My sub-arctic tomatoes are heavy with little green tomatoes. I think I finally found a variety that likes it up here. The peppers, even with the odd nasty 90°F weather are still small. The cabbage bolted. The chickens cheered. The strawberries are starting their second round. I have already started canning green beans and peas. The pumpkins, spaghetti squash and various varieties of dry beans are doing well. Carrots are OK. Onions still small.
I forgot to put the fishing-line barrier up. A deer got the tops of 1/3 of the cranberry beans and a few lentils. After the line went up, it got in again because we forgot a barrier into the garden. laughing... Bad- it ate the blooms off all of the potatoes. They had been there for a while, but do not know what that will do to the crop. It also ate half of a tobacco plant. Never had that happen. It has not come back since. Either the tobacco killed it or made it sick enough to avoid the area.
The second batch of four chickens we got, turned out to all be cockerels. They have been harassing the pullets to the point they will not leave the coop. Three are now in the chicken tractor until we get the new fencing up and set aside a small yard for them to fatten up for Freezer Camp. One who my husband named Elvis, (has a curl-like bit on the front of his comb and struts like the human he is named after), has shown good qualities for him to stay and make more tasty chicken bits. I hope the pullets relax when they realize that they will not have to fight off three randy cockerels any more. Elvis backs off when they give their version of “No!”
I sent a shot of our Subaru Outback fully loaded to my daughter today when we were about to head home after shopping. It was filled with: fencing, t-posts, canning jars, bale of pine shavings, chicken feed, groceries (that we cannot grow/raise ourselves) and sundries. She laughed and said we are truly hillbilly now. laughing....
What adventures! Hubby inadvertently had a chicken wing in his compost pile. Something got in there and collapsed the wire fence, and was trapped. Then it tore 2 holes in the wire and escaped.
We suspect a big racoon. Something got all the grapes on the lower rung of the vines last year. He set a live trap and captured a smallish coon. Set the trap again, and the next day, the door was mangled and the trap bent. So we think we have a large one hanging out.
I really don’t like roosters, due to being flogged viciously when I was just a youngun. I was born in Hill Billy Country, so I guess I have always been one.LOL