Of pullets and plums

It didn’t take long for me to regret going to Minnesota last weekend. I was up early Monday working on posting lecture outlines and reading quizzes for Unit 2 online. It took until noon. And then I had to start on the other things on my to-do list. While I was working on my laptop, Terry was out picking our very first plums. When you grow things on trees, there is nothing between “zero” and “too many.” So we’ve got plums. Forty-five pounds of them.

45 pounds of plums

Hilda took a lot of the plums upstairs to can.

“I should make a plum tart,” I said to Terry. “I wonder how you do that.”

He laughed. I started going through cookbooks. And as so often happens, it was good old reliable Betty Crocker who came through for me. Other than being too sweet, it was a good tart. The crust had ground almonds in it.

Plum tart

I never liked grocery-store plums, but I’ve been eating two plums every day. They are sweet, free-stone, and perfect for lunch. Yet there are still too many. Today I cut everything that was ripe in half, took out the pits, and put them in the dehydrator. We’ll see how that goes. I left the rest at room temperature to finish ripening.

The pullets are getting big. We are eager to have everyone in one coop. I really hoped we would have some rain before we had to move the fences. At present, the ground is hard as a rock. I took a hard look at the fence configuration and figured that I would only need to move five posts of the netting in the permanent run. There was no getting around moving the entire chick fence, but the posts could stay where they were.

The first tasks was to tear the cucumbers out of the raised beds between the two runs. The plants pulled out easier than I thought they would. I cleaned the vines off the trellis, took the trellis down, and pulled out the posts that came loose. Terry got the rest with a shovel. While I was at it, I pulled the zucchini and pattipans. Dry as it’s been, it is amazing to me that they would succumb to powdery mildew, but there you are. Terry thinks it’s from the dew. Which just makes you wonder how we can have so much dew when it has been so dry.

Zucchini overcome by powdery mildew

Hilda and I were out at 6:20 this morning. It was cold. Wool socks would have been a good idea. We cut the cable ties holding the chick fence to the posts. I pulled out the five hen fence posts and moved them around the raised beds. We rotated the chick fence so it reached Coop 1. I put in two fence posts between Coop 1 and the greenhouse. We put new cable ties on the chick fence in its new position. It took an hour and a half. The girls were eager to be out of the coops by the time we got everything set. To my great relief, the pullets did not walk right through the net fence. It helped that they had access to their familiar turf. Last year, they wanted to get back with the turkeys in the worst way.

No fence between the two runs.

As the day went on, the hens invaded the pullets’ territory. The pullets pretty much stayed in their area. Hopefully they will bond without too much pecking and fighting.

We look forward to the pullets’ maturity, as egg production has been low. We remembered yesterday that the days are down to 13 hours. Fourteen hours of light is best for egg laying. I put the coop light on the timer again. Still only one egg today.

Meanwhile, I had my usual Sunday chores—baking bread and muffins, making lunches—plus getting the plums ready for the dehydrator. The sauerkraut had developed a film on top and a kind of boozy odor. I guessed that a yeast had invaded. It smelled fine under the top layer, but it had to be put up sooner rather than later. And there went the afternoon.

Someone I was talking to recently said that goldfinches nest late in the summer. This was news to me because I have personally observed goldfinches nesting in midsummer. Terry was out trimming his red maple trees when he saw something in the branches that “looked like a tennis ball,” which he recognized as a goldfinch nest. It certainly looks like a cozy place to grow up.

The "tennis ball" nest of a gold finch

Terry figured the nest was empty, but as he prepared to cut the branch it was on, he saw two little bald heads. So he left it. From my previous observations, I know it is 14 days from hatch to fledge, and these chicks already have several days in. Plenty of time to finish trimming the trees after the chicks are gone.

Little bald chicks