February is the cruelest month for Oklahoma gardeners. Some would say August when temperatures often are above 100F, but I don't think so. We still have the beautiful months of September and October to look forward to. In February, we have days on end of gray skies. The Oklahoma winter landscape in its stark raiment of brown and gray is beautiful, but only when topped with blue. Today, my friends, blue skies are smiling at us, and although my weather station says we're in negative numbers -10F--that can't be right can it? I've never seen it that cold. I see that we are supposed to top out at 33F. That means melting snow!!! For those of you who don't live in Oklahoma, we were hit with two major snowstorms in a two week period. Oklahoma City didn't get as much snow this time, but Guthrie received at least six to...

This week seemed extraordinarily long with the snow and extreme cold, but the other night as I went to bed, I kept thinking about homesteaders who once farmed this land, and the American Indians, many of whom were forced to move here. Note, however, before the removal of the Five Civilized Tribes, several tribes already occupied much of Oklahoma. Oklahoma has an interesting and diverse history, and I took a small flight of fiction this week. Please bear with me as we visit my heroine, Elizabeth Barrows, and her family on a snowy morning in Oklahoma Territory. There were five Oklahoma land runs, but the first and most famous was held just outside what became Guthrie, the Territory Capital, on April 22, 1889. In Elizabeth's world, it's now 1904. Oklahoma is not yet a state. We found our 160 wooded acres of red land about ten miles outside of the...

Yesterday, at least twelve and a half inches of white stuff fell on central and north central Oklahoma. Tulsa got even more snow, but we're all just glad we don't live in southeast Oklahoma where they had ice. I'll take snow any day over ice. It's beautiful, but dangerous as many who have decided to drive discovered. Bill and his crews are out plowing in Oklahoma City, and he said yesterday, they could hardly plow for pulling out drivers. He reports that the highways look good, but city streets are a mess. This snow was the type which blew, and we have snowdrifts all the way to the top of the fence. I know the people in the northeastern U.S. are probably laughing at us, but our norm is one to two inches of the fluffy stuff (and in some years, none at all). At the Red Dirt Ranch though,...

Did you ever want to buy and eat local, but just didn't know how? Were you too busy or too intimidated to ask? I'm not sure what I expected to find when I drove to south-side Oklahoma City for the Oklahoma Food Co-op's annual meeting. They were having an open house, and all members and the public were invited. Together, we shared food and fellowship, and it felt as though the years of the world wide web were far, far away. You can join the co-op for $35.00 a year, a small price to pay to reach at least eighty different made-in-Oklahoma producers. Nearly everything you could want is offered from soap (lavender and/or goat's milk), meat (lamb, beef, bison and goat), poultry (chicken, turkey and eggs), dairy (butter, buttermilk, cheese, etc.) I've ordered two months now, and everything I received was of the best quality. It was a joy...