Red Clovers and Pullets Update July 2020

Gardening is finally full on. Took some time and persistance with the crazed weather and temps. But corn is three feet tall now, just starting tassels and I have put the last dose of manure on them before I switch over to the bone meal and potassium. I pulled about 30 apples, either sick looking, had worms or there were simply too many in a bunch.  I think there will be about 70 left to harvest later. I threw those apples into the compost pile. Sun has been too hot for the tomatoes so I now have a shade cloth for mid to late afternoon, then I take it off after 5 as the peak heat has hit and the sun is headed west. The clover that we planted in the first batch is nice and lush. I'm happy with it. 

Red Clover, Red Clover, Send.... 

Pullets, are just about ready to start laying.  These ladies are super friendly. Love their treats. I need to concoct some type of nesting boxes for them.  I'm hoping that the square buckets that I ordered will be large enough.  

I'm speculating that the Rhodes will being the first or second week of August, while the Barred may not start laying until the end of August or even the first of September.  We reallyl don't know their hatching dates, so that will make it a bit harder to determine their ages when they start. 

We moved them onto fresh grass last night, and they seem quite happy with the fresh cool blades of grass under their feet.  The Barred are super smart and curious. They are a fun breed to have. Collectively, they are a bonded flock now, but there is still a special connection between the two Barred Rock within the flock. 

Barred Boot Inspection	Rhode Boot Inspection
My Good Buddy Barr	I Want Pets too
Rhodie Buddies	Curled Neck Feathers
Barred Buddies	A check in
A different check in	All check in

August is Harvesting the Rewards

We are pulling ripe plants and fruits as they appear mature. Sometimes, we are a little too early, but, that happens when we can't see what's inside.

First of all it is strawberry runner time.  Strawberries will send out runners across the ground and "replant" themselves.  However, because we have ours in pots, we can bring bags of dirt up to the runner to simulate the event.  This is how we do it.  We do not cut the runner until the roots take hold in the dirt. Then we need to keep the soil really wet to ensure that the new little plant survives. This is an easy peasy way to get new strawberry plants for next spring.

Strawberry runner in fresh dirt for root growth.

Let the new growth peek above the soil keeping it wet.

A new plant on its own

I harvested 1/2 pound of green beans from our first plant. It is on the downhill side of producing. However, of the other two bean plants that I replanted, one has survived and is now thriving, so we may have more beans later in the fall!  This is the first harvest of the carrots.  There will be another in about two weeks to finish off that planting.  The fall harvest will likely be in early October. Tomatoes continue to ripen and the few apples that we have this year are ready. The other harvest is the corn. Can you tell what we will be having for dinner tonight?

Today's harvest from green bean bush	One-Half of the Carrots planted
Tomatoes and part of a ripe apple	CORN!
Sweet 100s	More the sweet 100s

As you can see, we do NOT plant a lot of anything that we grow.  We do not see any reason to over plant because we hate to be wasteful plus it takes up precious space. Some things will be dried for use later in the year, like herbs. Oregano that I totally cut back last month and thinned out is coming back in force, so we will get a third harvest this fall. Also, it is time to cut the dill flowers for drying. I keep topping the basil so that we continue to have a fresh supply all summer.  I LOVE a little fresh basil on my hamburgers. I have dried some basil for cooking this winter. This year I used a clean fry pan screen set on top of a colander. In the photo below, I outlined some of the dried leaves that will be thrown out because those leaves that turn a funky color tend to be bitter. 

Oregano Fall Reboot

Dill Flowers & Basil

Drying Basil

Aries Turkey Inferno

The poor turkeys were almost fricassee as a fire raged in the pasture. Thankfully, neighbors immediately came to help and shortly after that multiple fire trucks and fire fighters arrived on the scene. 

After the turkeys were released from their pen/coop, they flew to safety while a couple of fire trucks were navigated into the pasture and hoses were stretched across the road into the neighborhood up the street. This necessitated the police blocking the streets to protect the hoses! Santa Vaca!  

Thankfully, not too much was burned but the smell is intense.  The door on the pen is a little melted, but still, all in all, the coop and pen are intact and functional. The turkeys were a little traumatized, and rounding them up took some efforts. They had found the neighbor's apple tree and decided that was a perfect location to chill while those crazed men and women worked to put out that fire. 

What started the fire? Well, the week was an especially hot one, turning the pasture into prime tinder.  The electric fencing sparked the fire. We so totally appreciate our local fire fighters for saving our pasture and our home! Also, our kind neighbors were very helpful in the early minutes of fire. 

The turkey coop has been moved to a new location and the electric fencing has been taken down. Oy! What a nightmare this could have been!  On the positive side, it did burn up a good section of blackberries.

The Mystery Plants of Spring

Every year, we discover an/other new plant(s) on our property. Some years, they are noxious, and poisonous weeds. But sometimes, they are productive plants.  Then, there are always the plants and things that come back year after year, no matter what we do. Such as Blackberries.  The fact that the winter temps hardly dipped below freezing this year, the blackberries are growing faster than we can dig them up. We will need to get a backhoe to get these beauties! We have almost acre of berry coverage. Ugh! This is a view of about a third of the blackberries.  I don't know if you can tell, based on Lucky, but these bushes are up to six feet tall in some areas. Ugh again!

 

We found an interesting blooming tree in our field that we had not noticed until this year. It's an Apple tree!  We assume that Lucky (the horse) planted and nourished that tree in a pile of horse apples. hahaha  I think we have another young apple tree out there.  We will see if Lucky lets it live.

 

We also discovered an ash tree that has survived the horse in the field.  Most times, the young trees don't survive because Lucky loves to chew on the bark, push on the tree as a scratching post, eat the leaves, etc. To see these trees growing quite tall out there is an unusual find! We also have holly trees and some types of sticker bush trees that Lucky avoids and we try to pull them out at least once a year. 

 

Today was a beautiful spring day. Not too hot and not too cool. Gentle breeze and the garden is loving it. This is a photo of my favorite shade tree. It's a maple tree.  I guess I just never realized just how much pollen this tree produces! Wheeee! All those yellow buds are enough to cause me to sneeze. 

Late last fall, we threw out some ground cover seed where we pasture the chickens and the other discovery today was a bunch of oats! Oh boy, are the chickens gonna love this new plant. 

That pretty much brings you up to speed on the findings for the season. 

Garden is great. Strawberries, Blueberries, Peach, Cherry and Apple Trees (that we planted last year) survived the winter.  Garlic survived. Onions did not. I had to replant from seed and they are so tiny that I opted to purchase a handful of onion bulbs for this year. Red and Blue potatoes have good growth. Yukon and White potatoes are planted, but not out of the ground yet. Spinach is doing quite well.  Lettuce has just started. Peas are late. Got a late start and I think something ate most of the seeds out of the soil. I planted some more, in the green house to try to get more for replanting. Planted first row of carrots and dill. Starting basil and parsley in the green house. Got another garden area ready for planting corn in a month. Will plant more carrots, plus beans at that same time. We have our gardening thumbs on. 

No chicks this year.  We are going to wait until next spring to get some more.  We have eaten the old hens and they were very flavorful! The Wellsummers and the Orloffs are producing very well this spring. The wet sloggy winter cut down on the production. We ended up adding pro-biotics to their water for a few weeks to get them to feeling better. 

We do have request for a couple of turkey chicks at the farm store this year.  I decided we would try to raise a couple of turkeys for the holidays. So that will be our "adventure" for this year.