In Great Britain, the Hungry Gap used to mean the time between when a farmer’s stored food started to run low and when the garden began to produce again. Here in Northern Ohio we have similar growing seasons as Great Britain, so I’m learning about our own version of The Hungry Gap, which my family now calls ‘The Boring Gap’.
I think I should tell you a little about my family. I moved to Ohio from Rockford, Illinois almost three years ago with my three adult daughters, (two of which are disabled,) my grand daughter, and my oldest daughter’s fiance. Since moving here, two more grandchildren have been born, meaning there are eight of us now.
We live on a little more than 2 acres, and our goal is to raise as much of our own food as we can. We have a garden that we increase in size each summer. We have some chickens for eggs, a couple of rabbits, meat chickens, and last summer we raised pigs for meat. Soon our garden will be full of asparagus, peas, salad greens and strawberries. But that is a month or more away, and right now there is almost nothing growing that we can pick to eat.
Before I started gardening, I would have thought that a hungry time for gardeners would be in mid-winter. But I’m finding that if I have canned and frozen and dried my produce as it ripens, mid-winter is a time of plenty. In December, the pantry is full of stored home-canned food, the freezer is brimming with meat and produce, and bags of dried fruit and herbs fill bins in the cupboard. A closet by the back door stores winter squash, apples, carrots, parsnips and potatoes. There is so much food in the winter!
In the roots cupboard, I was able to store carrots, potatoes, parsnips and several varieties of winter squash. By February, though, the carrots and parsnips were long gone, and some of the onions had soft spots. The potatoes left were rubbery and sprouting, and if cooked tasted oddly sweet. Without those basics, it got harder to make meals. It was then that I relied on the freezer foods.
While the peas had done well last spring, the lion’s share of them never made it to one of the two large chest freezers. They were eaten just as fast as they ripened. Luckily, our green bean tunnel was a powerhouse, and produced a large bucket of beans at least once a week from July till frost. Many of them got eaten fresh too, and some got pickled as dill beans, but gallons of them got frozen. We held off eating the frozen green beans until most of the fresh vegetables were gone. After a couple months of root vegetables, the bright green beans tasted so good.
All winter we also had the home canned food. We put up many quarts of salsa, chili soup base, and canned tomatoes, plenty of dill pickles, and dill beans and even dill carrots. Any vegetable that we had more than we could eat got canned or frozen.
While my fruit trees are not yet producing, the neighbors’ four apple trees were heavy with apples, and they said we could pick all we wanted. So we did. I also plucked up courage and asked a couple times when I saw unpicked and fallen fruit in my area. Both times the owners didn’t want the fruit, and in exchange for us picking it and raking up the fallen mess, we got bushels of peaches, plums and pears for a couple hours of work. Even the fallen fruit got used, because we took it home for the pigs and poultry. By the time the first snow came, we had the pantry and half the kitchen cupboards full of home canned fruits and veggies and both freezers full to the brim with meat and produce.
But now it is April, and we’ve eaten all the ‘regular’ food. The freezer has all the odd vegetables left, like bags of grated zucchini that I thought would be nice for the loaves of zucchini bread I never made. Blanched swiss chard that I was going to add to soups and casseroles, but I always forgot. And a couple bags of frozen green tomatoes that I was going to turn into green tomato cake, but never did. There is also the odd meat that is left, like the two pig tongues and livers (ew.) and some smoked trotters, some fish my son in law caught last summer, and a stewing hen. It is going to take some ingenuity to turn pig tongues, green tomatoes and grated zucchini into something that doesn’t sound like some kind of cruel April Fools Day meal.
The canned food cupboard is a little better. I still have some applesauce, sliced apples, plums and pears, and way too many jams and jellies. Why did I think I needed 20 jars of plum jam? And 10 jars of watermelon jelly? I don’t think anyone needs that much watermelon jelly.
As far as fresh food goes, I have one last butternut squash from the garden. That’s it.
Fortunately for us, about 3 miles away is an orchard that is open year round. They still store their produce all winter long in coolers and you can go in on an honor system and take bags of produce from the cooler and leave cash in the can bolted to the counter. Right now they have red onions, apples, pears, and potatoes, all from last fall. The apples are still crisp, and they have a cidery taste from their long wait. The pears are brown and ugly but taste sweet and mealy. The potatoes are big and still have the dirt on them, and taste a little nutty. Since I don’t have a root cellar to store my own produce for several months, I was very happy to be able to go once a week to grab some local fruit all winter long.
While we don’t strictly eat only what we grow, we do try hard to eat all that we grow. We want to only purchase what we need to make our own food into good meals. That means that this time of year our food is pretty boring because we are using up the last of the frozen veggies and canned goods, thus ‘The Hungry Gap’ or as we like to call it ‘The Boring Gap’.
Though if I do figure out how to use up those pig tongues, steamed swiss chard and the jelly in a couple meals, we might have to call it ‘The Weird Gap’ or ‘The Godawful Gap’ depending on how it turns out…