June 2017

Rumor has it that inquiries are being made about the state of my garden, so I figure it is high time for another update:

The weeds are growing nicely, as are the five tomato plants growing with them. 

One of the tomato plants growing this year, is a volunteer, the other four are starts from my brother. I have yet to put the cages around them, and I better do so before I risk damaging their limbs. Pardon me a moment while I take care of that.

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It's hot out there. The volunteer tomato is already sprawling too much to cage it. It has been sporting several, little green tomatoes for the past week and is teasing me by not letting them ripen. Thankfully, my mother, who is a more diligent gardener than I, gave me several yellow tomatoes last week that I devoured with some salads slathered in bleu cheese dressing. I have been diligent enough to weed around my tomatoes, but need to top with some compost and mulch so the weeds have a little harder time coming back.

If I manage to till the garden for a third time, I may get around to planting some winter squash. We shall see.

I do have a plan in the works to foil those pesky weeds. I have scalped the grass in a good sized area next to the current garden and covered it in black plastic. The hope is that all the grass will get killed off, I can build several raised beds, and put down some of that commercial landscape fabric between and around the beds to prevent weeds- and specifically that evil Bermuda grass- from growing up into my beds. The problem with my regular garden is that, although I edge it in the spring, we are far too busy to weed-eat the edge every week when we mow, so by the end of the season, Bermuda grass has infiltrated the whole garden. It's awful. 

Moving on to other things, my bees seem to be doing well. 

We just finished fencing in a new section for the beef cattle. They pasture they were on had been eaten down quite a bit, and the three steers had started getting into the habit of finding weak parts in the fence and getting out. I was so desperate to get them on the new grass that I put off protecting the maple and oak trees in the new area, and went out to discover they had rubbed a good section of bark off the maple. I'm hoping it survives. Today, I braved the heat and did my best to protect them from further damage with some t-posts and barbed wire.

Out in the chicken coop, I discovered one nesting box always had one, both, or the other of two hens sitting on some eggs. They must have decided that such a tedious job was more fun with a friend.

Now that some chicks have hatched, they are sharing the mothering duties as well.

I never get tired of seeing new chicks. It continues to be a problem, however, that a good number of them grow up to be roosters. And since we have bantams in the mix now, they don't show much promise of growing into good meat birds. As such, I have decided that the coyotes living nearby will soon be surprised with some tasty treats.