Greens for the critters
More frequent deep
freezes are starting to nip back uncovered growth. Time to put some of
those extra garden greens to use before it's too late.
I always overplant winter
greens because all kinds of things can go wrong with this final garden
of the year. If it's a warm fall, aphids can move in and make the older
plants unusable. A wet fall can promote blights. A cold fall means the
late plantings are stunted and fail. It's tough to deal with all of
these potential issues, so I just plant about four times as much as we
need and figure we'll almost certainly be swimming in greens.
"If you need any help with that little problem, just let me know," Abigail says.
How about we start with the chickens first, hmmm, Abigail?
Anyway, as I was saying.... The tatsoi isn't long for this world, so I
don't mind pulling up whole plants for the critters. That makes it easy
to drape the greenery from the top of the chicken tractor so our cooped
up flock can enjoy a bit of fresh chlorophyll.
The herd instead got a
goat bouquet...or rather two bouquets since Abigail won't let her little
sister dine within a five-foot radius of her horns.
I pulled a little bit of
everything for our capricious buddies, but they were only interested in
the brussels sprouts tops and kale leaves. Perhaps the story would have
been different if they hadn't been gorging on butternut squash, sweet
potatoes, alfalfa pellets, hay, and fresh honeysuckle leaves earlier in
the day. But what can I say? Our goats live high on the hog and know
what they like. Swiss chard and frost-damaged lettuce are not it.
I guess the non-kale greens will go to the chickens. (Or to my mother!)
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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