A New Goat Walkway & Harvesting Cauliflower

Village Farm Team,

We constructed a new walkway for our goats that spans the front perimeter of their pen. This pathway will give them a dry spot to rest next to the fence (where they greet their visitors!). This will decrease their time spent in the mud which will in turn decrease their chances of having issues with hoof rot. As you can see, they are already smitten with their new walkway!

We harvested a plethora of cauliflower this week Since the weather has been trending warmer over the past couple of weeks, we went ahead and preemptively made a large harvest in order to keep them from bolting. Once a crop “bolts” and begins to produce flowers (and eventually seeds), it is not as tasty since all of the energy is going into the process of creating the flower stalks. We harvested two different varieties of cauliflower: Amazing and Snowball. The Snowball variety is self-blanching which means the leaves wrap around the curds as the head forms, protecting them from heat and sunlight. The result is a bright white head of cauliflower! Check out the difference in color between the two varieties below. Amazing is on the left and Snowball is on the right.

The preparation for spring has begun! Our first succession of greens and cabbages was turned under in order to aerate the soil and incorporate organic matter back into it. Any remaining cabbages were harvested and given to our chickens since they are particularly fond of the Chinese cabbage. Now we wait for drier days before we can shape the beds for spring crops.