We harvested the rest of the red cabbages today as far from allowing them to get bigger, leaving them to the ravages of the slugs and caterpillars could mean we lose the crop. Fifteen, although to be fair some are only half size – and those along with the couple we had already put in the fridge, is our red cabbage mountain. We’ve already had a few and given one away.
Hard cabbages like these – and our white ones, keep excellently if wrapped and stored in the fridge, but our fridge is not that big, and we have the white ones in there too! – So I am slowly (I’m still pretty weak and slow…) braising them one by one, and stashing in the freezer (adding to our freezer space crisis).
I don’t follow a recipe any more, and each batch of red cabbage turns out differently. I use red cabbage, onion, garlic, sugar and malt vinegar as standard. Optionals are apple, mixed spice, caraway seed etc. We like it – and should have enough for a year…
While we were out there, harvesting (well himself harvesting me taking the invalid supervisors role) I saw a fox – not far from our hen run too. We have plenty of foxes in Devon – and we saw them all the time at our last home, but this is the first one we have seen here in three years. I hope the hens are reasonably safe in the run….
We see badgers a fair bit and a lot of badger activity – runs under our fences and through the hedges, they dig up the lawn (distinctive badger digging) and have raided beer traps.
We like them. But something has trashed the carrot patch – I would assume rabbits – but we have never seen any, or any holes or any droppings and none at the scene of the crime. Not sure what did it, but we are assuming badgers. The patch has been dug, there are a few big holes and lots of carrots lying on the surface.. some with teeth marks too.
So… we pulled the rest of the carrots.. and most of the beetroot just in case. So we have smaller carrot and beetroot mountains to go with the cabbages. August is the month of harvesting and preserving.
