Grass, Rye and Rutabaga

The pictures in this post were taken yesterday.  I took this one to have a record of what the many-times-mowed pasture looks like now.  This is actually just a small corner of the pasture, looking out toward part of the hayfield, and the woods beyond.   Nice green pasture, isn't it?   Looking close up, there seem to be fewer weeds than last year (a GOOD thing).   Will be very curious to see what it looks like in the spring, but am hoping for the best, as always.

 I had left a few carrots out in the garden, because I enjoy having fresh carrots to add to stew.   I only use a couple of carrots per stew so....having maybe a dozen or 15 out there was a lot of stews.   Nice, fresh, very orange, beautiful carrots......   I took down the garden fence about a week ago, and mowed all around to make things tidy.    It must have taken about that long for someone to notice the nice carrots, but he or she did.   You can just see in the picture how the tops of some of them have been nibbled off.    Some of them have been nibbled almost down to the orange root.

Note for next year:   either get all the carrots into the root cellar or freezer before I take the fence down, or move some fence around the carrots!   So far, no one four-footed has been interested in the rutabagas.  They have been through one hard frost.   I boiled up a couple of rutabaga yesterday, added a bit of butter and milk and salt.     They have a mild flavor all their own - quite different from potatoes.  

The mashed rutabaga is slightly sweet, with just a hunt of bitter underneath.   The color is a very light tannish/yellow.   Yum!!  Very good!!!!   And, the fresh roots look good.   I've never been attracted by the wax-covered hacked up roots in the supermarket.   And, there is no way to know how fresh those are, or when they were taken from the ground (before or after frost?)

Maybe next year, I'll think about growing some more, and put out fresh ones one day for sale, with the leaves still attached, after a hard frost (the frost is supposed to make them sweeter).   Wonder if people would be interested?   The leaves are large and good for compost.   Or, I could cut off the leaves for the buyer and keep them for the compost here.   But, either way....fresh and good rutabaga.