Gallery of Carrots…or…What You Won’t Find in a Bag of Baby Carrots
Category Archives: the homestead
Harvesting Carrots
Saturday we harvested the carrots.
Harvesting carrots is one of the fun gardening jobs.
The kids love to pull carrots.
Storing a carrot is very simple. They are a “root cellar” vegetable, meaning they will stay good and fresh as long as they are stored correctly. I keep mine in plastic bags in an old refrigerator in my garage, I keep the temperature in the refrigerator at about 50 degrees, and they will stay fresh that way for months. You can also keep them in a cold basement room or a root cellar, if you are lucky enough to have a root cellar. When storing fresh carrots cut off the green top, leaving a half to a quarter inch of the top on. If you don’t cut the tops the carrot will wither, same thing will happen if you cut into the root.
If you don’t have a place to store carrots at that temperature, you can blanch and freeze them, or can them (using a pressure canner).
We harvested 50 pounds of carrots, along with the 23 pounds already harvested gives us a total of 73 pounds of carrots this season. They were grown in 16 square feet of garden on my little quarter acre of land.
Yay for suburban farming!
When a Chicken Gets Out
A few days ago while my girls were doing their chores, feeding the chickens and gathering eggs, one of my little hens got out. We tried to catch the darn thing, but she was too quick and hid herself really well. I told my girls not to worry, we would just leave her alone and since chickens are a homing bird (they like to roost in the same spot every night) she would come back to the coop, find a place to roost and sleep. Once she was asleep we could pick her up easily and put her back in the coop.
Well…..
I kinda forgot she was out there.
The next evening, when my girls went to do their chores they found our little run away hen clucking around. She must have really missed her friends, when Punk #1 opened the door to the coop she shuffled right in, happy to cluck away with the other hens.
Then we found this:
The Harvest 2010
Here is a little garden update. While there have been some ups and downs, a cold spring and an attack of cabbage aphids I am finally starting to really be able to eat out of my little gardens. Here are the totals so far this year.
Greens…..2 lbs 13 oz
Carrots…..16 lbs 10 oz
Rhubarb…2 oz
Turnips….3 4 oz
Bok Choy..1 lb 5 oz
Herbs……..1 lb 4 oz
Broccoli…..6 oz
Kale………..9 oz
Cabbage…4 lbs 12 oz
Beans…….2 lbs 13 oz
Beets……..7 lbs
Summer Squash…5 lb 4 oz
With a grand total of 46 pounds and 12 ounces!!!!
Work
“Fewer and fewer parents ask their children to do chores around the house because they think they are already overwhelmed by social and academic pressures. More indulgence of children may result in less understanding of life”
H. David Burton
