A week on the farm - June 20

     Summer has arrived, though a much rainier summer so far than we are accustomed to having.  Between showers, the porch umbrella and chair cushions were brought out in hope of dinners on the deck, the deck planters are filling in with geraniums and lantana, the herb pots filled and growing.  In the garden, two half barrels were started with potatoes, to be filled a bit more every few days as the sprouts reach for the sun in hopes that the season will end with two full barrels of fresh potatoes for the winter.  The beds of the garden were weeded and mulched, the winter squash has it's first blossom, the cucumbers and pumpkins getting secondary leaves.  There are pea pods and a good stand of young bush beans.
     The young roosters are getting vocal, three of them challenging each other to see who can be the loudest and most annoying, beginning at 5 a.m. and continuing through the daylight hours if they see me out in the orchard or garden.  Moving their ark/tractor every couple of days is reducing the area that has to be mowed in the orchard.  The pullets (young hens) are reaching the time where we may start seeing eggs, so their coop was thoroughly cleaned and bedded with fresh hay and the nesting boxes seeded with fake eggs (golf balls) to encourage them to use the nesting boxes instead of the run or main coop when they finally figure it out.  It is about time to rearrange their run again to give them more fresh grass, but the rest of the compost beside their run still needs to be moved and a 100' roll of 6 ' fencing purchased along with a few more posts so that their run can be set up along two sides of the garden in a 4 to 5' wide expanded run for them.

*This idea borrowed from SouleMama, a delightful blog of a young homesteading family in Maine.