Happy Harvest Blog
A nice nest
One doesn't think of chickens as being nest builders per se, but they definitely do nest construction. Guineas, ground nesters like chickens, craft quite beautifully careful nests, if extremely minimal ones, out of a few blades of grass. It's more of a saucer than a bowl - a slight bank to keep the eggs from rolling out, I suppose. When I set the Silkies on eggs, I think I form a perfect nest in advance, but no.
Mr Tomato Head
Look at that tomato. Eggs (normal and Silkie) are there for size context. It's very large. A Persimmon. They are so good. The surprise of the year. I was expecting a normal-large tomato, not one tomato the size of a loaf of bread! Meaty, and delicious. When the hens get a bucket of scraps, they pick out the orange persimmon bits first. In the tomato fermenting pots, the process is rolling right along. Look at that scum of mold - perfect. Outside, the morning glories have come, vining up with the volunteer tomatoes.
new chicks
Clever's chicks made it! (sort of). I didn't expect them to because the eggs were poopy, and that can choke off the exchange of air and humidity to the developing chick. She rolled one egg away from her a week ago, and it was rotten. I should have known she knew her other two were alive. However, one died after hatching. This is quite rare, for a chick to die after hatching under a mom, and after being alive long enough to dry out and fluff up.
The apple flow is on
Every day, the first apple tree is dropping five gallons of apples. Dropping. That's a fraction of how many are staying on the tree.
It's Apple Time!
The apples are coming! One of the big, old, stately ancient apple trees by the old farmhouse is loaded with fruit, weighing the branches down to the ground. I picked up about 5 gallons of apples just off the ground, lobbing many of them directly into the pig compound. Oink, oink. Happy pigs.
Tree tagging
I numbered all the fruit trees, and tagged them all with numbers I cut out of yogourt tubs and lids. This is so that I can keep notes about health, pruning, fruit, etc, variety! when we figure out what the heck any of them are...
Instagram.
I may not make a blog post every day, but at least I Insta.
Bite size.
