Last Minute Harvest

There was a freeze warning for our area last night so Paul, Rhiannon and I harvested the last of the zucchini, yellow beans and eggplant:

There was a lot of frost on everything this morning and the plants definately took a beating.  Time to pull them out and toss them to the goats.  Kind'a makes me sad.  But there are still cabbages and peas in the raised beds and I suppose I should pick the dozen remaining butternut squash.  I've never done a Fall Garden so I'm assuming that the cabbages and peas will still grow for a while longer since the afternoon temps are warm.  It got up to 67 degrees this afternoon.

Thankfully it didn't get cold enough to have to skim ice off water buckets this morning, but cold enough that I waited until almost 10 o'clock to take Rhiannon outside with me to milk the goats.  I keep thinking about drying Ishtar and Annette up so I won't have to milk when it's cold outside,  but I'd miss the milk.  Also, I figure since they only get milked once a day anyhow that I'd just push up their milking time each day so the sun has a chance to warm things up.

It's not like I a complete baby about the cold.  I've done my share of milking in the freezing weather. I recall being out in the barn in the early mornings last year bundled up in longjohns, sweater, jeans, insulated overalls and Carhart jacket.  The battery operated Coleman lantern I keep outside in the milk parlor doesn't even want to turn on at that point.  But now that Rhiannon is big enough to come outside with me - and she makes it very clear that she does want to "help" with barn chores - I don't want her to get too cold.  And I don't mind not having to layer on clothing every morning either. 

Oh, almost forgot about the harvest......

Would you look at the size of those zucchini!!  I had intentionally left a few of them on the plant in order to get to some Zucchini Boats, but honestly, I wasn't expecting them to get that big, especially this late in the season.  Guess I'm going to be making some Zucchini Fritters soon!