The Minnesota Farm Woman

This is the time of the year that I throw another log on the fire, turn the heat lamp on in the chicken coop and sit by the fire looking at my seed catalogs.   The colorful pictures and mouth-watering descriptions on a cold and dreary winter’s day seem to brighten things up a lot and make it seem almost like summer. Who can resist the newest “crisp disease-resistant stringless” green bean  or “sweet, crunchy and nearly seedless” cucumber?  I can’t. I can’t resist any of them.  I collect seeds. I collect a lot of seeds.  I am almost a seed hoarder. It starts each January when those tempting catalogs arrive, and I order “just a few” packages of seeds. “Just a few” can add up to quite a lot when one is ordering from five different catalogs. Soon after seed catalog time, the local stores put up their tempting displays each spring, and I’m looking for more.  I can spend hours reading the backs of the packages on when to plant, where to plant and number of days to germination. You would think that reading up on all this information would give me an encyclopedic knowledge of gardening,  but I soon forget everything that I read. I also forget just how many seeds I already have, so I pick up a few more. This would probably be a good time to mention the fall sales on vegetable seeds. Since I can’t resist a bargain of any type, I often come home with more than a few packages of seeds at 50% off. Late last fall, I ran into a sale at a local garden center where they were selling seeds for one cent a package. ONE CENT! Never mind that all they had left was chervil and catnip, I bought 25 packages at that bargain-basement price, and I don’t even own a cat.  Perhaps I am a little bit beyond the “almost a seed hoarder” stage.  So here I am on a snowy winter afternoon, reading the seed catalogs and trying to make up my mind about just what kind of zucchini I should order. Yes, I know I have nine packages of zucchini seeds of all varieties, and yes, I know that the “buttery taste like you’ve never had” cannot possibly really taste like butter because it is zucchini, but I think I should buy a couple of packages, just in case, and maybe some of those heirloom pumpkins while I’m at it.  When I’m done with my order, I’m going to check out my cookbooks (another thing I just can’t resist) to find out just what the heck I can make with chervil. I hear it goes well with eggs. I have a lot of eggs because I am probably pretty close to being a chicken hoarder, too.  It’s a strange, seedy kind of life, but I’m happy to live it, chervil, chickens and all.