Saturday, August 2, 2008

I could almost pretend it's a farm


Apple trees and corn and the happy chirping of young pullets - one could almost say we are farming. Of course, real farmers would probably laugh at me (hopefully a kind chuckle with warm eyes). Here is my short, "77 day" corn - it's beginning to bloom, but at the rate the chickies are picking at them, they may not survive long enough to ripen any actual corn. Still, the entertainment value of watching the chickens hide in them plus the entertainment value to the chickens themselves, has already made the 5 ft x 6 ft plot of 4 ft high corn well worth it. Epsecially considering that it only cost me $2 in seed and 5 minutes a day to deep water.
The "Princess" chicken, hiding in the corn. She's somewhat out of focus because she's one who doesn't stay still very much. The other day, she rode into the house on my head. I now have a goodly scratch on my scalp from her claws.
A Silver Laced Wyandotte girl sitting on a bag of store bought compost. Hopefully, this will be the last year I'll be buying compost - the girls are making quite a bit of the good stuff for me now. In fact, I turned the compost the other day, and the stuff on the bottom is getting brown and almost dirt-looking. Looking forward to combining it into the sand where next year's beds will be.

This is "Kick-start," our little lame Ameracauna, digging around in the compost pile. I had taken the black plastic cover off of it to water and turn the pile and she jumped in and went bug-hunting.

I'm getting better at catching the chickens in flight. Or, at least, sort of in flight.

Sunflowers were a great success this year. Nearly all that I planted germinated and are now in various stages from budding to being nearly ready to harvest. The ones planted when the day temperatures were in the 40's seem to have grown the best, but all suffered because they were planted, essentially, in sand. The one that was planted in good dirt was much healthier and grew a bigger flower head than all the others, of course.




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