off despair: parsnip seed is notoriously delicate, hard to germinate, and not rarely, won’t germinate, or germinates badly. It takes forever – weeks – to germinate; and needs to be planted in relatively rich soil. Not near the compost bins, I learned that lesson a few years ago when the winter mice ate all the roots below the snow, leaving only enough of the tops to make me expect a wonderful harvest, and left me in tears when I discovered they’d already been eaten. Two falls ago, the chipmunks ate all the two beds of parsnips overnight, before the first frost arrived, and there was nothing all that long winter to hope for.

Overwintered parsnips are treasure. Even a good harvest lasts only a week or so. 

Overwintered parsnips taste like freedom, spring, winning, joy. Overwintered parsnips drive out despair. 

Overwintered parsnips are magic.