Work in the garden is never done. While many may think of winter as a time to make To-Do lists and dream of the bounty while flipping through seed catalogs, my winters are quite busy. I was pulling carrots at Thanksgiving, and there are still a few leaves of kale holding on after the New Year, ready to pick. While these items in the hoop house are the exception to fall and winter gardening, they do provide gourmet fair and are quite exciting from a northern gardening standpoint.
Yesterday I built another compost bin, giving me a total of six 4x4x4 bins. Three are full and aging, one is half full, and two are empty and waiting for the Composting Co-Op. To a bystander they're not pretty, but I know the gold they yield, and to me they shine. 
Other things to do in the garden in January? Building new beds, creating lattice supports, clearing blueberry bushes for new paths and beds, hauling wood down and out (Atlin cut some monster trees in the garden this fall), designing new spaces, making crop rotation maps, building bat boxes, researching amphibian habitats, getting nest boxes ready......Do you think I'm bored?
One thing I've learned trying to farm in Southeast Alaska is that you have to let go of your idea of farming. It's not endless rows and rototillers, watermelons or honey bees. It's not the overbearing tomato plants and 5-pound zucchinis. The breadth of what we can grow is limited compared to more fertile, warmer places, yet the variety that we can produce and procure is quite astounding. Hunting and gathering are a big part of farming here--definitely unconventional farming, yet it is farming. All you do is the harvest and preparation/preservation aspect--you just show up to what the land and sea have already sowed and cared for. If we acknowledge this as Southeast farmers, gardeners, and eaters, we can really broaden our production and localize our plates. Here, the forests and oceans are as vital to sustainability as our garden plots themselves, and the more knowledge and practice we have with this unorthodox method of farming, the more we will be astonished and self-fed.
