Bringing in the Cabbage

Today is St. Patrick's Day.  Corned beef and cabbage is St. Patrick's Day fare.  We've no corned beef, but cabbage?  Yes, we've got some of that!  As the weather warms, the cold season crops begin to suffer.  Cabbage is one of those crops.  I like to leave it as long as possible to let the heads get big, but snails are attracted to our cabbage.  Tricia doesn't like snails - she says they're gross.  I told her to consider them escargot, but she's not buying that line.  I already picked one row of cabbage, but here's another we'll pick up today.  The cows and goats know what's up, and they gather to beg.

Here's probably the nicest head of cabbage in the patch. 

 

This one is a good, average sized cabbage - some were bigger, many were smaller.

As I picked, I plucked the outer leaves and tossed those to the waiting animals.  Before long, I had harvested the entire row.  This makes room to plant a couple more rows.  I always plant between the rows for the following year.  It's my easy way of crop rotation.

And here we go: A case of cabbage.  I'll tote these back to the house and spray them all down to clean them up real good.  Then I'll load them into the refrigerator, so they'll last.

We've already eaten a couple of side dishes of smothered cabbage.  We also had some cabbage and sausage jambalaya.  It is similar to a deconstructed cabbage roll.  We'll eat lots of cole slaw.  Finally, we'll make several quarts of kimchi and sauerkraut.