Veggies

The garden is coming along great.  The hardest part is the waiting.  The lettuce varieties are ready, and we have been eating salad every night.  I'm sure we'll be sick of it soon, but I am trying to no buy any veg from now til next spring.  I better cross my fingers that the stuff that stores or freezes produces well!
The tomato plants are like shrubs, covered with green globes.  There are tiny little cukes on the vines.  The carrots are almost big enough that we can thin them by eating baby carrots.  The cabbage has bounced back from rampaging chicken and a flea beetle attack.  The beets and turnip are well on their way. 
The spinach and arugula both succumbed to the flea beetles, so we have replanted, and the seedlings are doing better.  As soon as we notice that the beetles are back, I break out the organic bug spray, and it seems to knock them back.

There have been a few disappointments this year.  The peas are growing slow.  They should be about done by now, and awaiting a replant.  Instead they have been slow to grow, only about 8 inches tall.  The herbs in the other garden closer to the house have barely come up at all.  The cilantro was slow, and then only about 6 plants came up.  The rest never even germinated.  We tilled the soil, and reseeded.  So far, the basil has shown itself, but thats it!  I was dreaming of food seasoned with my own herbs all winter.  At this rate, I'm going to just buy some potted ones and put them on the window sill!

New Reading

"The practical advice in this exhaustive reference tool includes how to cultivate a garden, buy land, bake bread, raise farm animals, make sausage, can peaches, milk a goat, grow herbs, churn butter, build a chicken coop, catch a pig, cook on a wood stove, and much, much more."

How farm geek have I become??  I totally want this book as soon as it hits the shelves in November!

Thwarted!

We carefully baited 2 live traps with chicken found in the dark recesses of the fridge.  WE placed them near the coop, and hoped for a nocturnal visit from the poultry killer.  Whatever it was, it rolled the traps around the barn yard so the chicken tumbled around inside, and ate all the meat off the bones. The traps sprung, but caught nothing.  I hope the chicken was really old, and the creature gets gut rot.

Tonight, cinder blocks on top of the traps.

Factory Farming Rant

The first animals with hooves that will be raised on this farm will be heritage Berkshire pork.  All factory farming pisses me off to no end, but somehow, gestation caged pigs burn me the most. 

Cheap meat is cheap in $$ at the grocery store only!!  The cost to our health and animal welfare is far higher than we can afford to pay!  We need to vote with our wallets!!  Sure, pastured meat is more expensive!  Eat less meat, have meatless Mondays!  We won't die if we don't have tacos or ribs every night, but a whole bunch of people have died from eating contaminated meat for the factory food system.

Predetors

The boyfriend and I always walk down to the barn in the morning together.  I let the chickens out, he changes the hose over to water the flower bed in front of the barn.

When I opened the door, there was a hen on the ground.  She just looked.....flat, if there is a word to describe it.  Something had gotten in and out of the coop, and killed one of the hens, while the others had to watch.  The coop is 6 feet tall, with heavy mesh vents at the top of the walls, and small windows that tip in all of 4 inches, right up under the roof.  I am not sure what could have gotten in there, but it did. 

Shawn buried the poor hen under the compost pile, and nailed the windows shut.

Last night, when we went out to shut off the water on the garden, something shot out from behind the coop, nails skittering on the concrete barn yard, and disappeared under the old cattle feeder.  It was dark, and fast, not lumbering the way a skunk or raccoon does. 

All chickens are accounted for this morning.  It seems we have thwarted him for now.  Shawn is borrowing a live trap from work, and that will be out beside the coop for the night tonight.