The good, the bad, and the ugly

I love my life, really I do, but things go wonky all the time and I end up with chickens in the bathtub... I'll start with the ugly and work my way to the good so we end on a good note here.

 The Ugly:

You can just see him in there

•    Last weekend I sent Aislyn out to give the bunnies food and water. She came running in the house saying that there was a snake in the cage and the babies were dead. I ran out there (after grabbing my camera) and, sure thing, there was a snake in the nest box. It was just a medium, garden variety snake, but it was big enough to eat one baby and kill the other 3. The mama bunny was cowering in the far corner and practically jumped into my arms when I opened the cage door. Mike followed closely behind me, shotgun in hand. Then he proceeded to poke the snake with a stick, repeatedly, until the snake tried to climb out of the cage. Of course, it couldn't get out, there was an entire half-grown bunny rabbit in it's belly, but it sure tried. While it was stuck there Mike shot it. 

•  Yesterday morning I gave the Maran and Blue Amercuana chicks fresh water. As I walked away I forgot to drop the shade cloth back into place. About 8 hours later, when it was 108 degrees, 14 of the 21 babies had wedged themselves into a small corner behind a cardboard box, where there was a bit of shade, and smothered to death.The survivors were quickly moved into the bathtub to cool off and recover. I can't tell you how bad I feel about it. 

 The Bad:

Sad sad zucchini

•  Squash bugs have killed all my zucchini and yellow squash and are now working on the patty pan and cucumbers. I've pulled most of the plants and I'm going to try again in a different bed. I've heard that planting radishes all around the seedlings might help, so I'll try that.

Get a room!

•  Grasshoppers are everywhere right now. I can't walk anywhere without flushing out whole clouds of them. They don't seem to be too interested in the garden yet, but if they do decide to munch on my veggies there are enough to wipe everything out. They are also busy making lots of baby grasshoppers... everywhere I look there are grasshoppers getting busy.

We're letting it dry before we give it to the animals

•  The corn has succumbed to a terrible earworm infestation. We're going to put in a new crop in a few weeks. Luckily, the chickens don't care if there's worms in the corn and the goats like the crunchy dry stalks, so it's not a total waste. I am sad that I didn't get any sweet corn for 4th of July though.

•  Gabe has been sick. It's nothing major, just a virus, but it's awful when he's sick because he can't express himself very well. He's been sleeping a lot and Turtle is more than happy to keep him company during naptime. 

 The Good:

Aislyn, Ian, and Lily

•  I'll start with the best thing. The pool!! The Nanas went out and found us the biggest above ground pool they could. It keeps the kid occupied, which keeps the bickering to a minimum. If it weren't for the pool the kids would have to stay inside when it gets really hot out. Plus, it's huge, so there's plenty of room for the grownups too. My favorite thing to do late at night now is to go float in my ring, watch the stars, and enjoy the quiet. 

Dehydrated tomato paste

•  I have tons of tomatoes. Yesterday I stopped counting the cherry tomatoes I was picking when I got to 100. I've made a few jars of tomato sauce, lots of dried cherry tomatoes, and (my favorite) dehydrated tomato paste.We had amazing BLTs the other night and there is a big bowl of cherry tomatoes on the dining room table for snacks. 

Mama and babies

•  Miss Broody wasn't having any luck hatching out her eggs, so I took them from her and gave her a few of the babies I hatched in the incubator. After dark I snuck out there with 4 babies and switched them for the eggs. The next morning I went out to check on the little family and all seemed well. The next day she let them come out of the nestbox and explore the coop. Now they're running around after their mama and she's teaching them that the compost bin is the best place to find tasty tidbits.

Buddy likes to be in the middle of things

•  Buddy the duck was delivered to my a door a couple of weeks ago by one of the (semi) local members of my gardening forum. He needed a new home, and I have the space for him. The other ducks gave him a bit of a hard time when he first arrived, but now he's part of the group. He's a crested Khaki Campbell and a very handsome guy. I think some of the Pekin girls are sweet on him.

That's it for today. It's time to have some lunch and then go swimming. Blessed Be...

Duck update

 Well, I've spent a lot of time supervising the ducks in the last few days. Since I don't have a permanent shelter built for them yet all 27 ducklings are sleeping in the 4'x8' chicken tractor. It's pretty cramped so I'm having to move it a couple of times a day so that they aren't standing in their own poo and so that they have fresh grass to munch on. I also let them out every time I go outside.

Food!!!
The little duck up front is Spot. I'm waiting for her to get into something so I can say, "Out, damn Spot!"

 The routine goes something like this...I open the door and walk around the tractor, the ducks run out the door and make a beeline for the back porch (cause that's where the food is, ya know) and peep until I throw a couple of handfuls of food out. Then they trip all over themselves and each other to get a few bites.

A little bit crowded

Then they all dash back to the kiddy pool (which was fine for 3 ducklings but it terribly inadequate for 27) for a quick drink. Some will hop in and have a little bath, but most of the new ones haven't figured out how to easily get in and out. Duck, Goose, and Jill like to show off to the others by gracefully jumping in for a little swim and then, just as gracefully, jumping back out. After a drink they either chase flies and wasps or run around eating bits of grass or looking for bugs to munch on. When they get tired they find a patch of shade and settle in for a nap.

Drink!!

 I think that Duck and Goose are hens, since they are starting to get mottled feathers on their chests and faces, but Jill is still too young to tell. Here's hoping for a boy so we can breed some more (although that would mean a name change is in order, it's just not nice to call a boy Jill!) The new ducks are harder to sex, because a hen and a drake Pekin look almost exactly the same. I won't know for sure until the boys get their drake feather or the girls develop their quack. We will be eating most of the boys when they get big enough. I want to keep about a dozen hens and 2 drakes though, so that we can hatch our own next spring.
 The chickens have given the ducklings surprisingly little trouble. They discovered that I'm pretty likely to have food when the babies are out, so they intermingle and play nice to have a chance at getting some treats. Moonshine even seems to feel protective of them and chases the cat and kittens off if they come too close.

More food 

Moonshine is watching out for "his" babies

 And here's a video of Goose showing off. I can almost hear her, "Really y'all, it's easy. You just hop right in." Note the looks of envy on the other ducks faces.

 That's it for today. Enjoy the rest of your weekend and Blessed Be...

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...

Tomatoes and other good stuff

 I got my first ripe tomato from the garden this week and more are starting to change color!! This is what I've been waiting for since February. I did share too, even though I didn't want to. I probably should have let it go for another day or 2 to get even riper, but I just couldn't resist. It was still a million times tastier than a grocery store tomato.

This is going to be the second ripe tomato of the year

Small Red Cherry tomatoes are almost there

I got rid of the blossom end rot I was fighting on the Romas

Beefsteak

My German Green tomatoes are blooming

 Aside from that I've been getting tons of summer squash. The patty-pan are the best producers so far, but the zucchini are doing pretty good too. The yellow squash are just doing so so. I've made squash fritters (they were amazingly yummy), squash pickles, fried squash, sauteed squash, squash in soup... Well, you get the idea. I got a great recipe from my great gardening friends at The Easy Garden Forum for a summer squash chocolate cake that I'll be making and feeding to Ian (aka: Mr. I Hate Vegetables) to see if he likes it.

Lily likes to help harvest 

The rest of the garden is doing well too. I've harvested okra, radishes, wax peppers, and pickling cucumbers which, along with some squash and some tiny onions, all got made into pickles. It was my first try, but everything worked the way it were supposed to and they look pretty.

The pink ones have radishes in them

 The winter squash are starting to produce little fruit and one watermelon plant has a teeny tiny melon on it. The corn is also starting to get ears, which means we'll have plenty of time to get another crop in after this one is done. Peppers and tomatillos are also doing well.

Itty bitty watermelon

Winter squash (it's about the size of a baseball now)

An ear of corn starting to develop

Wax peppers

 In other garden news, Mike has enlarged the garden enough to add 16 more watermelon hills. He just mowed the area as short as he could and then dug up the hills and added bunny poo to each one before planting the seeds. We might also put some corn in this area this year, if we can get the tiller fixed or borrow one.

The new watermelon area

 On the animal front, I hatched out 13 new chicks last weekend and they are outside in the brooder. One of my Buff Orps has gone broody and is sitting on 6 eggs, so I'll have more chicks in a couple of weeks. The rabbits are getting bigger and we should be able to process them in a couple of weeks. I lost 2 of my ducklings to a predator this week, it happened during the day and both the dog and the cat were in the house, so I'm thinking a hawk. Now we just have Duck, Goose, and Jill, but I may be getting some Pekins this weekend to add to my flock. And our kittens are adorable and into everything these days. I may have a home for one already.

My favorite is the black one in front

They're hoping I have treats

Here's all 5 ducklings a few hours before Duck and Jack disappeared

Looking for trouble to get into

Miss Broody (since I don't name my hens all broody chickens get called Miss Broody)

 That's it for now, I gotta go check the tomatoes for hornworms and maybe fold the mountain of clean laundry that's trying to take over my living room.

 Blessed Be...

Visitors

 We have had visitors to the farm in the last week...
 First my father in law and his wife came from California. It was nice to have them here and the kids were so excited to see Papa and Wavy. They got to tour the garden and meet all the animals. We didn't really DO anything, but we had a great time hanging out and catching up. Gabe was especially sad when it was time for them to leave, and now keeps asking to "go to the airplane, go to California."

Papa and Gabe

Papa and Ian, discussing literature

Papa and Wavy brought the twins some books

  Then my grandparents drove up from Lincoln to go to my cousin Amanda's baby shower in Ft Worth. The plan was for Papa Davis to drive Grandma here on Sunday and then us girls would go to the shower, while Papa stayed here and hung out with the Mellor guys and little Lily. On Saturday afternoon I was in the kitchen, thinking that I had the rest of the night to finish the blanket I was making for the baby when my grandparents drove up. I freaked out, thinking that I had the day wrong, and ran to get dressed. It turned out that THEY had gotten the day wrong, the shower was on Sunday, but that meant that they got to spend the night and we had a very nice, if somewhat unexpected visit. Papa told me about his Mama's garden when he was a little boy and how she would cook squirrel in gravy and pour it over biscuits. Grandma told me about living in Selma, Alabama during the civil rights movement and how she saw the Selma to Montgomery march from Great Grandma Davis' front porch. Sunday we drove up to the baby shower and had a great time. Papa stayed here and learned how to find all his favorite old Westerns on Netflix.

Me, Daniel, Amanda, and Grandma (I made the little purple blanket and a tiny hat for the baby)

The parents-to-be

 In between visits I got some things done around here. We started to get blight on the potatoes, so we quickly dug them and burned the infected plants. That gave us a big empty spot in the garden that Mike has filled with watermelon. (Expect a post on Mike and watermelons in the near future.) We are getting some summer squash and there are tons of tomatoes on the plants, but none are ripe yet. 

Potatoes and green beans

Summer squash fritters with green onions and parsley

They're taunting me...

 I dried some herbs in my yard sale food dehydrator and put them in pretty jars.

Basil, Tarragon, and Celery salt

 We have lots of babies on the property... ducklings, rabbits, kittens, and a new bunch of 13 chicks that hatched over the weekend. I love baby animals.

Duck, Duck, Goose, Jack, and Jill with Lily, Aislyn, and Ian

This may not end well for poor little Smudge

One of the kittens, the kids call him Socks, for obvious reasons

Bunnies

Chicks in a hat

 That's all the time I have today. I need to go pick some squash and green beans for dinner tonight. Blessed Be...