Still Harvesting

All summer it was easy to go outside.  An occasional thunderstorm or the heat of the day would drive us in, but we were out every day.  Now in the fall, there are more stormy days than nice ones.  The rain has stopped but now the winds are so high that we don't dare get on a ladder.  The work on the shed will have to wait.

This morning I did some harvesting.  The artichoke plants we started from seed have grown huge and this is our second cutting.  The plants are perennial in milder climates, but I'm going to bury them in mulch and try to keep them over the winter.

Some of those broccoli plants are still producing little heads down underneath the main growth.   There is enough for dinner tonight.

As I was walking through, I noticed some carrots that I had forgotten about.  They have grown huge.  I suspect they are past the the tender/sweet stage, but they'll still be good in stew.  We have a bed of little carrot plants that I'm hoping will get decent sized before they stop growing.  I've heard of people over-wintering carrots in the ground and that they get actually get sweeter as it gets colder.  We're going to give it a try.  So far they aren't big enough to bother with, and I don't know how much growing they have left this fall.

We are three weeks from Christina's due date.  I am nervous about being the human responsible for her safe delivery, but we have the vet's cell phone number and Jerseys are supposed to have easy deliveries.  Initially she will give colostrum, which is only good for baby cows, but we'll milk her anyway.  Jerseys give much more milk than a calf can deal with and it's unsafe for the cow or the calf not to milk her right away.  Inside of a week it will have changed to regular milk.  In anticipation, I got some cheese cultures that were on sale.  I think Christina is anxious to get back to her molasses grain that we only give her when she's being milked, the stuff that we call her candy.