Sunday, June 10, 2012

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. 

5 comments:

  1. how lovely! looks beautiful and peaceful! what a blessing!

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  2. Anonymous4:39 AM

    Very nice and inspirational.
    I'm probably too old, and too not-retired from law, to move again just to have a big garden and some fowl. But I want to buy a suitable Hoosier equivalent so the young-uns will have a fallback when things get even worse, as I think they will.

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  3. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing this.

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  4. Rd. John,
    I am no survivalist--I do not even want a "big" garden. A small affair, however, suits me and feeds the delusion that I could be self-sufficient if need be.

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  5. I really love peacocks too...you're right they are majestic!

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