A View from the Garden

My little postage-stamp of a garden out behind the chicken pen is going gangbusters.  I planted tomatoes, peppers, squash, eggplant, zucchini, cucumbers, watermelons, gourds and sunflowers.  Last year's crop was pretty dismal.  But this winter, the wife and I hauled dirt in from a creek bank off our farm and built-up the soil.  This has made all the difference in the world.  The adjoining chicken pen hosts 3 Buff Orpingtons, 4 guinea fowl, 2 Chinese Owl pigeons, and--a pair of peafowl, just because.  I got rid of my rooster and guniea cock.  They were a couple of troublemakers.

Peacocks are wonderful fowl--calm but inquisitive, majestic, and a perfect reminder of the Resurrection.

Sunflowers and gourds aplenty

                                                                Tomatoes coming on

                                                                        And eggplant

                                                                

 Cherry tomatoes are the best

                                                       Le Arc de Cocombres

You cannot beat Buff Orpingtons

Guniea eggs work just like hen eggs--just use 3 for every 2 chicken eggs.

 

The flock

Prize gourd

Melon on the make

Every afternoon after I get home, my dog and I go out to the back of the yard and take care of this enterprise.  I give the poultry the table scraps for the day (they will eat anything), check their water, put out some laying pellets if need be, and gather the eggs.  I briefly scold them for eating the Morning Glories that are trying to wind up the side of their pen.  Then I check the garden.  I pull any weeds that need pulling, then pick the ripening tomatoes, and the cucumbers off my trellis.  I check on the status of my young melons, and hope the crows haven't spotted them just yet.  The burn barrels are close at hand, and I often burn our paper trash and the pecan limbs that fall most every day.  I cannot tell you how therapeutic all this is.  Of course, when you consider the price of the pen, the feed, and all the costs in getting my garden set up, it will be years before we come out ahead.  But that is not the point, is it?  I suppose if times get too hard, then we can get by on guinea eggs and sweet pickles (24 pints so far.)  Now I just wish I had paid more attention growing up the son of a farmer.  I will not have much time for writing before long--the figs are about to make.