Finally!

Well, I guess our chickens were waiting for Mike and Tomeia's birthday to get busy and lay eggs. On a funny note, my parents sent Greg Chicken Run for his birthday, which we watched last night. I swear, the chickens are organized!

Visitors

Our chickens had a some new friends a few weeks ago. Greg's eldest brother and 3 of his kids came down to visit. It was a fantastically fun and busy week. One of the highlights was an evening chicken visit. Greg would let the girls out into the yard, and help the kids catch a couple to love.

Holding them like babies.

Trying to get away.

Very exciting!

Very, very exciting! This buddy was sure he would catch a purple chicken.

The mosquitoes seemed to like the fresh food supply at dusk, too.

Welcome To Our Jungle

I took this picture this morning. It's just slightly overwhelming. The bushy looking stuff in the front is asparagus, hopefully they will be wonderful next spring. The next row over is full of two types of strawberries - I think they took rather well. The empty space was full of carrots. We had a decent harvest, most were not damaged. We harvested them when it was too warm out, and they are a bit bitter raw, though they cook up nicely. The tall vine is lima beans, and I also spotted our first bean! We grew bush beans, but we have a clever rabbit that loves to chew them down to the ground...no bush beans for us this year (I only just now appreciate the irony of the Disney version of Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh). We've also had some strong thunderstorms, which have blown over our corn. None of the stocks are broken, and the roots seem to be in tact as well. Greg is planning on trying to tie them up this week. The row after corn are tomatoes, and they are going crazy. They also seem to be our rabbits next favorite treat. We got in the habit of throwing partially eaten fruits to the chickens while our nieces and a nephew were visiting, which they LOVED (both the kids and the chickens). One poor tomato will be bum rushed by 25 crazy chicks, and devoured in less than a minute. So, even though we lost all of our squash, things are mostly going well.

We also planted a line of sunflowers. Most of the plants that survived the bunnies and birds are this dark variety, which Greg grew in Michigan. Only this time, each plant has multiple blooms!

The one yellow sunflower that has survived, plus a bee (we finally started to see bees about 1 month ago!!!!!)
Onion harvest - currently curing in the garage (which now smells wonderful).

And a chicken update - they managed to peck the string that holds their little door to the coop open to death, snapping it, and locking themselves out all night. Of course, the run has no human access, and Greg was at work. So I called my Dad and we finally came up with the idea of holding the door up with scrap wood. Crazy chickens. I hope there is a correlation between craziness and tastiness.

Weekend Update

So immediately after posting the last update, I was sitting at the computer and heard some loud clapping and yelling from our neighbors. I looked outside and saw a chihuahua running around the backyard chasing the chickens. Two houses down from us lives a number of dogs including this little chihuahua. He came and visited us once last year when he got out and that was it. So I ran out the backdoor and had to chase the stupid dog out of our yard. He didn't do any damage, thank goodness. Most of the chickens booked it into our mass of tiger lilies next to the garage. We then had to herd them out of there afterward which was pretty funny. I hope he comes back in a few months, because chihuahua vs. 25 full grown chickens and maybe 2 turkeys may not turn out so well for him.

We've been having perfect growing weather down here the past few weeks, hot, sunny, with perfectly interspersed rain showers, we haven't had to water at all, and everything had just been exploding. We did have one issue, with of all things, zucchini and summer squash. The two plants that I expected to do nothing too and have them overflow with produce...oh no. We're apparently lacking pollinators in our yard, as we are now hand pollinating zucchini and squash. This definitely means we're getting bees next spring. Other than that everything else is doing very well, we harvested 35 garlic bulbs this past week which are drying in the garage, and making it smell delicious.

Onions

Lima Beans
Cherry Tomatoes
Summer squash, hand pollinated...