The End Of Persephone Period, Brighter Days Ahead!

Greetings CSA Members! The end of January can feel like the coldest, most difficult time of winter. With the holidays over and spring planting dates still months away, it can seem like winter will never end. But it helps me to remember that at the time of the solstice, in mid-December, the days started getting longer. Each day we gain a couple minutes of sunlight.

We are coming up on another milestone during the first week of February when the “Persephone Period” ends and we will enjoy over 10 hours of daylight each day.

Connor Dunn summed it up so well in his 2022 newsletter, I'm going to quote his summary here: In Greek Mythology, Persephone, who is known as the goddess of spring growth, is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter. The story goes that one day, as Persephone was picking flowers in a meadow, she was abducted by Hades and brought to the underworld to be his bride. When Demeter, goddess of agriculture, learned of her abduction, she searched night and day for her, being exhausted from the search, all the agricultural crops withered and died.

Eventually, Zeus got Hades to release Persephone back, but before she left, Hades tricked her into eating pomegranate seeds. Pomegranate seeds were known as the food of the dead. So, Hades had a claim to keep Persephone. It was decreed that Persephone would return to the underworld for four months each year.  While Persephone is in the underworld, Demeter mourns and the world turns to winter.

The relevance to vegetable farming is that if daylight hours are under 10 hours, plants are in a “suspended animation” where growth pretty much stops. As a four season farm, we have to work around this period. Going into winter, we aim to have veggies about 75% mature before the Persephone Period. And once we reach early February, the potential for growth will return as well! The spinach will start growing again, ever so slowly. We'll begin putting seeds into soil in about 45 days.

This milestone always lifts my spirit, along with the solstice, as it somehow feels so hopeful to know that we are gaining daylight every single day. And in the same way that I start planning for winter tunnels as early as July in order to establish crops before the Persephone Period, I spend the cold days of January making careful plans for the growing season to come, knowing that we are marching slowly towards the 16 hour sunny days of June.

Gratefully,

Abby