In the Garden: Beautiful Veggies

All my focus has lately been on building the summer garden beds.  March snuck up on me this year!  I was supposed to be finished with most of it by now!  Every evening after I finish milking Matilda and the goats I hurry to fork up some of the cow's spilled hay and manure to build the beds with.  It's happening - gradually.  Of course all the carefully drawn out garden plans are being altered as I read more about planting millet and realize the real-life size of my garden - always something hard to estimate with off-hand paper sketches.  Because I want these beds to be permanent, I am making sure they are straight and have space for the wheelbarrow between the rows.

 Although the focus is not so much on the winter garden any more, it is still continuing to provide lovely vegetables that we harvest and eat daily.   Another cauliflower was ready - and some beautiful root vegetables - onions, turnips, carrots.  They all went into a delicious hot pot with home grown chicken stock, and some meatballs made from our grass-fed beef.

The second, and more ambitious, planting of kohlrabi has suddenly exploded, and I am trying to harvest them as much as possible before they get tough and woody.  So it's been kohlrabi, kohlrabi, kohlrabi....(my, that's a difficult word to type).

 I finally pulled the last of the turnips.  They were starting to go to seed.  I had very hastily planted them the second time, so they turned out small and runty.  It really does pay off to space them a foot apart.  The big ones we kept, but the runty ones went to the cows, goats and pigs.

We even got a surprise huge carrot among the Paris Market stubby carrots.  (they are supposed to be small and stubby).  And the second planting of daikons are almost ready!