It's Always Interesting - Summer 2021

Yesterday, I picked our first tomato.  It's a mystery tomato from a multipack and none listed varieties on the pack match up with what this looks like.  Kind of a small Cinderella, yellow/orange orb. 1.6 oz and almost 2" across.  The photos are taken on a tile that is 3.75" to give a good reference of it's small size BUT not cherry tomato size. 

We do have a lot of green tomatoes, some that look like oxheart, but mostly like beefsteak varieties. I know that we had at least four plants that were Cherokee Purple, and then the rest or mystery heirlooms from Ed Hume's "early heirloom" pack. 

I also harvested a purple and a red bell pepper.  No photos - they were instantly cut up and added to a salad last night along with a walla walla sweet onion. Very Sweet! 

The past couple of weeks, one of the Salmon Faverelles has refused to roost on her own.  I was expected to walk out there each night to pick her up and carry her over to the coop to place her inside.  The first few nights, she wanted to come right back out and I would stand there, blocking the door until she would hop up on a roost.  She generally does not roost nest to other birds, but will. She would then stay in there the rest of the night. Several weeks of this.  The past two nights are the first night that I have not needed to put her into the coop. So, hopefully, this is the end of that game. 

I checked the nesting boxes like I usually do one last time at the end of the day, and discovered a bit of a slime ball of an egg.  It was a little like a no shell egg, with just a smidge of a shell like layer on it.  The yolk is visible through the translucent layer, and I tried to show that in the photos, but the light reflects too much, and I don't have the best camera or the best lighting. Anyways, I am assuming it is just a newbie egg for now and hope she improves with age. They have free access to oyster shell at all times, and I don't see any pullets being chased away from the oyster shell bin when I am out there. The egg is actually a fairly good sized egg. Just not sure at this point. 

July is Here 2021

 Well, generally, June was a busy month, but it got too hot near the end. Breaking high temp records, day after day was too much. Even the over night temps were too hot to bear. Then, right after the extreme heat, we had a windstorm that blew over a third of my corn.  Thankfully, the corn was still young enough to prop back up and get back on track. 

To combat the intense heat, I put shade covers over the potatoes and the tomatoes. The onions mostly wilted and toppled one by one.  They did not get very large before that.  I only had one left that got to a good size.  Pulled up the red bunching onions and they are very good. More like scallions than anything. Surprised that the broccoli is still producing, even during the heat. Not large ones, but a lot of bite-sized heads. Everything in buckets ended up under the trees for shade and we did not lose any other plants (aside from the onions needing to be harvested) in the extreme heat. Thank Goodness! 

A week after the extreme heat, I had to harvest a lot of herbs, basil, rosemary, oregano, and thyme to keep them from flowering. Onions still have a great flavor and we are eating them as fast as we can. 

Not sure about the garlic.  But we are trying something different to see if we can back.  Even before the heat, the garlic was looking sad. Will see if we can get any to survive. Beans and carrots did fine in the heat. Beans are flowering now.  

Put the Cucumbers out late.  I didn't want to put them out just before the extreme heat, So plants were transplanted right after the extreme heat days just before July.  I noted a flower on one of them today. Yay! 

Peas are not thriving. Hanging in, but mostly just using them as a paper weight. They are holding down the edges of the sunshade for the house. 

I didn't take pix of the tomatoes or peppers, but they seem to be doing very well. 

Potatoes in the square garden are going strong. At least above the gound. Not sure about under ground. 

Corn was planted in sessions.  I planted 15 the middle of May, then another 15 the end of May and the last 15 the middle of June. The first batch is tasseling. The second batch looks good, the third batch suffered from the extreme heat and only some survived. So, we will see what comes of this experiment.

 

We had put the pullets in with the hens about mid June.  The transition was a bit rough, especially for the Faverelles.  But it was slowed down a lot by the extreme heat. None of them wanted to do much of anything, let alone chase one another.  We set up three food and three water stations.  This past week has been the first week where they all go to the coop and stay for the night.  For weeks, we were having to take them out of the nesting boxes and put them inside the coop. The first week, we left the bars on the boxes down so that the pullets would have a space to get away from the hens. Last week, we started closing the boxes late in the afternoon, and they quickly adapted to finding space in the coop to sleep. 

This weekend, we are trying to sell the hens. We have chicks arriving this next week. 

That's pretty much the update.