First day of summer

It’s another scorcher today. I went out early to weed the corn before it became dangerously hot. The hens do well in the orchard, hanging out in the shade of the apple trees. I have mentioned before that the chicks sit in front of the fan. Here is my attempt at getting a picture of it. There is an observer effect here, as some of the chicks flee as soon as I walk into the coop.

Chicks in front of the fan (which is behind a screen)

The chicks are spending more time outside during the heat when there is shade. These times include the morning before the sun comes around to the west side of the coop and later in the afternoon when the sun is low enough that there is shade under the canvas lean-tos I put in the run for that purpose (you can see on in the background of the kennel picture below). Here’s the puzzlement, though—if you are going to the shade to cool off, wouldn’t you space out instead of piling all on top of each other?

Spread out, for heaven's sake!

The chicks have learned to get on top of the kennel. It is not unusual for the pullets (chicks that will become laying hens) to get up there. Often the meat chickens (shown below) are too heavy to fly up that far.

A particularly agile meat chicken on top of the kennel

These meat chickens also roost with the pullets at night, which is something I have not observed in meat chicks before this year. 

Roosting for the night. The pullets are, from left, in positions 1, 3, 6, and 8

They can climb up the ladder rather than flying, which helps. One morning after most everyone ran outside, I heard alarm cries from the coop. There was a meat chicken pacing back and forth on the roost as if he could not figure out how to get down. He came up with a plan quickly as soon as I tried to pick him up. He squawked and fluttered his wings as he jumped to the floor and sprinted for the door. They can move quickly when motivated.

The new bloom for this week is penstemon. I have it by the garage and the fifth oak. This is the bunch by the fifth oak, obviously.

Penstemon and the fifth oak

Here is a close up. I am disappointed that the color doesn’t show. They are a lovely pale lavender in real life.

Close up

We are battling fruit flies again, and I’m damned if I can figure out where they are breeding. The last time this happened, it was a rotten onion. I have checked (and thrown out most of) the onions again and again. Then I thought of the potatoes, sprouting and wrinkling in the root cellar. Yesterday, I found a moment to go through them. One potato was rotting, but had no fruit flies on it. So the fruit fly mystery is unsolved.

However, potatoes are amazing things. The part we eat is not a root, but a tuber, an underground stem complete with buds or “eyes.” The Caribou Russets did something I had not previously seen by actually sprouting tiny potatoes not only on the sprouts but also right out of the tuber itself. Amazing. If Hilda were here, she would probably want to fry them up and eat them. I was worried they were full of toxins, just like the stems would be.

Baby potatoes forming not only on the sprouts but also directly on the tubers

I have always been amazed at the length of the sprouts that can come from a potato without benefit of any additional water or energy. These two small potatoes produced shoots over a foot long!

How can these weenie potatoes have enough resources to produce such prodigious spouts?

The sprouts, presumably those destined to be roots, also have a remarkable ability to seek out darkness. Here is an example of one that grew right into the corrugations of the cardboard box it was in. It expanded after getting in there, too. I could not pull it out.

Putative root growing into cardboard

The peas in the high tunnel are ready to harvest. I did the first picking on Sunday. It looked like a lot in the pink tray and took 30 minutes to shell them. And then we ate every last one for supper. If they weren’t so darned good, it would seem like a lot of effort for not much yield. I have learned, however, that even if I just freeze a handful at a time, I can accumulate a gallon bag of peas for the winter. So much better than store bought!

First pea harvest