RIP Red #2

Last night one of my laying hens Red #2 died. I don't think she ever recovered from a prolapsed egg incident that occured months ago here. I bought her another Rhode Island Red chick and a blackstar chic 3 years ago. My brother later delivered an americuana chic to complete our flock of 4 chickens. I was told to expect some of the chics to die or some turn out to be roosters but it never happened, instead our family has been blessed with hundreds of hours of chicken entertainment and hundreds of delicious eggs. Red #2 got her name because she was the number 2 chicken in charge in the backyard only her sister Red #1 was higher up in the pecking order. All week long I could tell she wasn't feeling well, and then yesterday she stopped eating the grapes I had been feeding her as treats and went and laid down in the coop and closed her eyes for good. I buried her this morning in the yard next to our cat Socks.

All 4 of the chics when we first got them.

SUMMER IS HERE

Well summer has finally shown up and it's hot out but the nasty heat heat that drives everyone inside won't be here till mid-July or August. I'm definitely putting down the water. My trees are getting deep watered every 2 weeks to a depth of three feet and my veggie patches are getting watered down 18 inches every 4 days. The easiest way to check your water depth is get a piece of rebar and push into the ground. All the bubblers and drip tape I've installed have kept the water bills about a hundred dollars less than last year at this time. I'm really impressed  that in the heat of the summer we're watering 17 trees, 4 blueberry bushes, 3 grape vines, 1 passion fruit vine, and a 22 foot by 45 foot veggie garden for a $ 150 dollars a month. That number is totally exceptable to my wife and I and I believe I can wittle it down even further by automating the whole system. You see I've figured all the approximate times it takes to get the amount of water down that all the plants need but sometimes I forget the water is on or fall asleep in the middle of the night while it's running, not to mention all the time I spend manually turning on sprinkler valves or dragging hoses around to different emitter setups. So soon I'll begin automating the entire system. I've also had to replant my vine garden because the chickens destroyed the last one, I've had set backs in my potato patch and blueberry patch, I love melons, and I've found some cool new bugs in the garden.

I had to replant my vine garden the original chicken defenses weren't strong enough and the chickens destroyed the whole thing in 2 days. This is the new garden with 4 foot tall fencing around the plants for protection. Lets see the chickens jump that. I kept the plants real simple armenian cucumbers and luffa sponges for the whole thing.

My potato crop this year was a huge failure the basket above was all I harvested. Last year I pulled 25 pounds of taters out of the garden. I blame the failure on buying store bought potatoes and not using seed taters. The plants just never got going maybe next year. I also had a problem in the blueberry patch, I was harvesting a handful of berries everyday, when all of the sudden every bird in the neighborhood figured out there were blueberries afoot and the whole crop even the green ones were gone just like that. I still got 1 cup of tasty blueberries which is one more cup than last years harvest. Those birds are lucky I'm a permaculturist the old Aaron would have settled up with all of them for eating his blueberries, oh well maybe next year. Do you sense a theme here? It doesn't happen overnight. The first year I struggled to get the b-berries through the harsh summer and I suceeded, the second year the birds stole my harvest, So next year I'll have to defend against the birds. PATIENCE PATIENCE PATIENCE!!!!

Do you love melons? I do, they're my favorite summer treat, these are my first honeydews of the season. They're are many ways to test for ripeness, some people can tell by sight, others are thumpers, I'm a pusher and smeller. All you do is push on the belly button (side opposite from the vine) if it pushes in easily the melon is close to ripe, then smell the belly button, if you smell a sweet melon smell then it's ready for harvest. Man I love melons.

Cool bug pic!

This is an assassin bug eating a bee. Assassin bugs are beneficial insects for your garden, they eat other bugs. The only problem is they'll eat other beneficial bugs to (bees).

Finally check out this cool 5 legged grass hopper that showed up, that's right my garden is handicap friendly for all. All in all everything is going great on the farm, I'm still harvesting about 4 pounds of tomatoes a week, but I'm tired of blogging about them and the wife is tired of chopping them but hey.

BOOYAH!!!!

THINK SAFETY

The title of this newest blog was going to be damn it's hot!!! But thanks to a dumb accident it's Think Safety! I've also harvested some more fruits and veggies and planted a couple of summer veggie plots.

Garden is in full bloom all the hollyhocks and sunflowers are volunteers, the sunflowers are naturally shading the garden quite well.

Tomatoes are producing big time, I'm getting this many every three days the majority are little, like super sweet 100, and juliet, the medium size tomatoes, that are doing well, are glacier, and silver fir tree, the better boys have produced a few monster tomatoes, and prudens purple is a no show, all they do is grow tall lanky plants with no fruit. So far we've made this spaghetti sauce, a simple pico de gallo, and a mixture of diced tomatoes, creamy italion dressing, and parmesan cheese which is a great chilled summer salad. We've also been putting tomatoes on everthing under the sun, sandwiches, eggs, or just eating them raw. I fear the looming tomato apocalypse, where there are no more tomatoes and we have to go back to buying those crappy store bought things they call a tomato.

Here's the garlic harvest hanging and drying in the shade of the porch. This year I decided to go hardcore with garlic since we use it all the time, I ordered some gourmet garlic and planted a nice big bed of them all in one place and got some decent results, but I noticed the garlic in the giant bed didn't get as big as the heads I randomly planted around the garden. It turns out garlic is slightly allelopathic.Which means they produce a chemical which slightly inhibits the growth of the plants around them, who new? So next year I'll spread them out and see how they do.

Still getting some fresh peaches Desert Gold Peach.

I planted 2 summer veggie beds, that I amended all of the soil with compost pile omega. I planted some tomatillos that I grew from seed, and also dug up some volunteers that showed up from last years tomatillo  patch, cowpeas(black eyed peas), pole beans, sunflowers,basil, chiltepines ,and tepary beans .

Finally a note on safety do you see the red part on the right side of my finger, do you see how it's flat and not round, that's because I lobbed the tip of my finger off while slicing a roast up yesterday with my meat slicer     making italion beef.

The sandwiches were great once I pulled part of my finger out of them. The lesson here is a little bit of inattentiveness caused an accident, that's how most accidents are caused. 90% of accidents are caused by not paying attention, which is what happened here. As I was explaining to my by boss this morning, why I was having a hard time getting some simple tasks completed, he told me a least I was deli slicing the meat and not cutting it into 1/2 inch slices. Bottom line pay attention to what you're doing, driving, running a wood chipper, swinging a pick, climbing a ladder, or slicing up Sunday dinner on your meat slicer.

OUCH!!! This blog post was typed completely using only one hand.

BOOYAH!!!