A couple of times I tried pushing the wheelbarrow up the plant to stack the beets. I'm getting a bit too old for that I realised my limitations. Number one son did it no problem. Well I am 60 in December!
The next job was to get my trusty half moon lawn edging tool and start cutting the beets into small chunks. Talk about a glutton for punishment. I could do with a root slicer or pulper but I will persevere and at least the pigs are happy devouring them. The donkeys seem interested in it also. They are going through hay like a donkey eating strawberries or hay even.
Have you ever grown Fodder Beet or bought to feed to livestock? I once grew a field of it. I might grow some in the field where the pigs lived last year and rooted and fertilised the pasture.
Fodder beets are good for humans too... "Both leaves and roots may be eaten. Leaves can be lightly steamed for salads or lightly boiled as a vegetable if treated like spinach or chard, which is a member of the same subspecies. Grown in well-dug, well-composted soil and watered regularly, the roots become tender, juicy, and flavourful. The roots are prepared boiled like potato for serving mashed, diced, or in sweet curries."
ReplyDeleteI grow mangolds Dave and feed them to the pigs over winter. I can't get the sheep interested in them though.
ReplyDeleteYour fodder beet look just the same as sugar beet. Go easy on how much your livestock eat at a time, use sparingly. Too many and they can get drunk or blown. We used to feed mangolds to the cattle and sugar beet tops, but not the beet themselves. I guess fodder beet are grown specifically for livestock and are a little different, the same but different.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know humans could eat them YP. I have grown Fodder Beet in the past and dug up by hand and chopped them up with the spade. I am a bit of a Wurzel myself. Definitely unsophisticated and amiable if spoken to.
ReplyDeleteIs your surname Gummidge?
Delete"Cup of tea and a slice of cake?"
Delete"I'll be bum-swizzled"
Delete" I've got me sulking head on Mr Crowman?"
DeleteAunt Sally will be played by Mrs J.Northsider-Gummidge.
DeleteWhen she puts on the blusher she looks like Aunt Sally😊. I have the dress sense and outward appearance of a scarecrow.
DeleteYou must be related to Boris Johnson then.
DeleteI think not Mr Pudding. Just the northern gift of self deprecation. If you can't laugh at yourself who can you laugh at?
DeletePeter Kay.
DeleteBilly Pearce.even. He's the funniest Comedian I have ever seen live. The Grumbleweeds were good to. Mickey Flanagan cracks me up.
DeleteAmongst comediennes, my favourite was Liz Truss. Hilarious tragicomic routine.
DeleteYes the pantomine season came early to Westminster last year.
DeletePantomime even.
DeleteNever step on a pantomine! It will explode!
DeleteOn no it won't!
Oh yes it will!
DeleteMy grandfather use to grow mangold for the cart horse Philip and massive Cow cabbages for the cattle. How do you feed them to your pigs and what breed are they?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feeding advice Rachel. Did you grow many crops on your Norfolk farm? Some people strip graze fields of beet for their cattle. There's too much monoculture (grass) today and we need to get back to a Turnip Townsend approach to farming. Crop rotation puts heart back into the ground. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteWe grew mangolds for the cattle which we used to fatten and nothing was wasted. As I mentioned , the tops (that is the leafy tops in case anybody doesn't know) were collected after the beet had been harvested and fed to the livestock. These would be the tops from both the mangolds and the sugarbeet. Sheep on neighbouring fields were fed straight on the turnip fields but we never had sheep.
DeleteOh and nearly forgot, we also grew kale for the livestock.
DeleteThanks for that Rachel. I helped build a golf course years ago and the root zone for the golf greens was Norkfolk fen soil mixed with sand. It was full of nutrients and lovely friable soil. I would love a veg plot with fen soil. Better still my own walled kitchen garden. Perhaps I should have lived in Victorian times? I'd miss the Internet though.
ReplyDeleteBeets were sold in bulk as deer feed in Michigan, where it is legal to bait deer (put down an attactant to lure them in.) I imagine that they were also animal fodder, but I don't know enough about the practice to speak to it with any authority. We are planting a field of pumpkins for the deer this summer. We figure that they cannot eat them all, and we'll wind up with a few of them for ourselves (we love pumpkin soup and pumpkin bread and pie....) and to give to the grands for Halloween. The idea is also to draw them to the field and perhaps keep them from the highway. The pumpkins vines will hopefully provide them a hiding place as well.
ReplyDeleteHi Debby. I would love to see a field full of pumpkins. You could make pumpkin wine to go with the soup, pie and bread? I am sure people would buy the pumpkins for Halloween. You could even feed them to your pigs? It sounds a very effective way of luring deer to fill your freezer.
ReplyDeleteTotoros are magical, helpful creatures who live in the woods and help people, I read. Look at you being an urban totoro!
ReplyDeleteAn adorable Chinchilla Debby? Is that me? You can't take the town out of some one who lived in a town or city but we can try to be rural. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteHoly cow, Northsider! I left this comment over on Shadowsteve.blogpost.com. I am just as confused as you are!!!!
DeleteGremlins in the machine perhaps Debby?
DeleteI blame Tiger kitty! Rascal!
DeleteDiva and rascal Debby. She had a wee on a bowl of newly laid eggs today. They got a rinse under the tap/faucet and the pigs will get them for breakfast.
DeleteDo the beets have to be chopped? You can't just chuck them whole to the pigs and donkeys?
ReplyDeleteI think they would be too hard for the pigs River.
ReplyDelete