Ducks and stuff...

 It has been a busy week here on the farm. I had some kind of disease (I think) wipe out my entire clutch of chicks. They didn't seem sick until, all of the sudden, they fell over and died. I cleaned out the incubator and the brooder, and I now have 22 eggs in the 'bator. A dozen of those are from my own hens and the other 10 are from a nearby farm. My eggs are EEs, of course, and so are 4 of the eggs from the farm. The other 6 are, as my husband tells me, "Red something." Lol, I'm guessing they're either RIRs or New Hampshires. Either way, that makes me happy, as I wan't expecting hatching eggs when he went on his little errand this afternoon.

 I was, on the other hand, expecting ducks, since that's what he said he was going to get. I was expecting 6 or maybe 10 new ducks. Imagine my surprise when he got out of the truck and had 24 ducklings in a box and 2 buckets!! He also got me 4 Wheaten Maran chicks and 1 Black Maran chick! 

Maran chicks

24 Pekin ducklings in their temporary pen

  I think I'll need a bigger pool!!

It suddenly seems inadequate...

 On Monday my baby girl turned 4 years old. I'm not sure how it happened, but there you go, she's officially a big girl now. I miss the baby years and I'm sad that I'll never have that again. Happy birthday, Bug!

Lily, on her 4th birthday

  In the garden, weeds are trying to take over, so the kids and I will be spending the first few days of summer vacation pulling them (their last day of school is tomorrow.) The bush beans are getting to the end of production, so we'll be putting in a new batch in a week or so. Tomatoes are finally getting ripe. We've only had enough to eat right off the vine so far, but soon we should be getting several pounds of tomatoes a day.

Cherry tomatoes and green beans

 In the herb garden, some of the Nest Egg gourd stems have started turning brown, so I pulled about a dozen off and have them in a box in the closet to dry and cure. If they turn out well I'm going to let the kids paint them and use them as Christmas tree ornaments. My original plan was to use them as dummy eggs in the chickens nests but they turned out so much bigger than I expected. I think planting them where I had added so much chicken manure last fall might be why they grew so big. One really interesting thing is that the fruit from the 3 vines look very different. One is big and pear shaped, one is medium and egg shaped, and one is smaller, round and striped. 

I put an egg in the middle, just for reference, they're all much bigger than the egg

 For the next week, we will be working on getting into a summer schedule and prepping for a visit from my sister-in-law, mother-in-law, and grandmother-in-law, but I will take some more pictures of the ducks and, maybe, get the post about Mike's watermelons done. 

 Blessed be...