New goats-Sonny (brown), Bella (black) and Wee (white) wanting to help in the garden while Butch and Bear eat their food.

By now most of my gardening friends have finished cleaning up their gardens but I basically just finished cleaning up the veggie garden on Saturday. It was a good day to be out there-51 degrees and no wind. I wanted to try to finish before a snow storm hits today and the temperature plummeted. I’m mostly done now in the garden. I pulled all the tomato cages (60 of them) out and threw them over the fence. So now they are on the outside of the garden (all over the place) and I can go out on a nice winter day to clean up the cages and take my time. At least they won’t freeze in the ground inside the garden.  I raked up all the debris into piles that I will bag and dump. I don’t put any of my garden debris in the compost pile because some of it could harbor disease or pests that won’t die if I don’t get my compost pile hot enough. In fact I don’t compost at all in the winter here as it is too hard to keep it ‘hot’ in the frigid weather.  I mostly compost in early Fall and then let it cook all winter and use it in the Spring after it becomes compost for planting. I also make compost in the Spring and Summer too,  just not winter. This is the biggest garden I’ve ever had and was quite a job cleaning it up. Somehow I must train the new goats (who were watching) to do this last and tedious job! I suppose I could let them into it and see it they eat it all! Now wouldn’t that be nice!