One Local Turkey

We managed to get a local turkey from a nearby farm. The kids got to pet some big fluffy rabbits, feed some goats, and chase some poultry. Our turkey was (formerly) a Royal Palm, which I'd never encountered before. They're really beautiful birds.

We also had some potatoes from our garden. We were going to have sweet potatoes from our garden* as well, but the yield wasn't really enough to work with. I also used some carrots from our garden**. We forgot all about our home-canned cranberry sauce.

* By "from our garden" I mean "from our fill dirt pile where I stuck them when I couldn't find a better place."

** By "from our garden" I mean "from a giant plastic flower pot filled with sand, peat, and compost." I never, ever have luck with carrots in the ground. Probably because they're slow to germinate and I'm slow to weed. And I've always lived where there's heavy clay soil. But this year I decided on a whim to try the flower pot, and I'm really excited about the results. I did virtually no weeding or watering, and I got some baby carrots, but quite a few the length of my hand and as big around as a quarter.***

*** You know, you've got a smutty mind.

I'm thinking next year I'll plant carrots in 5 gallon buckets. I've heard that if you're storing carrots in a root cellar, you should keep them in sand. So after a frost or two (Eliot Coleman is right, they're sweeter if you don't harvest until after a frost), I can just pick up my buckets, move them to a sheltered area, and pull them as needed all winter. If any are left the next spring, I can just take them back outside and let them go to seed in their second year.

I'm really way to excited about this whole carrot thing.

Meanwhile, I've got other priorities to attend to, so I may not be posting much here for the next couple weeks.

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