Each day that goes by brings change to the garden. The potatoes are dug, the first planting of bush beans is spent and the plants pulled and put in the compost pile. It will be another couple of weeks before the second planting begins to produce beans. There is a little corn on the larger stalks. There are dozens of developing Tomatillos that will be made into simmer sauce and Tomatillo Jalapeno jam. The sunflowers are blooming.
The first few were the bronze colors, but now there is a tall lemon yellow one. I plant a variety mix of seed.
The grapes are plentiful and are beginning to turn purple. Soon some grape jelly will be made.
And this year they are up and off the ground.
The daily harvest looks different than a week ago, today there was the first red tomato and even though it was a plum tomato, it went in our dinner salad. I had gone out to pick a cucumber for the salad and came in with many, a few larger ones and a quart jar of of small ones that I put in to ferment to whole dills.
There are now three jars fermenting, one of sauerkraut, one of dill slices, and one of whole small dills. There are two already fermented of dilly beans in the refrigerator. The Jalapenos are getting of a size to start the pickled peppers that hubby loves with most dinners and some sandwiches. Two pints were done this afternoon as well.
Today has been dry and the evening ended with a beautiful pink sky.
Stay safe. Wear your mask. See you on the other side of this pandemic.
Last night as it thundered, lightninged, and rained buckets full, I brought in the plastic pail I gather weeds in for the chickens and spread a huge garbage bag on the dining table to process the garlic for braiding. I watched two different videos on how to braid garlic and both were different, so I just did my own thing. The garlic was spread out, the dried roots trimmed and the dirty loose outer skin removed. They were sorted enough to see the sizes and braiding began. What a mess I made, but dry and easy to clean up after I was done. Every year I have planted garlic, I have planted hard neck varieties and they can’t be braided, but I ordered late last year and could only get soft neck varieties which can be braided.
It isn’t the prettiest braid, but what fun. While braiding, one of the stems had what looked like little round cloves breaking though it so I did some research. They are call bulbils and can be planted to produce small cloves that are then planted the following year, a two year process to produce bulbs of garlic.
There were only half a dozen, but I will plant them, well marked in the fall and again next fall to see how they turn out.
This morning, I dumped the compost waste from last night and tackled the onions, again filling the compost tub with tops and roots.
As you can see, the potato onion are small. Good for kebobs, or pot roast, or when I only need a bit of onion. After the bin was dumped in the compost pile again, the onions were loaded into it and relocated to the huge shelf and grid unit that Son 1 built several summers ago in the basement area that is not climate controlled, my “root cellar” in a sense.
The bottom two shelves are boards and store jars as they are emptied then filled jars as canning commences in the summer. The pressure canner belongs to Son 1 and DIL and needs some replacement parts. The top three shelves are hardware cloth with great ventilation for storage of onions, garlic, potatoes, and pumpkins. The onions were spread out at one end of the lowest wire shelf to continue curing and for use in cooking. Though I will replant a few of the smaller ones this fall, just because they are fun to watch develop, I will reserve most of my onion space for early spring onion starts.
As I evolve with my garden space and learn from my successes and failure, I learn to enjoy it more each year. This is the first year that I have tried the single leader on indeterminate tomatoes and love how they are up and not all over the ground. I realized after a couple of years that the asparagus bed was not well placed as it shades the beds on either side of it in the morning and in the afternoon as the sun moves across the sky. There isn’t much I can do about that without digging the bed out and starting over which would mean a couple of years without asparagus, so I need to use those beds for crops that mature early. This year it was peas in the spring, but bush beans are in that bed now that the ferns are tall. Tomatoes are on the west side, so they are getting afternoon sun, but I bought all indeterminate varieties and three of them ended up bush varieties and one of them is now sandwiched between a tall tomato and the asparagus so not getting much sun. Each year I grow something new and sometimes repeat, sometimes not. This year I tried soft neck garlic and will return to hard neck, already ordered; potato onions and will return to traditional onions; Chinese Cabbage, but will start them indoors; and ground cherries. Since they were just planted, we will have to wait and see.
If the heat wave ever breaks, I need to build the garden box and rebuild the one that had onions and garlic in it. The beds that will be fall garden need to be enriched and the ones that will be idle through the winter need a ground cover or at least a good thick layer of spoiled hay or straw. But again today, it is too hot! Last evenings thunderstorms cooled things off over night, but the heat and humidity are back.
Stay safe everyone. Please wear your mask. Today I went in our little local store to get a newspaper. Newly posted on the door is the sign that says “You must wear a mask to enter.” I asked the unmasked clerk if they were going to enforce it and she smirked and as well as we can. The owner and most of the customers in there were unmasked. So frustrating.
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.
Saturday, I sprayed the interior area of the walled garden with a 3% solution of the citric acid spray. It did a fair job on some weeds, didn’t do much to the grass or other weeds. Yesterday, I upped the game to 9% and sprayed again. The area is mostly browned off now with only some grass still showing some green. This morning, I shoved what was left of last year’s chicken run bale of hay over with the tractor bucket, I couldn’t get it in the bucket by myself to just drive it over. That bale is rotted on the side that was on the ground and so moldy that a cloud of mold spores erupts when part is pulled off. It seemed like the perfect solution to hold the cardboard down and be a layer to compost under leaf mulch or soil. Early in the spring, when it appeared that between DIL who started the wall began a full time job a while ago and COVID, that they wouldn’t be able to come this year to work on the house and the wall, so I began rock stacking to make her wall higher in low places and thicker in thin places and while doing so, I tossed smaller rocks up into a pile where the patio will eventually go.
I talked to my son about whether I should load them in the tractor bucket and relocate them to a rock pile and his suggestion was to use them along the edge of the cardboard or weed mat that would go down before soil was added and to build up the wall on the lower back edge at a slope. This morning, all of the cardboard that was left after doing the garden was hauled out to that space, boxes opened flat and i began below the retaining wall where the garden will be deepest and will house the herbs that might survive the winter if kept warmed by the stones. There, I can drape heavy plastic from retaining wall to garden wall to create a mini greenhouse in the coldest part of winter and perhaps the rosemary and thyme will survive there. When I ran out of cardboard, I had enough weed mat left over to do two strips of it as well. As I went, I gathered the smaller rocks again and stacked them against the back of the wall on the cardboard.
The area that has been covered was given a layer of spoiled hay to help hold it down and to begin breaking down.
The area shaded by the retaining wall is the deepest part. It receives full sun in the afternoon year round.
You can see the edge of the weed mat to the right of my shadow. It goes up to the top of the retaining wall and I’m in a shallower, flatter area now. It is hard to tell where the killed off grass ends and the spoiled hay begins.
Looking down from the deck, you can see the gorgeous heavy stone retaining wall that Son 1 and DIL built (without heavy equipment mind you) and how the garden wall wraps around to it. That area beyond the retaining wall was steep and difficult to mow. The double crook hanging pole is in the flat lawn level area. The round concrete pier in the lower left corner was where the old deck extended and all of the stones remaining and in the garden wall were under the part of the deck that did not get replaced. The pier is going to hold one end of an arbor and the patio will be between it and the house.
The outer pier can be seen here, where the path/patio has been started and you can see there is still a significant pile of smaller rock to be used or moved. Behind the end of the grill and in an area that will become part of the patio, there are bearded Iris, Dutch Iris, and a tall plant that has yellow flowers that used to be along the edge of the old deck. They will have to be moved soon. What is remaining of the hay bale can be seen in the yard, there is enough to finish the job if I can get cardboard or weed mat and some of that rock pile will go along the back of the wall.
Progress has been made. Now to finish it and get leaf mulch or composted soil to top the spoiled hay so that I can plant the garden. The patio will have to wait until the hay is down and I can get to the many rock piles with the tractor to bring large flat rocks up. The cracks will be filled with pea gravel or sand and the area will be easier to maintain, a practical space, and a joy to look at. It may need a second Hummingbird feeder for the back and an umbrella for the table so I can sit out there and enjoy it.
July 4, 2020 would have been my mother’s 96th birthday. As kids, it was celebrated at a neighborhood pool party and feast. We lived in what is now the suburbs of Virginia Beach, then a county. Our houses were all on several acres, so neighborhood is being used loosely. Four of the houses were a Greek immigrant and his 3 sons and their families. The patriarch of the family had no idea what his birthday was so he celebrated on July 4 and one of his son’s had the pool and a fantastic outdoor kitchen with a spit and they always grilled a lamb with lemon, olive oil, and oregano. Everyone brought dishes and the kids spent the day in the pool, we ate, and celebrated Papu’s and Mom’s birthdays.
As young adults with kids of our own, there were neighborhood block parties, fireworks at the ocean front or a local park and the traffic jams trying to get home. Blacksburg and Christiansburg, the towns nearest us have fireworks and we usually have our oldest grandson at this time of year and sometimes his Dad too and we go in to see them. Not this year. With the social isolation, we went in at lunch time, for drove through food, took a walk on the old rail grade, masking when we passed anyone or were passed by cyclist, and returned home for the afternoon spent planting more corn, pulling the corn suckers from the ones that were up and transplanting them if they had roots, repairing a leaky garden hose, and watering pots and newly planted seed. I cooked burgers on the grill and had corn on the cob, then drove to a little town nearby to get ice cream only to find hundreds of people in the street looking at various cars, having some sort of street festival and no masks in sight, so we drove to the county seat to a drive through for cones. By the time we arrived back home, the sun was going down and I tackled the overgrown yellow Bearded Iris bed, first cutting back their tops, then digging them all up to divide.
An overgrown mass trimmed back.
All dug and about to be divided.
Bed done.
Three large clumps set aside for friends, the remainder tossed into an area we don’t mow where they will set roots and bloom. The finished bed will be an overgrown mess again in two years.
It just wasn’t the same watching the fireworks on TV, but some of the music was nice.
I believe in peaceful protest, but not riots that bring out people who use the crowds to vandalize, loot, and arson. I am a Caucasian female, born to a middle class family of two parents, so no, I don’t know what it is like to be a targeted black male. I am old enough to have lived through the 1960’s as a teen and young adult, drove a mini van with curtains in the windows, so got stopped a couple of times for minor offences or license checks, but never felt threatened by those stops. I was taught right from wrong, how to be polite, but not to be racist.
I joined social media to connect with friends and family that I rarely get to see, to get updates on groups to which I am a member, but between the 24/7 onslaught on the news about politics, Covid, and now BLM, and every other post addressing one of those issues, social media has driven me away. I try to avoid the television, but if it is on and I want to spend time with hubby, I am in the same room with it and it is like a train wreck, you can’t avoid watching it. Last night after Trump had a peaceful protest attacked with tear gas, flashbang granades, and rubber bullets so he could have a photo op, I couldn’t take it anymore. I turned my chair away from the screen, put on headphones and played music, probably louder than I should have to drown it out.
I go outside, play in the dirt, take walks and pictures of the pastoral scene. I spin, mostly on my Jenkins Turkish spindles, and knit with the yarn I spin. And still I am stressed and have trouble sleeping.
The Jenkins spindle spin along in which I participate, starts new every month. I started the month with empty spindles and a brand new braid of wool in Peacock colors. The goal each month is a minimum of 25 grams of spun singles or plied yarn. That is less than an ounce. In two days, I have already spun 23.49 grams. I started with two colors pulled off of the gradient braid and divided it lengthwise into two equal pieces, weighed them to be sure they were.
This is half of the purple and blue, the next part to spin.
Here are the 23+ grams still on the apple wood spindle with the other half behind it and the rest of the braid under it. I can’t spin that much every day, but it is my sanity for now. I thought our country had made progress in social relations, but the past 4 years have changed my mind. It hurts my heart and soul that such bad behavior occurs. We are all the same color on the inside. Children aren’t born racists, they learn it. Stop teaching it to them.
“To make a difference in someone’s life, you don’t have to be brilliant, rich, beautiful, or perfect. You just have to care.”
After the rain and wind of several days ago, we returned to late winter/early spring like weather, freezing or near freezing at night, maybe up to 50f daytimes but the wind has howled constantly. Plants have been brought in or covered and taken out or uncovered. The wind has blown so hard the seedlings have been kept indoors. We are still about 3 weeks maybe a tad more from the average last frost.
The chickens have gone back to penned during the day, free range in the late afternoons until they go to coop on their own. Last night when I went out to shut them in, they were all gathered around and on the coop because the gate had blown shut and they couldn’t get in. As soon as I opened it, they all hurriedly trotted right up the ramp to bed. They lost their run around the garden when I found several in the garden three times. That would be okay if they would just scratch the paths, but they scratch the beds too and tender shoots don’t tolerate that well. When the wind calms and the daytime warms some, I will again try to figure out how they are getting in and hopefully give them their run back. Mama Carolina Wren is still tucked down on the ground in the corner of the box on her nest. She has 4 eggs. She has been hailed on, and snowed on twice, gully washing rain for 10 hours. What a good little Mama. I hope she successfully raises those littles. She doesn’t like me in the garden and since it has been chilly, I have stayed out so she won’t leave the nest. The other Wren in the Barberry bush is more protected. The bush is tucked back in the set back where the utility room connects the house and garage, so not as windy, though still unshielded from the rain, hail, and snow. She had 3 eggs the day I checked and I haven’t disturbed her to look again.
The riding mower was finally returned from the shop yesterday and in spite of the cold wind, everything that can be mowed with it was mowed. The grass was so tall and thick that it nearly choked it out even set on the tallest setting. It will have to be mowed again soon to bring it down to normal mowing height and to break up the drying clots of heavy grass that are about the yard.
This morning we had 3 “visitors.” First was the turkey hunter and our contact with him only a text message that he said it was too cold and he quit today. The second, a friend came by and picked up a dozen eggs from the front porch with a shouted hello across the front yard. The third, our daughter, who kindly brought us some supplies from the grocer, including TP which we didn’t need yet, but since they had it, she bought a package for us. She also picked up our utility trailer for use this weekend putting some stuff in a storage unit for a bit until some house repairs are finished. We actually got to talk with her, wearing masks and keeping at least 6 feet social distancing. Groceries were wiped down and put away and we are set again for a while. We certainly appreciate her doing that for us. The social isolation is difficult when you don’t know when it will end. Since pleasure rides aren’t essential travel, we are pretty much stuck at home, though when we take our garbage and recycling down to the drop off center, we take the “long” way home, an additional mile or two of scenic road through rural farmland.
The lilacs are blooming, but this is the least scented one I have ever been around. The bearded iris are beginning to bud, soon there will be bearded iris and then Dutch iris blooms for the table. The wild dogwoods are starting to bloom, but the one planted in the yard hasn’t. The wild plum is full of blooms, maybe this will be a year for fruit. It has produced only once in the 14 years we have been here.
Many friends are posting morel mushroom pictures harvested so I went wandering the woods yesterday where the oak leaves fall and the May apples bloom looking, but I didn’t find a single one.
The slowing of life with social isolation has me spinning more on the spindles. I ended up doing a trade of one with a gal in N. Dakota and ended up with a beautiful new one to play with. It is made of Marblewood.
This tiny one has been fun to spin and it’s diminutive 2″ size still spun 38 yards of fine yarn.
When I was in college, grad school and a new teacher, I wrote entirely with a fountain pen. The staying at home and cleaning up the house, I found both of my fountain pens and renewed my interest in using them instead of non refillable rollerballs.
Life is slow and deliberate right now. It is nice, but at times emotional not being able to visit with our families.
Yesterday morning it rained lightly alternating with periods of sunshine. By early afternoon, you could see the storm coming. The photo below was taken right after our phones alarmed simultaneously of severe thunderstorm warning with ping pong ball sized hail.
Our house has a large 2 plus car garage, but like most garages, it has too much other stuff in it and normally only houses the motorcycle. There are two large built in work benches, a built in floor to ceiling shelving unit, many sets of scaffolding with it’s braces and walk boards, scrap wood, various 5 gallon buckets (well more than a dozen), my garden cart with tools, the gas mower and weed wacker. One wall has pegs with hanging tools another wall has two high shelves of camping and outdoor gear. Of course, all the wild bird food, chicken food, and a half bale of pine shavings for their coop. There are 3 ladders, and the two bicycles were also in there. When the alert came, we scrambled to try to get the two cars in there too. Items were shoved and shifted willy nilly, the bicycles moved to a large unused coop and my car was put in on the tighter size as it is the smaller of the two. Hubby with much back and forth moved the motorcycle to the middle and stayed on it while I drove his larger car in.
To get out of my car, I had to climb over to the passenger side to get out and very carefully slid out the driver’s side of his car. There was no room to move around in there at all. We had just accomplished this, closed the doors and come back in when the phones alarmed a tornado warning in our area. We have a basement, but our dogs know it is off limits, so they had to be lead around the house and in the back door one at a time. There is a TV down there so we turned it on to monitor the storm and waited out the all clear.
Because I had spent a good portion of the day making two batches of sandwich rolls, I had decided to make spicy sloppy joe for dinner and started it and some hash browns. The sloppy joe was barely done and I was right at the end of the frying for the potatoes when the power went out. It was early for dinner, but eat we did and as the wind howled, the rain started, then the hail. Fortunately it was pea sized, not ping pong ball sized and doesn’t seem to have done any damage.
This is not typical weather for us, tornado warnings are very rare and I don’t remember large hail ever since we have lived here.
The power stayed out for about 3 hours and the clouds thinned, the wind continued. In the early morning hours this morning, it again rained, thundered, and flashed and the wind was scary sounding. I kept waiting for the phone to alarm again, but it didn’t, I just couldn’t sleep well with the storms. Today is mostly clear, still very windy and cooler, but comfortable with a near freezing night tonight and tomorrow night.
After lunch, I moved the cars carefully back out into the driveway and committed to clean up and reorganize the garage in case we are faced again with having to quickly put the cars in. The scaffolding braces were tightened up, my craft show shelter finally put back in its bag, scrap wood organized and tightened up, cans better organized and out of the way but so that chicken feed can still be accessed even with cars in there. A large rolling plastic crate that was purchased several years ago to move new chicks to the warm basement during a late fall cold snap was moved back to the utility area of the basement where it can be stored until it is needed for that use again. The mower and garden cart arranged tightly against the scaffolding. The only vehicle in the garage now is the motorcycle and it is still in the middle as there are no plans for it to go out. Usually, the riding mower is parked on the side where my car was yesterday, but the repair folks had picked it up. It will go back in the garage when it is returned, but if another warning comes, I will drive it up to the bay of the barn that has the tractor parked in it, it will be okay there for short periods, but I don’t want mice in the engine compartment. I would like to organize shelves and workbenches better, but I needed a break. If we had to quickly put the cars in now, it would be much easier and still be able to get through the garage.
Now I need to go get the house plants protected, it is going down to 35 tonight.
The self isolation has prompted a return to bread baking and consumption of homemade bread. When we knew that we would be staying at home and began our supply stocking, some sandwich type rolls and a loaf of sourdough bread were purchased and frozen. A month into the isolation, those supplies are long gone which prompted a resurrection of the sourdough. While the sourdough was being fed and restored, a couple of loaves of no knead artisan bread were made, then the starter was ready and several loaves have been baked, giving one to the neighbor that helped with the mower. This morning, I realized that there were no sandwich rolls left, so the starter discard was put to use to mix up a batch of dough for them. There are two recipes that I use for rolls, one with sourdough and one without. The sourdough ones take longer to make but use up the daily discard. The ones below are the yeast raised ones.
The yeast raised ones are done, the sourdough have 4 more hours plus baking time. Think I will stick to yeast raised for sandwich buns.
The bread making helps pass the time and since we aren’t going anywhere, there is plenty of that. Because flour is a rare commodity, I can’t go out to get it, I’m using so much of it, I ordered fresh stone milled organic flour. It comes from a mill where a blogger friend works and it arrived today. I just sprayed the outer box with 1% bleach spray and will open it with gloves on once it is dry and bring my 4 three pound bags in. Can’t wait to try it, but with one each of the roll recipes rising on the counter that will make 12 buns, and about a half a loaf of sourdough remaining from yesterday’s baking, it will have to wait a day or two and will probably be a loaf of sandwich bread.
This morning, the mower repair people came and picked up the riding mower to take in to fix and when I stepped out to yell up to the guy to see if we paid for the pick up now or when it was returned, I saw our neighborly mower had again jumped her fence and come to visit.
If she is going to come mow, I wish she would at least come down to an area that I have to mow, not an area that is saved for hay. Of course it had just started raining when I called her owner to let her know where “Bad” Penny was. She is due to calf in May so maybe she will stay home and not leave her little one then.
The time at home has my garden in a better place than it has ever been this early in the spring, but we have two days of rain followed by a chilly day and near freezing night ahead, so it will sit idle. The asparagus look like they will provide enough for a meal soon, then they will overwhelm and I only like them fresh, so freezing or otherwise preserving is not going to happen. I know daughter and granddaughter love them and I’m sure she will be glad to come out to pick up a bag full and a dozen eggs. I need to get out between rain showers and string some trellis for the peas.
A few days ago, I said I had given up on the fencing. Today is another beautiful day and I am less sore, and have more energy, so I attacked it again. There were two long pieces of garden fencing partially loose on the ends attached to several T-posts and it served no useful purpose. I started taking it down last summer to make mowing easier but it was really overgrown in the grass and I couldn’t get it free. It is now down, the T-posts all pulled, a dozen of them. Old rotting wooden fence posts that were laid along the bottom to keep the chickens in when there was a run that it enclosed were pulled up and stacked along the edge of the large A frame coop.
The row of tall weeds is where it was, the garden fence to the right, the orchard to the left, and I am standing with my back to the chicken run where they kick out the compost. That large coop was built so I could raise some meat chickens. Maybe this fall if the virus subsides, I will get a dozen or so Freedom Rangers and some electric net fencing and put that coop back to use. It becomes the holding coop when old hens are replaced with new pullets.
Feeling smug that the task was accomplished and going back to last year’s idea of a garden fence closer to the garden inside the original sturdier fence, making a run around the perimeter of the garden for the chickens was revisited. I had done that last year, but had used 3 foot fencing in places and the chickens would get a running start and go over it and get out or in to the garden. The fence I took down is 4 feet and the exterior fence is 4 feet and if I put a cover over the end near the coop, they can’t get a running start and fly onto the egg door. The first section of that fence was put in place, but then I got down near Mrs. Wren and she got agitated, so I left her alone to sit. I went back to it after lunch and got by her so she won’t be bothered again. I got the fence put back, and the chickens can have the run of that alley and scratch the henbit, chickweed, and other goodies looking for bugs. It helps keep the weeds down, gives them some running room and more area to scratch.
It didn’t take them long to find the feast, it won’t take them long to beat down the weeds in that perimeter. There is very little left to do inside the garden fence now. A few small areas of henbit, a deteriorated tarp at the farthest end to be removed.
When the leaves fall in autumn, we look forward to the new greening in the spring. Usually we see no green hints except on scrub until early to mid May. We aren’t even to the middle of April and the trees are beginning to leaf out. This is such an atypical spring. My seedlings are thriving and get a bit of sheltered time on the back deck during the day. Some heartier house plants have been returned to the porches. I watch the weather and if a frost sneaks up on us, some will be brought back in.
The hens are being generous. The nine of them produce about 5 eggs a day, but yesterday they were in overdrive.
The oblong layer is still producing odd oblong eggs and her shells are very thin and brittle.
Cabin Crafted 