Scallions

A few years ago, I bought a packet of High Mowing onion seeds. I meant to buy seeds for yellow onions, but these Ever-Hardy Bunching Onions only make themselves into scallions. But they're perennials, and every year they make more of themselves and I give some away. The best part, though, is that they come up all by themselves in the spring. Even through the snow.

So last night, less than a week after walking over my raised-bed circle garden, oblivious to its existence under three feet of snow, I picked some scallions for supper. They were just beginning to straighten themselves up and they weren't pretty, but they were green food, from the farm.

Now, we eat stuff from here all the time. I have a freezer full of Keeko, the bull, and corn and berries from the garden. There are potatoes in the basement jars of jam in the pantry. And then there's the milk, eggs and ice cream, of course. But we take that stuff for granted. In April, the scallions are special. They don't so much mark the beginning of the growing season as the promise of it. I've got big plans this year, for enough lettuce for the family reunion (a week-long camping trip for about thirty people), for onion braids to last the whole year, cucumbers for pickles and corn in succession plantings for a month of corn-on-the-cob. I have plans like this every year, and every year my garden gets overrun with weeds and things rot on the vines. This year, though, I think I might actually be able to get it all picked and frozen and canned. I mean, if I can grow scallions through the snow, anything is possible.