All hail King Kale

So, today I ate the last of this year’s kale – sob.  I have to say I’m going to miss it, although maybe not for a couple of weeks.  I’ve eaten mountains of the stuff this year, and prior to February I’d never eaten kale before!  Once I started harvesting my own I know I probably ate a few kale bugs too. I was always rescuing spiders after I harvested leaves – the little ones set up house in the folds of the kale – and I’m sure I missed a few.  And all the green caterpillar worms.  When they got big enough to see, I’d of course pluck them off (and gave them to the chickens), but when they were small…well, I have a feeling I probably ate a few.  And aphids too.  A little protein here and there.

My favorite recipe, hands down, was the massaged kale with Gorgonzola salad.  It was easily the tastiest, and pretty easy to make, kept fairly well (24 – 48 hours) and best of all used up a few quarts of kale leaves.  Like, two large bunches.  When things were in full swing, I could make this salad a couple times a week and not make a dent in the kale supply.  I finally pulled up the remaining plants last week, though.  They had survived all the bugs and slugs dining on them, and several wickedly hard frosts, but in the end were getting thrashed by the dogs, since Daisy and Pal discovered that a mostly fallow garden is a great place to play – something about all that soft soil to chase each other in, and of course kale and rutabaga leaves to chomp on (Daisy and Farley, and the sheep, love the rutabaga leaves).  For now the rutabagas are all that’s out there, aside from my herbs, a few stray beets, and way too much Swiss chard.  I am so sick of chard that I’m just picking it now to give to the chickens.  The three monster rutabagas left look reminiscent of the mandrake babies in Harry Potter (only bigger) – I’m almost afraid to pull them up.

It’s been a busy month since my last post, with lots of yard work, as always.  The leaves have all fallen and I’ve been slowly working on raking the pasture, sending out bushels and bushels of leaves in the yard waste recycling.  It was nice last weekend, as I raked I could see a large flock of trumpeter swans in the fields across the street, and hear them honking greetings to newcomers flying in as I raked.  There are still masses of leaves out there, and a few bushels will go into the garden, along with the manure and hay mix from the sheep shed (plus their direct deposits, when they’re out gleaning), now composting nicely under a tarp (partly to keep the dogs out of it, partly to keep from getting too wet), and manure/straw mix from the chicken coop.

The bees seem to be doing okay so far.  There has been some die-off, with dead bees outside the hive and on the screen at the bottom of the hive.  If we get a halfway warm day and the sun manages to shine on the hive, a few of the girls might fly out, but mostly it’s been quiet.  I did find a number of dead varroa mites on the bottom board last month (removed it so there would be better ventilation).  And the wax moth larvae too.  Of course I never did any varroa mite control, so now I’m worried I may have blown it by resisting the preventative treatments most conventional beeks do in the late summer.  It’s too cold and wet to open up to check on them, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed they’re okay in there.

I took Pebbles and Cinnamon on a little road trip a few weeks ago to honeymoon with a handsome ram named Jocko.  They’re spending the month with him, while he wines and dines them and hopefully becomes the father of their lambs.  If all goes well, I’ll have lambs in late April.  I’m going back to pick up the girls the week after Christmas – right about the time the odor from the trip up there has finally dissipated from my car.  I put a large mat down in the back of the car, but they managed to pee on the area that wasn’t covered by it.  It’s been too cold and/or wet to get the shop-vac out there to shampoo the carpet, but I’ll have to bite the bullet and do it after they come home.  I miss the two of them, especially little Pebbles, though I’m sure Conan, Curly and Bo could care less (“more for us”).

The holidays have come swooping in, as they always seem to, somehow catching me off guard.  I think it’s because I try to resist the onslaught of commercialization (Christmas decorations up before Halloween is over) until after Thanksgiving (one holiday at a time, thank you very much), then all of a sudden it’s only 12 days away and I haven’t done any shopping…  Ah, well.  I put up some lights over the weekend, but still have the bulk of my decorating to do, too.  I am happy that I finished my Christmas cards tonight, squeezing them in around a large editing job I got in last week.  I have another large one due to arrive on Friday, so will be juggling the two over the weekend – who has time to shop?

Advertisement

Fall chores

Autumn has been typical this year and not too extreme with any of the weather:  not too cold, not too warm, not too wet – it’s really been a textbook fall in all regards.  The leaves have yellowed and turned brown, and have mostly fallen.  There have been a few frosts, one hard frost (hose was frozen,  sheep’s water bucket had a cap of ice) and we switched from daylight “savings” time to standard time.  And the fall chores are keeping me as busy as the summer – maybe busier.

I’m slowly deconstructing the garden.  Most everything has been harvested and/or composted.  As I pull out the spent plants (beans, squash, potatoes) I back fill with used sheep bedding, and will be layering with the acres of fallen leaves (that I need to rake up!).  The only things left to still harvest are the kale and the chard, some collards, and three or four football sized rutabagas (American football, and I’m not kidding – they’re that huge), and a few carrots.  I harvested all the beets over the weekend, when I found that mice or voles were dining regularly on them.  Several were completely ruined, and the rest were all salvageable.  I miss my Jasper even more now – he was a superb mouser and would have kept my garden pest free.  I’m also having an issue with what I’m assuming are meadow voles, or maybe rats.  They tunnel under my chard and radicchio and chew off the root.  The plant flops over and if I get it in time I can “harvest” but if I don’t see it, the plant just wilts and dies where it fell.  I’m not sure how to combat this one since they’re underground – Google and YouTube to the rescue. They’re not bothering the kale plants, or the collards or rutabagas, so will probably move on once the chard is all gone.  It seems like the kale is indestructible.  I had plenty of pests sharing the crop with me, especially later in the summer.  Cabbage worms and cutworms and slugs were eating a lot of it.  Now, though, it’s having the last laugh.  The hard frost over the weekend just made it laugh.  It’s like the Chuck Norris of garden plants, I swear!  I’m getting a little sick of eating it, but am starting to see where I might run out and I know I’ll be sad when that happens, and long for spring so I can plant some more.  Maybe fewer plants next time.

The bees have been quiet, naturally.  It’s been cold, but when we get a moderate day and the sun shines on their hive, a few of the girls come out for a flight and a drink.  I’ll see them on the grass around the hive (lots of damp dew to drink) or in the garden, on the chard or kale, drinking the drops of water.  I see some of the girls coming back with bright yellow pollen sacks full, so there must be a little foraging going on too.  The front stoop of the hive is littered with dead bees after a day like this; it’s not excessive, but I  still don’t like to see it.

The chickens are grooving in their new, expanded run, with their young rooster.  A friend and coworker insisted she would come over and help me with building out the run, a project that’s been on my to do list for the past year.  She came out with her was-band (her ex husband, a friend) one Saturday afternoon and we set the posts.  The next day they came back out and we put up the wire.  A few weeks later they were back, installing the door to the run that they built for me.  In exchange for the help,  I took the rooster who needed a home.  Of course about the same time I realized one of my young pullets is probably a rooster – so now I have two roosters!  My former pullet is a little younger and smaller so it’s not an issue now, but if it becomes one (like, they don’t get along, or get too noisy, or are too much disruption for the hens), I’ll be having a roast chicken dinner in the spring with one of them as the main dish.