Where did summer go? ..a late summer summary

     The best growing summer ever...albeit a bit dry, but lots of heat for the tomatoes and peppers. I sold loads of salad mix to the local restaurants, greens can be a challenge in hot weather so this was a summer to experiment with different varieties. The green and red varieties of oak leaf lettuce became the basis of my salad mix, augmented with spinach, bulls blood beet leaves, arugula and various mesclan mixes. Seeding every 2 weeks gave me a constant supply of fresh baby greens.
     I started a new garden for next year, had a tractor mounted tiller come in and chew up a piece of the pasture, which was then limed, manured, and seeded to buckwheat as a green manure.
     The blossoms  were so lovely and the bees flocked to them, but the buckwheat had to be tilled under to fertilise the soil before it went to seed.
      Trusty old Big Red, vintage 1978, chomped his way through the tangle of buckwheat, and once mixed with soil the plants began to break down quickly.

    

 Darrel came back for his horse and chicken fix.

It's such fun to watch him having such a great time with the animals, and they really seem to be drawn to him.

Avery came and said his goodbyes to the horses, and then was on his way back to Ontario. I miss his frequent visits.


The weather forecasters had us thinking hurricane Earl would blow us all to kingdom come, so we tied down everything important.

In the end it veered off to Nova Scotia but we did get a welcome rain out of it.

We had record breaking high temperatures in late august and the hottest day ever was Sept 1. I'm so thankful to live on the coast as no matter how hot it gets here, its always hotter inland. Counting my blessings these busy end of summer days as I'm up to my elbows in ripe tomatoes, canning, making pickles, preserves, and freezing summer's bounty.

Chick chick here, chick chick there, here a chick, there a chick, everywhere...

Wow, where did 3 weeks go since the last post? Lots of things happening here, both good and bad. Here is Freckles with her adopted babies, 7 meat chicks. I timed her setting so that her borrowed eggs would hatch the same day we were to pick up the meat chicks from the feed store. She never noticed the switch.

Chicken Little hatched out a batch of little layers also and gladly accepted the crew from under Freckles, so now she is mothering 10 of them.  The yellow ones are from the white rocks and the dark ones from the ancona. All fathered by our white rock rooster, Fancy.

They grow so fast, here are two of Little's bunch a week later with real feathers. One flapped into this visiting boys' hood, prompting fits of giggles.
In the not so happy news, two of the horses got inside the garden fence one night, the wind blew the gate shut behind them, and thats where I found them in the morning. Everything that was up and growing was pretty much stomped into oblivion, except the plants in the hoop houses, cold frames, and covered with ice cream buckets.

I had quite an undignified hysterical meltdown...but I'm good now. (sigh)

Not much time for painting with all the outdoor work to do, (and re-do) Here is a recent watercolor of Atlantic Puffins that we have made into prints and cards. I love birds of all kinds.

Just had to paint this...

When I saw this photo of 8 month old Millie I was inspired to paint her. It's such a typical "What have you got for me?" expression.
I put Fancy, the rooster in behind her, just because he's a great looking rooster and I'm very fond of him. The lighting was tricky because it's inside the chicken house with a window on each side. So basically I made it up as I went along.

Acrylic, 11"x14" Title - "What ??"

I love my chickens.

Baby chicks!

What an anxious, engrossing time waiting for three eggs to hatch...We could hear peep-peeping from inside the shells and little tapping sounds like trapped miners signalling for help. At last a tiny hole in each egg and a small beak partly visible.

Mama hen was patient with us, letting us check the progress and then tucking the egg back under her feathers to keep it warm.

It took about 10 hours until all three were hatched. Amazing how active and adventurous they are already, on their second day. Hard to get any work done today, they are such fun to watch.

Happy hens

Two chickens have moved in to the new chicken house, Black Maria and Dorothy. They have had a remarkable week from a hen's perspective...when I found them they were living in a battery situation, each in a one square foot cage, standing on wire mesh, indoors, barely able to turn around. They couldnt walk properly at first, with their legs going every which way like intoxicated fowl, and being intellectually deprived they couldnt figure out the ramp or what the roost was for.

So after crawling in the cage for a few nights and shoving them up the ramp, they caught on and now they go merrily up and down just for the fun of it. They learned how to scratch and dig and discovered worms , and now I hear a kind of anticipatory chirruping that translates "Heads up, the worm lady is coming!"

They have been very entertaining all week, but are yet to lay a single egg. Could be they feel they are in some chicken spa with gourmet food and dust baths and on vacation from work.

There is room for two more, but I'm holding out for a poultry show and sale in June where I hope to find a pretty speckled Barred Rock.