Great tomatoes

This is no great tomato year by any stretch, thanks to an unusually wet and cold spring. But my tomatoes spent a month under a toasty cloche, and now they look great.

Coddling moth protection

This year I am determined to get some decent apples off our apple trees. These footies are supposed to protect from coddling moths and apple maggots.

Chicken grains

I read an article yesterday in Sunset magazine about pasture-fed chickens. These are farm-raised chickens that get most of their food by foraging in an alfalfa pasture. Darn, i should have bought some alfalfa seed this year! I did buy oats and buckwheat and I already know they love buckwheat.

Free-range

Greg has let the chickens out this morning. It's impressive to see how much they can dig with their powerful feet. Actually, they can do a lot of plant damage...

Dirt bath

Although colder weather is coming, we are having a nice, dry and sunny day today. And the chickens are doing what they love to do in the sun -- taking a dirt bath in a hole they dug.

Bock bock

After they lay an egg, the chickens often make a lot of loud honking noises. If they were wild chickens, this would be the equivalent of saying, hey, predators, lunchtime. Why do they do this, I wonder?

Rat problem solved

I seem to have successfully blocked the neighborhood rats from raiding the chicken coop. A row of bricks at the entrance point seems to have blocked them, for now at least.