Cabin Crafted

Category: farm

  • Each year, each project

    My memory on Facebook this morning from one year ago was a harvest of red ripe tomatoes and tomatillos. This year the tomatoes are all still green, there are tomatillos forming, but not ready to harvest, but the cucumbers are coming in quickly now and there are dozens of blossoms on the spreading vines. I fight them every morning to keep them from taking over the other half of the bed where some of the peppers are planted and sending the vines away from the beans and out into the corn and the path in the other direction.

    Yesterday after hubby’s appointment, we did our feed run for the critters and I purchased a new feeder to replace the one that was broken and added a second Hummingbird feeder. I couldn’t get the three tines of the double shepherd’s crook through the weedmat, soil, and underlying gravel, it was barely stuck in the ground before and mostly propped up with rocks. It can’t be put between stones in the retaining wall for obvious safety and structural reasons and I was at a loss. I finally grabbed a half barrel that was in the front by the garage door with one puny plant in it, transplanted the plant and repurposed the half barrel with soil and many rocks to stabilize it and the pole and set it on the retaining wall edge. The birds fly to the crook, look at the feeder, and fly off. So far they haven’t braved trying to eat from the hopper style feeder. The Hummingbird feeder is too far from the flowers, so the single crook will be moved to a flower bed and the feeder hung there until there are flowers in the new large walled garden.

    Once evening was dimming and the temperature was falling, the bags of compost that were just tossed over the wall onto the hay a few days ago, were opened and spread. So far, we have purchased 28 bags and it hasn’t even covered the entire area with a layer. It will probably take at least that many more, then topped with shredded leaves this fall and a layer of some sort of mulch.

    The 9 hens aren’t pulling their weight. Feed is too expensive if they aren’t going to provide food in return. Ms. Broody finally gave up sitting after 9 weeks of broodiness, but she hasn’t resumed laying. None of the Olive eggers are laying. I don’t know if it is the heat or that they are aging out. Day before yesterday, there were 3 eggs and one of them the shell was so fragile that it had been cracked in the nest by the weight of the next hen to lay. It went straight into the compost pile. Last night there were 3 and a marble with no yolk.

    I should get new chicks before it gets cold and introduce them to the layer coop and move the old ladies to the Chicken palace and give them free range during the day. There are nesting boxes in there, but past hens have been reluctant to use them.

    Yesterday, I posted that it was the beginning of fermenting season with green beans and cucumbers. Today was the beginning of a non edible, non potable ferment. The long stalks of Comfrey that fall over mid summer were cut and chopped, loaded into a couple of lidded buckets and filled with water set in the sun. It will make a stinky slimy mess that is the best garden fertilizer ever. The Comfrey that didn’t fit in the buckets is put in the compost pile or spread as mulch in the garden.

    In cutting back the stalks, I see several Comfrey volunteers that will be dug and moved over to the walled garden in the herbal medicine area. As the edible herb and medicinal herbs will be on the south and west of the retaining wall, that area is already filled deeply with the composted soil and after adding another couple bags this evening, it will begin to be planted so the plants can establish good root systems before cold weather. The Rosemary and Thyme are in pots on the deck steps and they will be moved. Calendula plants in pots will be moved as it self seeds nicely, but seed will be gathered from the bed where Calendula is growing now to use if the transplants don’t provide seedling in spring. There are a few Echinacea plants that I started from seed this spring that can be added where the new bed has soil deep enough to plant in and some Rudbecia that has established by the garage will be divided and some of it added to the new bed. The upper flat area of the walled garden was under the old deck, it has had tons of rock piled on it for 15 years and is hard and compacted. Once the patio is finished and there is a solid edge to work against, I will work to deepen and enrich the soil there enough for planting. Until then, the half barrels of flowers that are currently not in the best locations will be settled in and kept planted with annuals for color. It is going to be an area to enjoy, an area to attract birds, eventually a place to prepare and enjoy outdoor meals.

    I will end today’s missive with a picture of the most gorgeous sky last evening as the preview always uses the last photo in my blog. It was beautiful to look at as I worked in the new garden and tended the evening chores, but enough cloud coverage to obscure any view of the comet later.

    Stay safe everyone. Wear a mask, it isn’t a political statement, it is a health and safely statement.

  • Successes and failures

    Basically, I consider this year’s garden a success. In pictures with captions.

    Many future tomatoes, all still green, two varieties, paste and slicers.
    Healthy peppers with blooms, basil, Chinese cabbage, and more tomatoes.
    Vigorous cucumbers, taking over.
    Lots of young cucumbers, this is the largest, just another day or two.
    Soft neck garlic and potato onions pulled to cure.
    With potato onions, you plant a single bulb and it produces clusters like this. The larger ones will be used as onions, the smallest will be replanted in fall for next year’s crop. I think I will plant some traditional onions next year too, most of these are under 2″ diameter.
    They will stay in the sun to cure for a couple of days then be brought in to the garage or wire shelves in the basement to finish curing, then their box that was not rebuilt in spring because it was already planted last fall will be rebuilt, given a load of compost and replanted with either beans or a fall vegetable in a month.
    While pulling weeds in the potato bed, I uprooted this little new potato. I didn’t dig for more, but it is hopeful that they are making potatoes under the leaves.

    Failures. The multiple plantings of corn have produced less than half of the stalks that should have grown. There may be some corn, but certainly not for what we had hoped. The experiment planting pepper and tomato seed directly produced nothing, nor did the direct sow of basil and dill. The two rows of Chinese cabbage that were planted after the peas were pulled did not germinate a single plant. Thus, now that the onions and garlic are pulled, there are two and a half 4 X 4 foot beds idle as well as the area where the mint was dug out and that box has still not been built and installed which will give me another 4 x 6 or 4 x 8 foot box. That is a lot of space that can be used to do a third planting of bush beans, some winter greens like spinach, fall peas, carrots perhaps. Anything planted now will need watering, we have reached the hot, dry period with occasional afternoon thunderstorms that are very hit or miss.

    When I rebuild the box and build the longer box, I think I am going to use corner posts at least 14-16″ so that heavy plastic can be laid over the bed to extend the growing season even after a light frost or two. We often have a frost then another period of mild to warm weather that would allow the harvest to be extended.

    More bean seed and some fall veggie seed were just ordered. As soon as it is appropriate, seed will be planted.

    While the pizza was baking and then after dinner, I moved and stacked the mini wall to help prevent erosion on the steep.

    Most of the stones are ordinary, but there are a few lovely dark purple gray and this one.

    Today we will buy another car load of Black Cow and at least toss the bags down on the hay before the afternoon storms begin. The hay men didn’t finish all that was already mowed, but have lined up 31 huge bales for picking up on the trailers and trucks. They will probably try to get the rest of what is mowed before the rain begins.

    The morning began with “Yogurt in a cooler.” It has been a while since I have made my own yogurt, having been buying a quart a week from the Natural foods store in town and having it curbside delivered with other food needs we can’t grow. But it is easy and cheaper to make my own. A half gallon of quality local milk that will make two quarts if I ate that much in a week, costs between $2 and $5 a quart less depending on which brand they put in my order. I have the jars, the cooler, and a supply of beach towels with which to wrap the cooler, so I am back to making my own.

    I also decided I was tired of trying to climb up in the coop several times a day to move eggs to nesting boxes to discourage the laying in the corner under the perch and encourage returning to the nesting boxes. I did a partial coop cleanout because the water inside the coop leaked and created a mess just inside the door and to open up two more nesting boxes. Three had been blocked off with the feeder and the water in front of them. By removing the water and just giving them water outside, two of the boxes could be reopened, that is 5 to choose from though when they use the boxes, it is never either of them. As I was working, the culprit that lays the first egg in the corner kept coming in and surveying her spot from which I had removed all of the straw. Fresh straw was put in the nesting boxes and 3 terra cotta flower pots were placed upside down in a row where she wanted to be. As I climbed back down out of the coop, she came right back in to the corner and this is what she found.

    Now she can use a nesting box or if she chooses to not, at least I can reach them from the pop door, or with a scoop from the main door. I’m curious what she will do.

  • A productive day

    After my post yesterday, I remembered 3 large boxes that I had stashed out of the way and was able to almost finish putting down the cardboard and hay. Today I will get a few more boxes from a source I reached out to yesterday and will spread the remaining bit of hay. Quite a few more rocks were moved in putting down those three boxes and two smaller ones I located. I uncovered several ant nests moving rocks and had to wait for them to move on before I could continue moving the stones.

    Only that narrow strip left to cover. From this angle you can see the plants from Iris left that need to be moved and the stone to the right of the piers that also need to be moved. What doesn’t go down on the edge of the cardboard will have to be relocated so I can get cardboard up to the edge of the piers. The patio rocks are all about 6 or more inches thick, so no wall needs to go across. I will use the small stuff to fill cracks and shim jiggly pavers, the larger ones used to fill in thin or low spots on the wall. The rest piled somewhere until we see if there is a need for them, maybe where the barrels are now on cardboard or weed mat to keep down the weed growth where the work hasn’t been done yet. I am excited that it is coming together a bit at a time.

    Much to our delight, the mowers arrived right after dinner and with two huge mowers and a smaller tractor with a tedder, they got everything mowed and teddered except for the big south hay field before dark. They will rake and bale tomorrow and probably get the south field mowed. I can now get my riding mower down near the berry patches and may yet get some berries for the freezer or for jam.

    It is a family affair. Both big tractors had husband, wife, and a kid on it, and the Dad to one man on the tedder.
    Tractors parked for the night.

    There is a very rocky area in the east field that I generally mow before the hay gets tall and didn’t get it done this year, so I will have to go over with the weed wacker and cut it down as they wisely mow around it. It could be cut with a sickle bar, but I don’t have one. If I had and knew how to use an old fashioned hay scythe, it could be saved as additional hay.

    Now to get some soil or leaf mulch down on the new bed, I can then move the plants and salvage some of the yellow iris to plant there as well. This fall I will plant the false indigo, move some comfrey, seed some calendula, and seek out some other dye plants to put in that bed. It will have an edible herb section, a medicinal herb section, and a dye section along with some ornamental perennial flowers. The half barrels will be moved, patio work done. I think the bird feeders will be moved out of that bed so I don’t get spilled seed volunteers in there, or maybe put down a tree ring covered with the smaller rocks that will discourage weed growth there. I won’t plant there anyway as there is a load of gravel right below the soil level where it stands. The lower single hook crook holds a suet feeder that doesn’t “shed” or maybe it will hold another Hummingbird feeder during the summer months, when I don’t put out seed for the birds.

  • Hot, Humid, Lazy Day

    The morning as usual was spent doing some garden maintenance. The asparagus tops so tall that they were shading the tomatoes and laying on the electric wire at the top of the fence, got a hair cut. I know they need the tops to feed the crowns and I didn’t cut them down, but reduced them to about 4 feet and used the ferny tops in the compost and as mulch in the paths around the bed. Nothing was harvested today, but some weeding done. It was hot, even early. After animal chores and garden time, breakfast on the back deck, and quiet household tasks, I took my spindles to the front porch to sit and spin and watch the Hummingbirds and the doe and her tiny spotted fawn.

    The spinning is using locks from a clean Jacob wool fleece, spinning one lock at a time.

    The walk up to the mailbox this afternoon was brutal. The cicadas have quieted, gone back to ground for 17 years, but there is evidence of their visit everywhere. The young tips of some trees dead, they seem to have liked the young oaks and locusts most. It would have been nice if they liked the Autumn Olive.

    Tucked between two pines on the edge of the driveway where they won’t be mowed by the hay farmers or by me is a nice little patch of milkweed beginning to bloom. I’m not seeing the butterflies yet though.

    After dinner we drove to the nearest town to get an ice cream cone from the ice cream parlor/arcade that is never busy early in the evening, but they are closed on Monday and Tuesday. Across the road is a river outfitter that has a small cafe and sells ice cream by the scoop as well. There were 4 employees and at least half a dozen customers in there and no one had on a mask except us. As we were leaving, we did see one older man putting on his mask as he entered. We are seeing a few more at our village store, but they seem to not be a safety measure that most in this community believe will help. Our county cases have tripled and has 1 hospitalization now. What is it going to take for people begin to be safe and take this virus seriously.

  • It only took 3 Days

    In the heat and humidity, it took 3 mornings to get the lawn done. Yesterday morning I broke out the monster Stihl line trimmer and got around the house, garden, the coop, and within the walled garden. I mixed up a gallon of salted vinegar and sprayed the stone path where I don’t want weeds to grow and where sterilizing the soil isn’t a problem. I need to get the cardboard down in the walled garden while the grass is short, but I need compost to put on it. Perhaps I should arrange a load to be delivered. A friend told me about a vinegar based weed killer that doesn’t contain salt. My research shows it is a concentrate of vinegar, lemon juice, clove oil, and soap. Maybe I will try it on the grass in the walled garden first if I can get it without going in a crowded store. The tops from the Iris that I cut back were added to the compost pile and more spoiled hay on top of that.

    After the sun started down and some clouds came in, I moved 18 T posts that have been laying in the grass for weeks, beyond the chicken pen with grass and weeds growing through them. I weed wacked those weeds while the trimmer was out. Cleaned up some rocks in that area and made it easier to maintain with the riding mower when I mow back there. Slowly everything is getting easier to maintain. We still need to replace the brush hog to mow areas that the riding mower can’t handle, but can’t be hayed. There is another morning of trimming to get around the culverts and the chicken palace but they can wait. Ms. Broody is going on 8 weeks of sitting, so she is going in isolation in the chicken palace for a week to see if I can get it out of her system. For some reason the hens have decided that the nesting boxes aren’t for laying eggs and they are making a nest in the back corner of the coop. The coop is raised slightly higher than my knees and it isn’t quite tall enough to stand up in, so going in to gather their eggs is a challenge. I put a bucket in that corner and they just made a nest next to it.

    This morning was reserved for vegetable garden maintenance and new harvest. There are always a few weeds to pull and I’m being a zealot when it comes to the Creeping Charlie that with pulling, cardboard and aggressive monitoring, so far is mostly developing outside the garden and I’m keeping it away from creeping in. If a tiny bit crops up in a bed, it is quickly dispatched. If I get the vinegar based weed killer, I may spray the outside base of the garden fence. The morning inspection and weed pulling showed me that the garlic and potato onions are just about ready to pull and dry and just in time because the box they are in was planted last fall before I rebuilt the other boxes and it is literally bursting apart at the seams. And I should be looking into buying garlic for fall planting before it is all sold out.

    Once the onions and garlic are out, the box will be rebuilt, the soil supplemented with a wagon load of compost and it will hold a fall crop or two.

    The Tomatillos are a large variety. I bought plants this year, though if I had been patient, I could have transplanted volunteers from last year’s crop that sprang up in one of the pea beds where they were planted last year. The cucumbers are resisting climbing the trellis and have to be encouraged every few days, but there are dozens of tiny just forming fruits so fresh cucumbers and pickles will soon be enjoyed.

    The bush style green beans are prolifically developing. The first few meals harvested this morning will be blanched and some frozen this afternoon, the rest enjoyed with dinner. It will be a daily harvest now for a while until they quit blooming, then there will be a wait until the second planting which has sprouted grow large enough to give us a another crop.

    There are raspberries that I didn’t expect to produce this year not to make jam, but enough to top my granola and yogurt each morning. Soon the kitchen will be hot and steamy every day as beans are blanched, pickles are canned, then tomatoes and peppers to process and hopefully corn to be eaten fresh off the cob as well as blanched and cut from the cob for winter cut corn. There are two developing Chinese cabbages, the second planting of them hasn’t come up yet. I wonder if they can be fermented. Hmmm, Kimchi.

    The grape vine that I totally decimated to get it up off the ground in late winter or early spring which I didn’t expect any fruit from this year is laden with bunches of tiny grapes. There will be grape jam this year even if I never can get to the berries. They are a Concord variety, so the jam is deliciously grapey.

    The hay cutters have one more field to the east of us, the rest are mowed, baled and lined up for them to move to their fields as winter feed for their cattle. I doubt they will get to us this week because every day til Friday has a 40 to 80% chance of thunderstorms. Next week’s projection looks better, but who knows how that will change in a week.

    Later today, we will make our weekly curb side pickup of supplies from the Natural Foods store. This is even more important for the next few weeks as cases of Covid have increased in this part of the state, not substantially, but worrisome all the less, and daughter spent a week away from home in an area that was heavily infected, so we will have to be even more isolated from her for a couple of weeks. She avoided going out, but we still want to be careful.

    Stay safe everyone. Wear a mask, wash your hands. We want to meet our now 6 month old grandson we still haven’t been able to meet.

  • We found summer

    Garden and lawn tasks must be done in the early morning or after the sun is low in the sky. It is hot and humid, though neither as hot, nor as humid as summers were when we lived on the coast. Yesterday morning, after I had actually rested well the night before, I mowed the front “lawn” of the house.

    A photo of a photo.

    Since this aerial photo was taken by our Realtor after we bought our farm, we have built the house, gardens, bought a coop and fenced a run, planted an orchard to the east of the house, and many pines, maples, and redbuds between the barn and to the northwest of the house. Our farm is the L shaped series of hayfields containing the buildings and down to a line in the woods to the south. This is 30 acres, for the sports minded reader, about 27 American football fields. I mow about 5 acres (about 4.5 football fields) as our lawn, from south of the barn to below the septic field and from the orchard to 25 feet or so to the west of the house. The area above the barn is too rocky to mow or hay and without animals grazing on it, trees have volunteered in the 15 years we have lived here. The rest of our farm is hayfields. We have woods and cattle fields as neighbors to the west, hayfields to the east, woods to the south. This morning before it got too hot and muggy, I mowed the west and south sides of the house and around the orchard, garden, and chicken pen. It takes about 3 hours total to do the lawn on the riding mower. Another couple of hours to clean up with the line trimmer which I still haven’t done.

    As I mow, I love to see what is seasonally blooming, as soon the hay will come down and so will the wildflowers within.

    • Moth Mullein
    • Chicory
    • The hay is shoulder high when I am sitting on the mower.
    The fig I though had died.

    The 3rd planting of corn is up about 6 inches but still there are sparce spots and the pumpkins failed again. I am still in the window to plant corn in this zone, so I guess I will fill in the empty spaces and our corn will come in not all at once, which I guess is a good thing. I may give up on the pumpkins, I don’t have any more seed.

    During the heat of the day, I spin and make masks, though my sewing corner in the bedroom dormer gets hot with the iron on. I need to look for one of the little portable fans that are stowed away somewhere in the house.

    Stay safe, wear your mask, wash your hands. We want to be able to go out again at some point and see our children and grandchildren. Phone calls and video calls are nice, but just not as good as hugs.

  • The one that didn’t get away

    Last year about this time, grandson 1 came to spend part of the summer with us. He enjoys doing so because he gets to use the riding mower and drive the tractor, but he also has to help me with farm chores. He helped move some fencing, work in the garden, and just about anything I ask him to do. He cooks some as well and gets lessons and new recipes to add to his book of Grandmom’s Spells and Magic that he got for Christmas a couple of years ago, a loose leafed recipe book with cards that can be filled out and filed, all in my handwriting that my kids and he call a font that should be on the computer. He and I were about to start work on some project last summer when I looked in the egg door of the coop and a 6 foot long Black Rat Snake that I had seen outside of the coop about a week earlier was in one of the nesting boxes. It had gotten eggs the first time and had come back for more. I wasn’t going to have that happen, so without telling him why, I sent him to our tool area to get my leather garden gloves and an empty 5 gallon bucket with lid. When he returned with them, I had him open the egg door from the other end from the snake while I reached in and grabbed it behind it’s head and snatched it from the coop. His eyes got huge and his response was, “Grandmom, what kind of magic was that.” We put the snake in the bucket, put the lid on and he held it from falling over while I drove a bit more than a half a mile away to the woods and turned it loose.

    Well, because of COVID, he can’t visit this summer and I miss his help. This afternoon, I got the part of dinner that was going in the oven prepared and put in the oven and grabbed a basket to go gather peas and whatever eggs were under Miss Broody and when I opened the egg door, I spotted movement in an empty nesting box. I hurried back over to the house, grabbed the same gloves, a 5 gallon bucket with lid, and called up to hubby to grab his keys and his phone. He questioned why and I gave him a quick explanation as I dashed back to the coop, opened and hooked the egg door up and snatched this one out of the coop just as he arrived to snap a couple of pictures.

    Not as long as last year’s, this one was only about 5 feet and where the one last year was lethargic, this one was a writhing mess, trying to wrap around my arm. Once calmed down and picture taken, it was plopped in the bucket, lidded and back to the same spot the last one was taken. Last year, I had to dump the snake out of the bucket and it didn’t even move away very fast. As soon as I got the lid off today, it went over the rim and off into the woods. While there, I spotted these cool black mushrooms.

    I love mushrooms, but I would never gather them for food. Back home, the peas were picked and shelled in time to plunge them into boiling water for 3 minutes to enjoy with our dinner. The plants aren’t blooming anymore, but there are still many peas to pick, enjoy, and freeze.

    I would never kill a snake that wasn’t directly threatening me, the dogs, or a family member, but they don’t get to be in my coop and eat the eggs.

    Be safe. I wear a mask for your safely, please wear one for mine.

  • Wonder

    I have enjoyed watching the Finch care for her nest of 4 tiny mouths to feed. Once they hatched, I quit looking for a while so she could care for them. Over the weekend, I peeked again and instead of large gapeing mouths popping up, there were little feathered birds with proportional heads and big black beady eyes looking back at me.

    It is amazing how quickly they go from awkward disproportioned nearly naked bodies to little feathered well proportioned birds. In the midst of the nasty weather this week, chilly, gray, and periodic heavy, heavy rain, she fledged these 4 little creatures out into the world. The nest is empty, the hanging pot can again be watered.

    I know that the birdhouses by the garden have supported two nests of Tree Swallows and one nest of Eastern Bluebirds, the Barberry bush had the nest of Caroline Wrens, and these little finches. I think a Hummingbird has a nest in the breezeway garden, one flies from there to the feeder and back often, but I haven’t attempted to find it in the rain.

    One of the wonders of spring is watching the nests of baby birds, the tiny rabbits kits, and the fawns. I discovered this year that something, probably the deer like Sunflower shoots. There were dozens in the walled garden under the feeders and everyone of them has been clipped off just above the primary leaves. I haven’t been weed wacking in there to let them grow. I guess it will get mowed down as soon as it dries up. I will then put down cardboard, move some rocks to the back side of the wall and start filling it with leaf mulch or compost. And still no corn. Two packages of seed from the feed store and both seem to be bad even though they were packaged for 2020. It is probably too late to try to find corn seed elsewhere and plant it now, though we have about 4 months til first frost.

  • Rainy Sunday Activity

    The rain did come off and on today, so I chose to do stay at home activities. First thing this morning, I finished spinning the wine colored wool that I took on my walk yesterday and began plying it on my largest spindle. It was taking forever and after about 90 minutes, I wished that I had plied it on my wheel, but persisted throughout the morning and early afternoon.

    I am trying to finish knitting a shawl with it before the end of June. This is the last 27 grams of the wool. The shawl had a major error in it and I had to rip it back about 2/3 of what I had already knit, pick up the stitches and start again.

    After lunch, I started two loaves of sandwich bread for the week. Of course it had to be tasted while still warm.

    I know that the fad during the pandemic is sourdough and I have made my share of it, but we both prefer yeast bread, half whole wheat with good stone ground flour.

    Between rain storms, I took a basket to garden and picked a basket full of fat shelling peas.

    While out there, I spotted 3 chubby asparagus spears among the thin ferny shoots, added them to the basket as well. Since hubby was having a chop for dinner with our corn, peas, and cantaloupe, I pulled a fresh small garlic bulb and a small potato onion. While out there I ran the broody hen off the nest for the third time today, grabbing the eggs under her. This has been a six week brood. Nothing I do breaks her.

    The onion, garlic, and their tops were chopped along with half a green pepper that was in the refrigerator and sauteed to top his chop. There were enough peas for dinner and the first batch in the freezer. I planted about 2 or 3 times as many peas as usual and wish I had planted twice what I did. My dinner was many of my favorites, fresh sweet corn, just picked and lightly steamed peas, cantaloupe, and fresh bread. The hens get the pea pods, corn cobs, and cantaloupe rinds and seeds to make compost to feed the garden in the fall or next spring.

    While wandering the garden, I picked a few raspberries and a blueberry, but they didn’t make it back to the house.

    I love when the garden starts to provide and pay back for all the toil of the spring prep. Every couple of days the suckers are pinched from the tomatoes and the tomatoes and tomatillos are tied higher on their posts. I am seeing blooms forming on both. The cucumbers have been given a trellis, the bush beans are filling out, but no blooms yet. The potatoes have purple/blue flowers and desperately need a good layer of hay applied to them. I’ll tackle that the next dry day. The peppers aren’t doing much yet, but they will. I added more basil seed and a few Chinese cabbage seed to a bed that still had space. The only failure I am seeing in the garden is the corn. I have planted it twice and still only have 3 stalks and the pumpkins didn’t come up. I need a plan for that area that will provide us with something for the table, maybe more potatoes?

  • Critters, just because

    The hay is tall, the turkey’s can be heard, but rarely seen unless they come into the mowed area. The deer look like moving brown humps as they graze, also unless they come into the mowed area. These are one of the pair of twins from last spring. They were just outside the garage door as I was going out to lock up the hens last night. The Mom’s are seen singularly now, with new fawns tucked away until they are a bit bigger and will follow her around. I haven’t spotted any new ones yet.

    Yes that is a stink bug on the glass on the inside. Taken through the glass because I knew they would bolt as soon as I opened the door.

    After mowing and gardening, the rain began and I sat on the covered porch and spun on a spindle while the Hummingbirds flitted in and out of the overhang to the feeder. It is easy to spot in the second photo, can you find one in the first?

    The Carolina Wren that I startled away from her nest while watering a hanging plant a couple days ago, had 5 eggs. After enjoying dinner on the porch, I climbed up on a chair to see. Three have hatched and one raised a wobbly head, open mouth, begging for food.

    They will be left alone and I will watch them fledge from the hanging pot in the next 10 days or so.

    There are a lot of rabbits about, I tried to get a picture of one last evening, but I couldn’t zoom enough to really see it.

    I needed a post that wasn’t about today’s issues.