Harvest - MONDAY? 1.3.11

Oh boy, not starting the New Year with a good record am I?

Well, I have no real garden harvest to report. When I got back home all my romaine heads had bolted leaving only 2 buttercrunch and 2 simpson lettuces. I also found a hole in the ground from the one onion that was bulbing. There was no other trace of it. There is a rogue squirrel that has been yelling at me from my fence and tearing up my screen. I may have to have a little discussion with him. I believe that he and I will be butting heads even more in the spring. I'll have a complete utter meltdown if my peaches disappear like last year.

I don't eat cabbage but one of the 4 heads is getting close to harvesting and I'm excited by this mainly because it's been a month since anyone ate much of anything from the garden. The only other things still green in the garden are the strawberry plants, the 5 remaining onions and a few peas.

We did harvest a doe however for the freezer. She was much smaller than most of our does and therefore a weak link in the herd. 80% of the meat was donated to the local homeless shelter so don't feel bad that we manage a herd. We are also feeding the hungry. We were unsuccessful at taking the hog we wanted and not looking to take a sow or piglet we left the rest of the pigs be. The spring looks like it will find us busy building a trap for the cretan. He's aggressive and we won't tolerate it. Being full grown and not castrated the meat will not be wonderful so we'll donate to the homeless shelter again and take only what we want - some bacon, sausage, fat back for soup and a ham for the spit. As the piglets mature to around 100-150 pounds we'll consider trying to sort out the sows we want to keep and by fall our freezer (with any luck) will be stocked, and the homeless shelter will have enough hocks, jowls and fatback for a whole year. :-) I'm interested in splitting if someone has some trained dogs to run, or for that matter the means to clean - smoke/cure a large amount of meat at once.

Plans for the first spring planting are coming along. Richard is however not cooperating with getting the second raised bed going. I'm not sure I'm going to continue to wait on him for this one. I want it finished by the end of January. One way or the other.

Linking in to join Daphne (Late again) for Harvest Monday. Make sure you stop by and see the harvest still going on, and how people are using their stored harvests now!

Happy New Year everyone!

'Till next time!
~Barbie