The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Harvesting the rest of the carrots

Digging carrots

Our last big harvest of the year is always carrots. I actually dug a few beds in September to spur along my garden renovation, but there were still several more beds to go. Good thing Kayla was willing to come over and turn a chore into a long morning of fun and gossip.

Sorting carrots

We dug, washed, and sorted nearly a bushel of carrots in a couple of hours, which leaves me perhaps a third that much to work up today. That's a lot of carrots, but only the cream of the crop will go to two-leggers, with the goats eating up the remainder.

Assuming, of course, that I can teach Artemesia to eat anything other that wild food, hay, and alfalfa pellets. Our littlest goat actually nosed the butternut squash out of her dish yesterday morning even though I drizzled molasses on top to sweeten her disposition.


Goat eating sweet corn

"I think she's already sweet enough," said Kayla, patting our darling doeling in the head.

"Yeah, but I'm worried she might not be getting enough carbs to keep her kids fed if she really is pregnant," I replied. And then I proceeded to tether our spoiled first freshener amid the sweet corn stalks.

"Now that's carbs worth eating," Artemesia proclaimed. Munch, munch, munch.



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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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happy goataversary
Comment by kayla Thu Oct 8 11:46:47 2015
Kayla --- Thank you! I forgot I was supposed to celebrate our goativersary today! :-)
Comment by anna Thu Oct 8 15:29:43 2015

I think my two must be taking cues from Artemesia. Carrots? No thanks. Apples? Maybe a couple. Squash? Forget it. Fodder beets? Are you kidding?

Can we go munch in the woods now, and stop by the strawberry patch on the way?

Comment by Deb Fri Oct 9 00:50:57 2015





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