Winter Solstice begins this Thursday, December 21. In Delaware this occurs at 11:27 am. In terms of daylight, this day is 5 hours, 31 minutes shorter than on Summer Solstice in June.

But, it also means every day after that will be just a little bit longer, even as we officially begin the first day of winter. From hereon, the skies begin to lighten and the angle of the sun begins to change to give us more direct sunshine. For me, it is like a little bonus to get me through the winter!

As we mentioned last week, this year Hattie’s Garden will operate as usual during the holidays and have our pickup/delivery service on both Saturday, December 23 and Saturday, December 30. We hope this fits your own schedule.

The order form next service, scheduled for Saturday, December 23 is now available online. While the cut-off for placing your order is Wednesday, December 20 at noon, we encourage you to order as early as possible since some items are sure to sell out. We will send out another reminder on Tuesday.

Holiday Suggestions

We’ve got some nice ideas for buying great local produce and artisan foods, including gift items.

• We are pleased to bring back Jenn’s Gourmet Pies this winter! Her dessert and savory pot pies are absolutely amazing and you won’t find anything like them elsewhere. She uses mostly organic ingredients, including organic flour and butter for the crusts, free-range meats and in place of sugar, Jenn uses agave or local honey.

• Plant Wisdom Within’s amazing herbal products make great gifts.

• Backyard Jams & Jellies make great stocking stuffers. Choose from over 50 flavors of jams, jellies, chutneys, mustards, including no-sugar added varieties.

• You can’t go wrong with raw honey from Baues’ Busy Bees hives.

• Duck eggs from Blackhog Farm or Twin Post Farm are the go-to-egg for bakers, making cakes rise higher and baked goods fluffier and richer. We like them for our scrambled eggs too. Of course, we also have plenty of free-range chicken eggs from Twin Post Farm.

• For holiday meals with family and friends, you might consider a Bohemia Lea free-range pork roast, beef-roast or free-range chicken. For holiday breakfast, don’t forget their breakfast sausages. Or you can head to the sea and have wonderful salmon, cod or rockfish from Alaskawild. And do you know why our meat is always frozen and not fresh during the winter season? This is because the meat is grown by farmers, employs sustainable methods on fresh pastures with constraints of the season of the year and the fresh growth of pasture.



• Hattie’s Garden is offering gift certificates which do not expire and can be used at any time during the year for anything we sell during our off-season service, as well as our produce, plants and flowers during the growing season. Contact Hattie directly by email to order. And don’t forget our own Suzanne Squires’ whimsical Stella the Cat blank greeting cards which make great stocking stuffers.

• Fill the table with vegetables from several of our vendors, including four different types of organically grown sweet potatoes and three kinds of garlic from Colchester Farm, plenty of fresh greens from Chesapeake Organic or Fresh Harvest, and a bag of salad kale or a bunch of Hakurei turnips from Hattie’s Garden.

• And you may need Portobella, Crimini, Shiitake mushrooms from Davidson’s Exotic Mushrooms.

• Chapel’s Country Creamery makes beautiful artisan cheese on their farm. They are the first Maryland farmers to have worked with their state officials to assure safe, quality production of on-farm cheese using raw milk from grass-fed cows.

• Finally, we know there are times you simply don’t want to cook and Patty’s Gourmet has some wonderful prepared food that will definitely get you through mealtime in style.

Remember the deadline for ordering is Wednesday at noon. Once you complete the order, you will receive a confirmation email listing all the items you ordered, along with an estimated total. You can reply to the order confirmation with any changes you may have, and you may email us with any additions or additional changes up until the Wednesday, noon deadline. A final invoice will be sent to you no later than Friday.

Thanks for patronizing Hattie’s Garden and all of our local hard-working vendors. We wish you the best for the holiday season and look forward to working to serve you well into the winter.