Harvest frenzy

Once I got back from vacation, I had to hit the ground running. Summer was rapidly running out, and I had many things to put up for winter.

We started with harvesting the garlic. We should have done it sooner as the Purple Glow bulbs were starting to separate. They don’t keep well that way. We’d already eaten a good deal of the Early Italian. As the name suggests, it matures early and consequently does not store all that well. I dug; Hilda pulled the bulbs out. Up by the house, Hilda hosed off the clumps of dirt while I bundled and hung. Here they are under the deck.

Garlic hanging to dry under the deck

Meanwhile, the pullets and turkeys started to fly. This is never a problem with the lazy, overweight meat chickens. They have to flap their wings just to walk. They are never getting off the ground. I became alarmed with our all-white Americauna, whom Hilda has named Angelica, was sitting on the fence between her run and the big girls. If she landed on the other side, there was a good chance she might be pecked to death.

In the management of poultry, night vision is a human’s superpower. Chickens don’t see well in the dark. We had a choice of staying up late or getting up early, and I preferred the latter. I went out just at sunrise one morning and slowly opened the coop door. It was still pretty dark inside at any rate. I grabbed one of the pullets, shut the coop door, stretched out one of her wings with my left hand and trimmed the flight feathers with my right. And on to the next. It was easier than I expected. Alas, just today, I saw Angelica and one of the Barred Rocks sitting on the fence. I’ll have to get out early tomorrow and trim them again. Here’s a picture of a turkey showing its clipped feathers.

Turkey poults with clipped wing

One of the Americauna perched on the coop wheel.

Americauna perched on the coop wheel

Every morning when we open the coop, there is a rush to the feeders.  The meat chickens hog the feeders while the pullets fly to the top to see if they can reach food out of the middle. then they go eat grass, acting like it doesn't matter. After about 5 minutes, as you can see in the video, the chickens wander off.  At that point the turkeys and pullets have a chance

Here they are grazing by the fence.

Hanging out by the fence

The pullets and turkeys are good about going to bed when it gets dark. The meat chickens, now so large they can hardly walk, take a little longer and sometimes have to be herded or lifted in.

The nighttime march to the coop is complicated by the preference for all the birds to sit in the doorway. It gets quite congested during rush hour.

The march to bed

Traffic jam by the door

All but a few of our cucumbers have succumbed to wilt. We were surprised because we thought all varieties were bred to be resistant. Perhaps it is just most that are resistant. Perhaps the hot, dry summer is to blame. Terry says that the wilt is caused by a virus that is spread by cucumber beetles.  Certainly we had beetled earlier than ever before this year. In any case, this was our second year of failed cucumbers. Last year, when the cold, wet conditions caused an outbreak of slugs that ate the cucumbers right down to the nubbins, I figured we would just buy pickles. Why bother if the cucumbers are not your own? As it turns out, my family is very fond of my dill pickles. This year, I bit the bullet and bought a half bushel of 3” cucumbers from Klein’s in Elgin. They were actually a variety of sizes, and the largest were so big I could only get 4 pickles and another pickle cut in spears in one quart jar. I spent a day in a pickling marathon, putting up 20 quarts. If push comes to shove, it could last us two years.

Pickles with not home-grown cucumbers

On to the corn, which is very impatient. If you don’t get it at the peak of sweetness, it gets all tough and starchy. Hilda and I picked, shucked, blanched, and froze exactly 100 ears in the first picking.

Shucking 100 ears of corn

Corn, before

Corn, after

Since then there have been two smaller batches of 52 and 45 ears, respectively. I left a few ears in the garden for corn on the cob, which we had again tonight. We never get tired of corn on the cob.

Finally, we had an interesting bird siting this week. We were in the middle of supper when a great blue heron landed right on the top of the fifth oak. I got one good picture before it flew away.

Great blue  heron in the top of the fifth oak

 

And away it goes