Winter Farmers Market

The official end of the Wisconsin winter might have been last weekend?


While we might still have some cold days here in Milwaukee, this year's "Milwaukee County Winter Farmers' Market" ended on Saturday April 14th 2012. This farmers market runs from Nov 5th - April 14th, every Saturday from 8am-Noon. It's indoors, which is great for snowy days. When I went on April 14th, there was green vegetables, root crops, honey, wine, meat, fish, mushrooms, local coffee, jarred pickles, and some cool dog treats. Out side there was a tent selling seedling plants; peppers, tomatoes (so many varieties...), lettuces, herb, etc..

So what did I buy. Rushing Waters Fisheries located in Kettle Moraine had a deal on two fresh trout, smoke salmon, and salmon burgers that I couldn't pass up. While talking to Springdale Farm I bought some potatoes. My wife loves the pickled mushrooms over at River Valley and I really like their mixed mushroom deal. We just last night ate the incredible tasting lamb chops from Pinn-Oak Ridge Farms, Watch Steph's Snack Shack for the a blog about dish. 


Still not impressed, well visit the links bellow and see what else they had there. Remember just 7 more months before it starts again... that reminds me, I better start working on my vegetable garden before it winters comes back! ;)




Resources:
Official Milwaukee County Winter Farmers' Market


List of Producers at the Winters Farmers Market

More pictures from my visit 

testing Rocket Mass Heater

Rocket Mass Heater: Heat for your winter garden.

I back in August  tested a small version of a rocket heater using about $20 of fireplace bricks and a metal vent pipe. you can read more about how it works here. My test works, but clearly i need to do some more math with my air intake ratio, to make this work better.

Why make it better. maybe you've heard of my winter strawberry challenge.

Rocket stoves offer some advantages over cast iron stoves:

• 1/10 the wood needed
• cleaner air going out (less smoke)
• less costly to built

Winter Garden

Someone at work challenged me to grow strawberries in the winter. Well I said 'challenge accepted'.

The rules:

• No energy from the house
• located outside
• plants must produce red/pink strawberries.

I found someone replacing their windows and some old lumber, made a hotbed (4ft x 2ft). On sunny days it get up to 110F, on snowy days 35F. They have bloomed once already, but the berries died when they were green.

This isn't the last improvement to my frozen strawberry challenge. It is hopeful to see my plants survive with so little work.  More updates to come...