Post
by windwalkingwolf » Thu Sep 13, 2018 3:32 am
OMG @JimW , that sucks donkey unmentionables. Best wishes for speedy healing and uncomplicated recovery.
@Killerbunny , we need pictures of the new boy!
I am up to my ears in peppers, beans and, believe it or not, cucumbers. Baskets and baskets and baskets of them. Late planting combined with extended nice weather and a shortage of time means wayyyy too many slicer cucumbers. I did my best to get them all off at gherkin size, been picking every second day for over a month, but often missed a bunch. I hate to see good food go to the pigs, so I'm going to have to look up some recipes and tricks. One can only eat so many pickles.
Beans are still beaning; just starting to get some first signs of rust. Peppers are still peppering, though we had a coolish night and lost a lot of blossoms, so that's the end of the new ones now thank goodness. They were late out of the gate, but are making up for it with a bumper crop, and some are enormous...over 400 grams. I've cut up four sinks full for the freezer, and there's still a load out there, probably three times that much again. I gotta get to it, because frost will come any day now, no matter what environment canada says. None of them will get a chance to turn colour on the plants, but that's fine, I like them any which way. Hot peppers didn't fare so well, only two jalapeno plants, and the Hungarian Hots are not hot. At all. Not even a hint of heat. So, if anyone has some hot peppers they'd like to trade for sweet, I'm your girl.
Broodies are STILL at it, though the tide is starting to slow. I just grafted a bunch of incubator hatched chicks onto a chronically broody Giant (first timer at 4 years old, too). She's a very happy lady now. Just had a hen turn up out of nowhere with chicks in tow, happy surprise because I thought she'd disappeared forever. I have NO idea where she hatched, or where she's taking her new brood at night. Exasperating surprise because this is her third time at motherhood this year, and of the first two batches, none of the eggs were hers because she's not a hen I would have chosen to breed. She clearly had other ideas, and I can't argue with mother nature.
One more hen has just hatched a huge clutch of eggs I didn't discover until too late, and I've still got one broody sitting on eggs. Hopefully she is the last one until next year, I'm happy to be getting enough eggs to eat again! I can't believe I am saying it, but I am officially all baby-ed out. Enough is enough!
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