Batdance

Hopefully, the bat saga has now come to an end.  It finally got hot enough this year that the attic louver became too uncomfortable for the clan and they moved out to cooler sleeping quarters.  We set the BIG ladder up so I could reach the louver from the outside and I gritted my teeth to the heat and began the process of screening them out.  First I had to clean the louver because they had pooped all over it and down the side of the house even.  I washed all that, touched up the paint and redid a little of the caulking.  Of course, in the process I managed to poke a hole in the screen that is secured on the inside face of the louver so I had to go in there and patch that good.  I needed to clean up some in the attic anyway, under the louver so it was as good excuse as any to get it all done at once.  It was pretty freaking hot but not as bad as I thought it was going to be.  Regardless, I was soaked by the time I was finished. 

Today was kinda cloudy and I finally had all my materials together and ready so I checked to make sure there were no stragglers up there and started to screen off the front.  Well, of course, there were two bats that had come back so I had to go back into the attic and scare them out.  Wasn't too bad...I just blew on them and tapped the screen until they got mad and left.  So, back outside and up the ladder.  I stapled 1/2" hardware clothe over the face of the louver so nothing (but bugs) can now get into the slats.  Of course, you can't see anything from this crappy photo but it doesn't look bad.  I was afraid the hardware clothe would stick out like a sore thumb but you really don't notice it.  Now, I did spray paint it with a reddish primer so that helps greatly.

The photo above was taken a couple of months ago and I wanted to show ya'll because....if you click on it to enlarge it, you may be able to see the bat on the far right is in the process of having a baby!!    The others (there were more) all had babies under their wings.  Some of them had two!  One under each wing.  I know they were making a mess but this was SO cool!  So, we let the babies grow up and everybody get out before I put the screen up.

The bats are not so easily deterred however.  Of course, they can't get back into the louver but they apparently really like my house, so they just went to the other end.  Now, it's cooler on that end too, so I suspect that's why they went down there, and there is no attic on that end, but they still managed to find a nook to cram into.  I was walking up to the door today and heard all this screeching and such and knew they were up to something.  Bats have a very distinct sound so I recognized it right away.  I looked up just in time to see a dozen bats or more come billowing out of the crack between the regular roof and where the clerestory roof joins it.  I have a (maybe) 16 inch soffit on the sides of the clerestory roof and where it joins the normal roof it makes a large bird's mouth.  They were stuffed in there and maybe even under the metal ridge cap (only about 16 inches of that too).  That side faces the rising sun and I think the metal roof had finally heated up enough to start burning their little furry buns so they came hauling ass out of there.  I kept hearing some others though and climbed up on the roof to see there were still three or four hanging on to the spot.  I don't know if they ever did leave.  That area is not so bad though.  They can't really get into anything there and their poop will just get washed off when it rains.  Besides, that being a pretty much open area, I don't know anyway I could stop them from roosting there anyway.  I am going to put up a large bat house, in a tree, and just hope they find that a more desirable place to sleep.  I really like having the bats around as they are great for pest control and of course, I'm a softie for them because they are often misunderstood.  But I don't want them messing up my house!  I'll build them two houses, or more!, of their own if they'll use them.

And the bats are not the only critters that really like my house!  The phoebes just love the outriggers that hold the verge rafters up.  Of course, I love the phoebes too.  They are really great pest control also, so I don't want to run them off.  I do want to remove their nests as they abandon them though and lay some copper flashing down on the tops of the outriggers so that future nests don't rot the wood.  I don't know that they would now but better safe than sorry.  A lot of people fuss about the looks and think it's nasty to have bird's nest around but I just love them.  I'm glad my house can provide a safe place for the babies and I hope many generations (of bats and birds) will call this valley their home.

Sunshine Babies

After a gloomy start this morning we finally got a nice sunny afternoon and everyone seemed to enjoy it, despite the humidity.  It has rained and stormed on and off here for several days and I was glad to finally see the sun again too.
The bitties have finally gotten big enough that I felt fairly safe in letting Mama take them out into the yard.  They have been having a blast too and Mama is pretty watchful and careful with them.  Several of the other girls probably have sore spots from getting a little too close and Mama launching herself onto them.

They had a pretty good line formation going out across the lawn today looking for bugs.  Very thorough! lol!  Later in the afternoon Mama Hen will take them back to their little run and ask to be let back in.  (We have to keep the gate closed so the others won't go in there and eat up their food.)  Anyway, they go back in then to get a good helping of ration so they won't go to bed hungry.  I noticed last night that she is now teaching them to sleep on the roost also, so they are growing up fast.

The wild hydrangeas are in full bloom.  I love these things because I don't have to do a thing to them.  Except maybe prune one occasionally to help it fill out a bit.  And the flowers last for a really long time.

I don't know if this is chamomile or feverfew.....I think the latter.  It is not a perennial but rather just resows itself freely every year.  I haven't added much to my herb collection lately and need to remedy that.  I definitely need to add borage, comfrey and maybe another mint. 

Some of the girls thought it was a good day to work on their tan. Ha!  They love to lay out in the sun.  It has taken me quite awhile to get used to this though and not immediately think I have a bunch of dead chickens when I come out and see them strewn about the yard.  I tell ya, the first dozen times I saw them do this it really scared the crap out of me.

The garden is doing well although this is a fairly crappy photo that doesn't show much.  The squash plants were some volunteers I just transplanted into a row.  Hey, why buy them if they are just gonna come up on their own?  Honestly, I'm a lazy gardener; I'll let the plants do as much as they can on their own.  Beyond the squash I have cukes (for pickling), eggplant, peppers and some late cabbage that is probably going to get thrown to the chickens.  Beside the squash I have one row of tomatoes.  I think four are for eating and the rest of for canning.  We also planted some watermelon and in the other run we have peas and green beans.  The bulk of the main garden is planted with corn.  Well, maybe just half.  It's a fair amount of corn though.

My grapes are doing great this year so that kinda makes up for the raspberries that have crapped out and the strawberries, which I have let get overran and are not producing much.  Hopefully the figs will do well this year, since we didn't get any last year.  That's one reason I try to have an assortment of fruits planted; you rarely have a year where everything does well and with an assortment you are going to at least have a couple things that produce.

Of course, seems like the blueberries always do well and this year is no exception.  The bushes have grown at least a foot or more and are loaded down with fruit.  All the fruit is in the border of the main garden and I have various perennial herbs in between the fruits.  In between the blueberries I have lemon thyme, oregano, catnip, sage and another variegated mint.

This variegated mint is not invasive like some peppermints; it seems to behave itself pretty well, and is supposed to be great at repelling mosquitoes and such.  Plus, it's pretty and has blooms on it for the bees.

After I finally had the revelation that I could grow beans vertically (duh), I purchased 3 cattle panels and made some very cool trellises the length of the run.  I then planted my beans in 2 rows, one on each side of the panels.  They are doing well and already starting to climb without us having to train them at all.  We did the same with the peas.  They are a bit shorter right now but should come on up and attach to the panels also.  This should help my back tremendously.

This is looking across the okra and pea/ bean run.  If you look closely you might be able to spy 3 little bitties doing bug patrol!  Mama Hen gets a little upset because she cannot get in there with them but she waits patiently until they get their fill and come back out.

 It's gonna take a lot more to get this soil to a really good level but it is MUCH improved over what it was when I first came here.  Now when we dig we actually find earthworms and hardly any grubs, which is the exact opposite of my first year or two here!  Of course, we regularly amend with chicken poop too, so it's getting there, albeit slowly.

So, that's the garden update.  Hopefully I'll have something a bit more informative next time.

The Garden Rules

Many people have asked me how I manage to have fairly decent flower gardens and still let the chickens free range around the yard.  Most people would expect the chickens to scratch up and trample on everything, and to some extent they are correct, but you can have both if you follow a few rules..

One of the main strategies is that I don't mulch anywhere I wouldn't want the chickens to scratch.  Of course, they are still going to scratch even bare dirt some, but putting down mulch of any kind is the exact same thing as putting a person in a room full of bubblewrap.  They go wild.  Can't help themselves.  Chickens are absolutely sure that that next few inches of mulch is harboring a motherload of tasty bugs and by God they are going to fling that stuff everywhere until they find it.  You simply don't go there.  You will never win.

You can mulch with stone, but it better be heavier than pea gravel and hard pine cones work pretty good but are not absolute.  My strategy is to just plant things close enough that the foliage serves as mulch, or use a non-invasive ground cover in between plantings.  I also mainly use sturdy plants, such as iris, lilies, echinacea, mums, peonies and so on.  The girls will make little trails through the beds but the flowing foliage of such plants usually hide them.

                           

 I have also included a number of flowering shrubs with arching habits as these serve as hide-aways for the girls when the hawks are out.  And they are sturdy enough that the hens can't hurt them.

When I plant something new I always lay some small stones around the plant for a couple of weeks because the newly turned soil is an open invitation to scratching!  They can no more resist that than they can the mulch. 

If you insist on growing something that tends towards the delicate I would recommend putting it in a pot and then mulching the pot with stone.  My girls have shown no inclination to eat my flowers; but for some bizarre reason they love to eat the perlite and fertilizer pellets that come with potted plants, so be aware of that.  If I'm planting something that has arrived with commercial soil I always throw a couple of inches of my plain dirt over that stuff so the chickens can't see the "goodies" in the potting mix.

The vegetable garden is another matter entirely because they will happily eat most anything you have planted there in addition to scratching everything up.  Now, you all know I have my garden fenced, which is mandatory, and a couple of runs available for the girls depending on the season and age of groups.  This did take a bit of work to build, and is much more than what most people would be willing to do, but it works great for us and we didn't mind doing it.  The runs come off the coop at a right angle and run alongside the main garden.  Their main run is solely for the chickens but the other one, which includes the Goober Chicken Memorial Pen, is divided in two and can serve as a bittie pen or a larger run for adult chickens, mainly if we separate pullets or roosters.  The larger section of this run can also be garden and this is where I have planted my winter crops this year.  I sold George last weekend so I knew this run would be empty and just the right size since we don't plant near as much in the colder months.

This allows me to let the girls use the main garden now that the warm weather crops are gone.  It's very handy to keep them in here on days when we need to leave before sundown or if there is only one of us here and that person needs to run into town for a minute.  You can see the black gate in the back that goes into their main run and coop.  Chickens are very much creatures of habit and if you disturb one of their beloved daily rituals, like getting out into the yard, they will get their cranky pants on in a hurry, so this is sort of a happy medium with them.  Big enough that they feel they are "outside" but still safe from most predators and at the end of the day they go straight back to the coop without us having to worry if they all got in before dark.

By the time winter is over they have picked the garden pretty clean of bugs and larvae and fertilized it all over, even working in into the soil with their scratching.  The only thing I don't like is that they have decided that underneath the blueberry bushes is the best spot to dust bathe and have dug huge holes there.  I may have to fence off the fruit bushes for that reason but that would not be terribly hard to do just for the winter. 

Wait It Out

We got a beautiful respite from the cold, dreary winter weather this weekend!  Mid fifties and sunshine!!  Woo!!  And I even felt a little better and was able to get out and do a little.  Just mostly puttered around yesterday but today I was able to wash and hang 3 loads of laundry!  And... do some minor yard work.  It was great!  Of course, if I think too much about what all I used to do it gets a little depressing but I'm just trying to be thankful for what I can.  Mainly I just wanted to be outside all I could because we have another snow/ ice/ sleet storm coming Monday night and it may last a few days.  Hard to believe that's coming on a day like today but that's Alabama for you.  The place where you can get frostbite and sunburned all in the same week.  I also needed to catch up on some housework and the weather today was a great opportunity to do laundry.  I did not have the stamina to vacuum and dust but I did cook supper so that was something.

We are not the only ones that are eager for spring it seems!  Despite the very frigid weather we have had fairly consistently, almost all of my daffodils are trying to come up.  I wish they would wait because I know they are going to get bitten.  Maybe I need to replant these a little deeper.

We had a little drama yesterday when two of the Easter Eggers got into a knock-down-drag out.  The one in the foreground there gets picked on a lot for some reason and I think yesterday she had about enough of it.  The other ones don't like her to eat out of the feeder if they are around but she decided she was going to eat out of it no matter what!  Well, one of the other girls pulled a plug out her head and in the ensuing fight she broke her middle toenail off on the other hen or something. I went down to the coop and there was blood everywhere!  So, get out the medical kit and start patching.  You can see her big bandaged toe if you look close.  Thank goodness for duct tape.  I gave her a half of a baby aspirin for pain and she seemed fine.  Just thinking about getting one of my toe nails ripped off just makes me shrivel up!!  Ugh!

Grass and all is getting so scarce now that they are wanting to range a further than normal and a little out of my comfort zone, so when I needed a break I would go sit with them and play chicken herder.  They were apparently finding a good assortment of slugs and snails in these deep leaves so I was willing to stay with them so they could get some good foraging time in.  We keep layer mash for them at all times in the coop but I'd much rather they find all the protein and goodies out naturally, rather than eat the bought stuff, and I think they prefer that too.  Organic chicken feed is hard to find around here and ungodly expensive when you do, so it's pretty much out of our budget.  So, we just try to let them get all the natural food they can and only eat that layer mix if they have to.

Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up......but I refuse to look at the camera no matter what you try to tempt me with!!!

Are any of you getting a break from this cold winter??

In A Nutshell

 A few days ago I was actually feeling well enough to do a little hiking/ walking so Chigger and I set out for the trail that leads to the top of the ridge behind the house.  We didn't make it to the top mind you, but that wasn't really what I had in mind anyway.  It goes up on one end of my property and about halfway up you can take the deer trails over to the west and come down right behind the house.  One of these days I'll actually make some clear, formalized trails but for now you kinda just follow intuition.  Anyways, I remembered that there were 3, big, hardwood trees not too far off the main trail we cleared that had been downed by a storm and I wanted to see just how much trouble it would be to get to them.  The fate of the trees is a bit of a mystery.  They are large, healthy hardwoods, well, except for one that was completely hollow, but they were all just snapped right over about 15 feet above the ground and they all fall in the same direction.  It was obviously a storm that did it but the type of storm is what gets me to wondering.  See, the trees grow on the side of a small mountain that is very, very rocky, so, high winds just normally blow the trees over, roots and all.  And, they almost always fall in the opposite direction that these fell.  It was a fairly recent event also (within a year) as the trees still bear dead leaves. Amongst the leaves and limbs of the trees I found this:

Now, that side of my property does connect to a subdivision but that thing is a ways down a pretty steep hill.  I suppose some crazy dog could have toted this coconut way up there and dropped it but it had no chew or teeth marks in it.  So, how did an intact coconut get way out in the middle of nowhere on the side of a ridge??  You may remember back in 2010? when we had those really bad tornadoes that tore up many places.  We found probably 2 pickup loads worth of debris scattered across my land, some of which is still way up on the higher elevations because it is just so hard to get down.  I found numerous items from Tuscaloosa and areas over 100 miles from here.  Maybe there were flying coconuts that night too??  Who knows??

Well, in other news, we have harvested just about everything but the brussel sprouts out of the garden and I am slowly feeding the spent plants to the girls.  They really go nuts over the stuff!  They stripped one of the cabbage plants so fast it looked like feathered piranha going after it!  The greens really add some good vitamins to their winter diet though and it really doesn't cost us anything.  Before too long I will be able to screen my brussel sprouts off and just let them into the garden to forage, dig and poop to their hearts content.  They do a great job of cleaning and preparing the garden for spring.

And we can tell the days are starting to get just a tad longer again...We are getting more eggs!  I was excited to see we got all of the colors today.  The browns, white, aquas and olive.  It's funny, the olive colored egg is laid by Marilyn, our all white Ameraucana.  I really thought she might lay a pale pink or blue egg.  Oh well, shows you what I know. 

Old-Fashioned Garden

Since I've started gardening what I would call "seriously", I've been astounded at the fact I never really thought about gardening throughout the cold months until a couple of years ago.  This is compounded by the fact I live in the South, where winter gardening is relatively easy, but the sad truth is I had never thought about it because I had never really seen it done, even here.  Oh, you might see some people grow a few cabbage in the fall but by Thanksgiving everybody had rolled up the garden until warm weather.

Of course, I didn't grow up eating a lot of broccoli, brussel sprouts, asparagus and other "exotic" veggies, so it didn't occur to anybody around me that you would want to grow those things.  We just ate summer veggies that had been canned for the winter, but no thought of veggies that would actually grow in those cold months, or "seasonal eating" as we say now.  I enjoy seasonal eating and gardening and my winter garden has improved quite a lot over the past few years.  Constant amendment of the soil is paying off!  Of course, we do put up a good bit of summer fruits and veggies for winter consumption but I really think seasonal gardening is an important part of a healthy diet and self-sufficiency.  Cool weather crops are really nutritious and fresh is always better than frozen or canned.  You can't beat going grocery shopping in your yard either. 

This year I may have planted enough broccoli, I'm not sure yet!  It was kinda just sitting there for some time but after a few rains we just recently got it has really taken off!  I should be able to harvest a head or two soon. Good thing, I just cooked the last frozen bag I had put up in anticipation of eating fresh next.  I should have lots of fresh broccoli for various Christmas dinners and lunches. 
Even after cutting the heads the plant continues to put out side clusters, so these can be gathered for quite some time to make easy side dishes or quick snacks.  The big leaves also get harvested a few at a time after most of the broccoli has been picked.  These leaves go to the chickens to supplement their winter diet and make up for lack of green grass.  They really love broccoli greens and cabbage.  In fact, they were SO enthusiastic about the cabbage leaves that, in the spring when my hostas started coming up, they thought, hey, these look like cabbage, and mowed every one of them down to the ground.  They had walked all around the hostas for weeks without bothering them until one day I gave them cabbage leaves and I guess they thought the leaves looked similar.  Oh well.

The Bok Choy I planted from seed has done really well.  I haven't actually eaten this yet though.  I love it in a stir fry but just haven't had the meat I wanted or the gumption to make one yet.  Fortunately, since it's cool, it can just kinda sit in the garden without bolting or spoiling until I get ready for it.

 The new girls, and the old ones that were molting, have mostly began their laying and we are getting 8-10 eggs a day.  Of course, some of them are still small eggs but they are getting bigger.  It won't be long we'll be needing to start selling eggs again.  We finally sold 5 of the new hens and 2 older ones.  I got $12 each for the young ones and we sold Pretty Hen and Prissy for $5 each.  I kinda hated to sell them but we just had way too many chickens for that coop house.  So, that paid for a bit of feed and the cost of ordering those chicks to begin with. 
 So, finally we are starting to see a bit of return on some things instead of constantly putting out.  Of course, it's all a cycle and sometimes you have to wait a little but hopefully I'll get better about planning for these things so there is much less time between cycles.

I believe I told ya'll I finally finished all the corporate pottery orders I had, so now is just making general stock.  These are the honey pots I had to make for the last order.  I thought most of them came out well. 

Christmas is drawing near however, and my time to produce a tremendous amount of stock is getting much shorter.  After about the 18th or 19th I won't be throwing much, just firing the last bit of stuff to take in.  That's well and good however because then I can wind down and take time to enjoy my holiday decorating, cooking and just relaxing. 

Plant That Seed

Well, that last post got such an overwhelming response I thought I'd immediately post another dry-as-cracker juice essay on gardening!  Haha!  Oh, I'm just joking and being my normal pain in the butt self.  Don't worry, I'm not going to turn into one of those dreary, redneck doomers living in woodsy seclusion that hordes 50 cases of Spam and saves my underarm hair to stuff pillows with.
No, I just thought I'd try to do a few more cohesive posts about my planting methods, what we grow etc.  I've read several posts lately where the people were talking about how horrible gardening was and Oh!! the misery and disappointment when everything just failed miserably.  Year after year even!  Well, gardening can be frustrating sometimes, especially if you're trying to really make a dent in the amount of food you buy, but it's not that bad.  Most of my crops are fairly successful and I live in humidity/ fungus heaven.
 Nothing much bothers okra.  I had tried different methods of drying the okra seeds and nothing seemed to work very well though.  I had tried cutting off large pods and air drying and then cutting off large pods and heat drying.  Every time the seeds would be shrively and puny.  Not good.  This year I let them grow as big as they would but leave them ON the plant.  Just leave them until they dry themselves right there in the field.

Worked great!  These seeds are all very robust and healthy.  No shrively, black things!  Yea!!  Now we just wrench open the pods and store the seeds in plastic pouches.  You can put them in the freezer but I just store mine all in a box in a cool, dark place.

The garden is doing well and I finally got it all mulched.  I made a great discovery on what to use for the walking paths in the garden.  I had one roll of silt fence left over from when we built the driveway, so I took that and pulled all the wooden stakes off of it and then split the roll in half longways.  This took a while as the rolls are about 100 feet long.  Silt fence is just that black plastic looking stuff you see there.  It's pretty sturdy but allows water to flow through it easily.  They sell a similar material at gardening shops for A LOT.  It's basically silt fence.  I got Steve to bring me some more off a job so mine was free but I don't think it costs too much if you buy it from a construction supply.  Plus, you get some wooden stakes you can pull off to use elsewhere!
Anyway, my strips were about 18" wide, so they fit right between rows and I mulch over the edges.  I did make some little pins out of some scrap wire to kinda peg it in place. 

We mulch the plants with wheat straw that comes out of the chicken coop, so it's got poop and all built right in!  Now, I usually let it set for a week or so to kinda mellow a little, then just distribute around the plants.  The rain washes the poopy into the soil and then later it all gets tilled in and the soil gets richer.  I hand dug my garlic area the other day to get it ready for planting and man!!  there was some big ol' wormies jumping everywhere!  I think that was the most earthworms I've ever dug up in this garden.  That makes me so happy because that's a sure fire way to tell the soil is improving.  It has been raining, thankfully, the past couple of days so that project is on hold but that's great!  We really needed the rain.
Well, off to bed because I've got to get a good start on pottery making tomorrow.  Got to throw it into mega production mode!

Simple Sunday

Since I haven't posted anything lately about what has actually been going on around here, I thought I'd put up a number of photos that I have taken recently.  The mutt chicks and mamas are doing well and everybody is all still with us.  We did have a close call back about a week ago when either a dog or coyote came into the yard during a rain storm.  We looked and looked and had about given up hope but they all were apparently hiding in amongst the lawnmowers and such and came out after they felt everything was okay.  I'm glad they have such hiding instincts.  I like also that the mamas stick together as a group.  I was afraid each mama would try to go a separate way and the chicks wouldn't know who to go with but they stick together as their own little herd. 

The turban lily actually put out 2 blooms this year!!  Yay! I actually found two more of these plants down the valley a bit back in the spring but when I checked on them later the deer had eaten them.  Maybe next spring I can transplant them up near this one and keep the deer away.

The pure bred chicks are doing very well; growing like weeds!  They are constantly amusing.  On the far left is the Brown Leghorn, in the middle is the Partridge Rock and on the right is the Speckled Sussex.  The Sussex are very sweet but they Leghorn are extremely flighty and never get near you.

This little Partridge Rock is the funniest looking little thing!  It looks like she is wearing bloomers!  And none of them have tail feathers still!  I guess they grow some eventually.

This has been a great year for the garden even though some stuff was a little slow to get started.  I hate to say anything, considering the drought in some areas, but we have had plenty of rain this year.  The corn did not produce as big of ears as last year, so we haven't had much on the cob, but I did manage to cut a good bit off the cobs and freeze for creamed corn.  I've also had virtually no problem with squash bugs, potato beetles or even tomato hormworms; knock on wood.  I think the birds and dragonflies have been doing a superb job of patrolling things this year.

Now, my rhubarb has all bitten the dust, even the one designed to grow here.  I guess they just couldn't take the heat.  I may try again next year with one planted in complete shade.  The asparagus is doing excellent though.  At least in my opinion.  I guess this is good!  I've never seen it grow before so I'm not sure.  I can't wait until next spring when I get to cut just a little!
So, that's the update around here.  Still canning an drying and such.  I have a couple of recipes I want to put up for you soon too.  I hope everyone is having a good weekend too.

Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da

Laa la la la life goes on.....!  During my absence in the blogosphere Prissy and Sheila have finally become mamas.  They seem quite happy with themselves.

I didn't really intend to be gone so long but things have just been so busy lately.  The two mamas and their 6 babies now reside in Goober Chicken's old pen.  No one knows whose babies are whose but it doesn't seem to matter.  They just run to whoever is closest!

The babies wasted no time in acclimating to outdoor life.  They run and scratch with the best of 'em.  These little babies are basically mutts, so I have no idea what they will look like when they grow up.  They seem very healthy and strong.

The bigger bitties are doing really well also.  This is one of the Partridge Rocks I believe.  Most all of the others have most all their feathers now, including tail feathers, but these still have what I call "baby butt".  No tail feathers at all.  They are pretty cute.  These bitties reside in the largest run and have their own house.  They are some of the fastest little craps you have ever seen; they never stay still.  It's like they all get up and take a shot of espresso every morning.

 The garden is doing really well this year and that has been taking a great deal of time.  I'm already putting up pickles, jam and beans.  I'm especially pleased the potatoes have done so well this year.  I've harvested about 12 lbs. already from just a few plants.  I believe the influx of so much chicken poo is really helping the soil and such.

The red raspberries are coming in now; the black ones have finished, and the ever-bearing strawberries are finally cranking up.  I harvest a couple of cups worth a day usually.  Not enough to can or such but enough to provide plenty of fresh fruit for my morning yogurt and a snack later. 

I'll be back soon with some more in depth posts.  I've been feeling very much like the ol' square peg in a round hole as of late and not very sociable.  Ya'll know me though.  It'll pass.  It has also been over 100 degrees every day here for several days and it is quite oppressive.  We work outside in the morning all we can and then retreat to the cool inside when it gets too bad.  Hopefully this heat spell will be over soon.  Anyway, I'll have more later.