Winter Gardening 101

Here's how to garden in winter in Western Montana.  Build yourself a greenhouse -- a very big one in the case of Val and Paul Dannels' structure on a farm north of Hamilton -- and winterize it in the Martha's Vineyard "Solviva" manner (http://www.solviva.com/).  That means, in part, building big south-facing windows angled from ceiling nearly to the floor, a north wall of three tiers of tubs holding some 18,000 pounds of sun-warmed water, more warmth from air in an adjacent hen house  circulated through underground pipes to "help keeping frost out of the gravel," says Val, and a big wood-burning stove (nicknamed Sasquatch, in this case) taking the chill off in extra-cold weather. This is Montana, after all.

Mustard greens flourishing in Valerie Norman Dannels' winter-gardening greenhouse.

Whew!  It makes me tired just thinking about the work that went into this.  But Val and Paul have worked tirelessly and, just in the last year, taken their gem of a raised-bed, organic greenhouse to the commercial level, calling it The Winter Garden at Woodside Farm and selling everything from arugula and kale, to spinach and Swiss chard.  Abundant herbs and a few mid-winter Sun Gold tomatoes are thrown in for good measure.  Val takes orders for the greens mostly by email (1valpal@gmail.com) and harvests them on Friday mornings, selling from noon to 5 p.m. on wintry Friday afternoons.

Val in her greenhouse with the builder, her husband Paul.

I try to get to Val's every Friday.  Her spinach is impeccable.  (Tonight we're using it in a New York Times recipe called Penne with Mushroom Ragout and Spinach, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/health/penne-with-mushroom-ragout-and-spinach.html?_r=0).  Her arugula is tangy in stem as well as leaf.  Lettuces are so fresh that they may last two weeks, if carefully washed, dried and refrigerated in a dry spinner with a paper towel or two.  Val usually throws some dill into the lettuces for extra flavor.  And if a plant is about to bolt -- such as cilantro was on my last visit -- she chucks that in for free. We made two batches of yummy guacamole with it, plus a dinner of chicken tacos.

Val's spinach -- crisp and curvaceous -- in one of my smaller mixing bowls.

A broader view of Val's greenhouse, with Sasquatch the stove in the middle. (Paul is relocating the stove much closer to the water wall, as I write this. He wants to straighten the stove pipe and also make room for another raised bed).

And here's an extra, international kick to this story: Val is British, daughter of the late film director Leslie Norman (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0635554/bio) and herself an exile from behind the cameras and scripts of L.A.!  We sat in folding chairs near Sasquatch the other day as snow fell on Bitterroot mountains just across the road to talk about her path to this place.

"I stepped off the plane in Kalispell," she says, of a first trip to Montana for film work, "and I felt like there was a magnet holding me. As soon as I stepped foot on the ground, I said, 'I belong here.'

"It wasn't the mountains," she adds.  She had "hated living in California" and had survived "a very unhappy marriage" there.  "Being an islander," she says, "I needed water around me. But after that first trip, I always thought, 'Well, I'll end up in Kalispell some day.'

"Years later I was introduced to the Bitterroot Valley," Val says.  "And it was so beautiful, I thought that all those rocks and pine trees must have been placed there. It's like it was landscaped.  Someone had to tell me, 'No, that's the way it's always been.'" She laughs at herself.  Settling here two years ago on 54 acres, she put 40 of them into conservation along the wild and meandering Bitterroot River.   And she met and married Paul Dannels.

It was her daughter-in-law who suggested that they try a winter-hardy greenhouse as a project, "because how can I have gone from spending all my days so busy on a film set and come to this beautiful part of the world and not know what to do?" Val asks.  She's since learned to paint and carve.  And to garden in winter.  Paul followed the Solviva greenhouse plans and "built this all himself, practically," she says. "I thought, 'Well, it will keep us active in our old age.'  It makes me get up and go outside.  I can't just ignore it.  It won't just go away.  It's the reason to do something that couldn't be ignored."

Small leaves of Swiss chard get added to Val's lettuce mix.

"That first season was real trial and error," she says. "During that first season, I thought, ' this is never going to work.  I got so depressed.  What have I done?  That soon changed when things started to grow.  And I've met so many wonderful people through this."  So much so that she had to send out a cautionary email: "This Friday, we will be a little short of produce.  I practically harvested down to the stalks last week, so things haven't had a lot of time to catch up."

In case you're interested, many of her seeds for such produce come mail-order from Harris Seed (http://www.harrisseeds.com/), she says, and many of them come from the wide variety in a Hamilton gardening shop called Sam's Spade (http://www.samsspade.com/location-info/).

Local also is how she likes to keep her garden-free summers.  "I traveled so much with my parents when my Dad was directing that I just love camping and fishing around here."