Harvesting

Growing season is ending here in Wyoming (even with our ongoing Indian Summer), and since Jason and I are headed off on our work road trip tomorrow, I had to hurry up and harvest some more veggies. There have been some definite surprises in the veggie patch this week, along with some really cool Cauliflower.

I dug up the rest of the potatoes yesterday, and came up with this one - J is for Jason! I ran over to show Jason his special potato, but he was less than impressed. I still thought it was pretty cool, though!

Then, today when I was pulling out a zucchini plant that hadn't been very productive and was WAAAAAY overgrown, this sucker showed up:

To give you some perspective, that zucchini weighs 5 pounds and his ginormous. I guess I know why the plant wasn't very productive - all it's energy was going into that one zucchini!

Then, I finally harvested the Romanesco Cauliflower. Chef Tony specifically requested these babies, and they're pretty incredible looking. They're "fractal", meaning that no matter how close or how far away you look at them, the smallest nodule mimics the whole. Maybe Wikipedia can help explain it better: "Romanesco broccoli resembles a cauliflower, but is of a light green color and the inflorescence (the bud) has an approximate self-similar character, with the branched meristems making a logarithmic spiral. In this sense the broccoli's shape approximates a natural fractal; each bud is composed of a series of smaller buds, all arranged in yet another logarithmic spiral. This self-similar pattern continues at several smaller levels." In the US, it's actually called a Cauliflower, because it looks more like one, but it TASTES like broccoli. Whatever - it's incredible looking, and I'm very excited to have grown it!

Alright! Well, those are the updates from the Ranch. Tomorrow? We're planning on driving about 750 miles to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. That's a LOOOOONG drive!