A month of weather woes

Surely we must have broken records for lack of sunshine in May. I think I remember one and a half days when it wasn't raining, foggy, drizzley or cloudy. And the slugs loved it. And they multiplied and multiplied, so my early morning ritual became don the rubber gloves and saunter thru the gardens doing slug patrol. Into a pail with salt water they went, by the dozens and dozens. I started prowling about at 11 at night with a flashlight and my trusty pail. Horrible nasty creatures, so vile even the laying hens wont eat them.

May had its good points however, like a Mother's Day visit to Corn Hill Nursery for a great lunch of real food, and a trunkful of plants, hardy roses, raspberries, black currants, and coming home, a terrific roadside sale of perennial flower plants dirt cheap.

Our next wwoofers, Armandine and Richard from France joined us and we tackled loads of garden chores, setting out tomatoes in the greenhouse when it rained,

setting out plants outside when it stopped..

Everything was covered immediately before it could be chomped on by the slugs.

A family with a 4 year old came by to visit. The little boy was impressed with all the ice cream buckets in the garden and asked wide eyed, "Wow! Are you growing ice creams?"

The little meat king chicks arrived and Freckles loved them immediately. 21 days before pickup day at the feed store we borrowed some fertilized eggs from the farm next door and put them under Freckles who had been broody for a week or more. On day 21 several were beginning to hatch and make peeping sounds, which causes a hormonal shift in the hen to change her from setting mode to mothering mode.. They all went with us in a box to the feed store where we picked up 8 chicks, a day old, and slipped them into the box. Freckles thought, "Great! Instant family!" and pushed them all under her wings. The neighbor got his hatchlings back and Freckles was none the wiser. One of the best things about meat kings is that they will eat slugs.

And now we have our last wwoofer for the spring season, Konstantin from Germany. A wonderful lad who cheerily tackles any job that comes along.

He was exceedingly cheery when we put his very first lobster in front of him! I think we enjoyed watching him figure out how to eat it as as much as he did chowing it down.

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.

Building progress

A week post surgery and I'm beginning to get some strength back, thank heavens. I can just putter at little things, but with some help the greenhouse, chicken/garden shed is coming along nicely. All the plywood scraps we accumulated over the summer from yard sales and freecycle have gone into the shed walls. Today I hired an energetic teenager who transferred 2 truckloads of compost from the bin, and a few wheelbarrow loads of soil from the garden into the greenhouse planting bed. It is 4 feet x 13 feet and will give me lots of room for spring and fall gardening.

As soon as the roof is finished I will transplant some lettuces started mid august , from the garden to the new bed. I'm hoping they will be ok in there til near Christmas.

The sweet million tomatoes in the old greenhouse are coming on faster than I can eat them, and I eat them like candy, so sweet and delicious. They are doing much better than my poor beaten up outdoor tomatoes.

The little chicks seem to have turned into miniature chickens the week I was gone.

Its like they doubled in size when I wasn't looking.

I think the one eyeing the camera with its head sideways is a little rooster. He seems more assertive than the other two and is quite the little character. He is strong enough now to grab an entire piece of bread and run with it, with the other two in hot pursuit. We call it Chicken TV.

Building up and tearing down

My little greenhouse I built 12 years ago is rotting and will never make it thru another season so here comes it's replacement. I was given a pile of sliding patio doors, thermopanes, so the building is designed around them. This time I'm using pressure treated lumber so by the time it wears out I'll be too old to lift a hammer anyway.

Today I'll work on the right side which will be the winter chicken house/garden tool shed. The window in between is to let the warmth of the winter sun in the greenhouse through to the chickens.

On the raccoon war front...I am losing badly as evidenced by the devastation in the nearly ripe corn. It seems another family has moved into the vacumn created by the removal of the last five. They are driving me crazy, I'm finding the trap sprung every morning with nothing in it.

The little chicks are 3 weeks old now and entering their gangly teenage stage. Momma keeps them close to the house or in the shade of the big trees away from danger from the skies. They are so entertaining to watch them learning their chicken things.

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.