I've started cleaning out all the flower beds. The back yard is nearly finished, the beds have been weeded and the debris has been hauled to the appropriate dump pile. I still have flats of annuals in the greenhouse that are waiting for the temps to stabilize before I put them out. Many of my perennials have become overgrown and it's time to divide them and move them to other beds. Yesterday I decided the bed that borders the Bocce court would make a great home for many of the plants that need to be divided so I started the clean up on that bed. I hoed out all the dead grass and hauled it to the compost pile and I had every intention of doing some transplanting but by the time I finished cleaning the bed my arms felt like they were going to fall off.

We're having temperate swings from morning frost to daytime highs in the 90's and the ground is still so saturated that tilling just turns up big goopy clods of mud. If I wait for the ground to dry out it will be too late to plant so my solution is to add tons of my horse compost to the tillage to try to refine it to a workable soil. I'm moving my Dahlia bed this year from the vegetable garden area out with the fruit trees and berries. In this photo you can see where the front wheels of the tractor sunk in when I was dumping the compost. Today I'll go in with the little garden tractor, spread the compost and do some test tilling.

Daniel Webster

When tillage begins, other arts follow.
The farmers, therefore, are the founders of
human civilization.

Skunks

My little chickens survived the coons, but not the Skunk. My Bearded Belgian D'uccle Bantam hens are known not to be terribly prolific, in fact most fanciers inseminate the hens to insure fertile eggs. I've chosen to rely on my Belgian rooster and thus I am lucky to get two or three chicks a years. In late spring we were blessed with one chick. We rushed the hen and her new brood into the safety of the nursery yard to keep it safe. For weeks we closed the little hen and her chick into the nursery box at night and returned in the morning to release them to scratch in the nursery yard.  Finally the hen decided to take her chick and returned to the big house and the rest of the flock.

Just before dusk I do a head count in the coop and close it up for the night to keep the birds safe from the local predators, coons, fox and skunk. I recently saw a coyote in the late afternoon skirting the horse paddock. Early one evening as I was doing my chores, there in the corner of the chicken yard was a skunk thoroughly engaged in eating my one and only chick. What I didn't realize at the time was that it had also killed the mother. What a sense of loss and all for some birds with brains the size of a bean. I was livid but not dumb enough to challenge the skunk while I was standing in the yard with it.  I left the yard, collected a load of large rocks and started pelting the skunk with them through the fence. He moseyed out of the yard and let off a spray in my direction, thankfully I was out of range. The stink lasted for days around the coop. The trap is set every night for the skunk. I will dispatch him.

Skunks are actually beneficial here on the farm and we usually leave them alone unless they start hanging around the house or yard where we might have a stinky encounter with them. Skunks love bees and hornet larvae. They dig up huge yellow jacket nests and eat every one of the larvae and a lot of the adults in the process. When we first came to the farm we trapped and killed every skunk we could but as soon as we learned about their appetite for bees we only destroyed the ones that were actually a problem for us. The result has been a tremendous decrease in the bad tempered hornets.

Our neighbor a quarter mile away is an apiarist and has to trap and destroy all the skunks as one skunk can eat out an entire hive in a single night.

Coon #5

 I was Dead! Dead! Dead! asleep at 1:30 AM when Stan decided to wake me up saying "Get the gun we've got another coon in the back yard." Max had treed it and was going crazy, it was 30 degrees and there I am standing in my nightie and slippers in the back yard with a rifle. It would be so much simpler if the dog would just keep the coons totally out of the yard, but noooo, he thinks it's great sport to let them sneak through the fence and then he trees them using his nasty, vicious junk yard dog attitude to keep them in the tree until he wakes us up to come see what the problem is . He is so funny, as soon as we go out to see what's up he turns into a wiggly silly puppy again totally overjoyed at what he's done. I dispatched the coon with a head-shot, Stan hauled the carcass out by the hay barn and I'll go bury it today. Stan left at 3:AM for the airport to fly to NM. I want to thank my dog for the added chore, because he will lay sleeping in the sun while I'm digging the hole. Oh well, at least the coon didn't get the little Banty hen that's setting on a nest of eggs under a shrub in the back yard. And why is it that hen has a perfectly good hen house with cozy nest boxes and instead she's hiding under a bush tempting fate? Farm Life

Frogs

Last night while I was cleaning the kitchen this guy stopped for a few minutes to watch me and then he was off to chase down a crane fly.

Cooler Mornings

It's only the first week of October and my mind is already turning to thoughts of indoor projects. YUCK!

The Poison Oak on all hillsides is turning red, the Maples and Ash are changing. We've covered the debris pile so it stays dry for our annual bonfire on Samhain.

My leaf lettuce patch is ready to cut. I'll be bagging it to share with friends and co-workers today.

 It's time to move the little hen and her baby out of the dogs house and into the chicken coop with the other birds.

The Lantana has slowed down with the cooler nights, I'll hate to see it go.

The herb garden has gone wild, it's time to cut it all back and get one last growth of fresh tips before the frosts come.

It's time to collect seeds to overwinter so I'll be ready to start it all again in the early spring. The wood has been cut, chopped and stacked. Sometimes on very cool mornings I can smell the smoke from wood stoves already put to use in our valley. I'm wearing sweatshirts and heavier socks on those mornings I just can't bring myself to start a fire and I refuse to turn up the thermostat for the furnace.