May Madness Begins

May 3, 2009 - May is the month that make all others seem like a walk in the park. In my family, May is full of family gatherings - it all starts today with my grandmother's 80th birthday party(HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA!!), with Joe's grandmother's, mine, my sister's, and my sister-in-law's soon to follow. Throw in Mother's Day, and you have a celebration for almost every woman in my family all in one month.

So it was never convenient for my personal life that May also happens to be the month that everything happens in the garden. May is when all the plants we have left in our greenhouse, as well as all the vegetables that will be direct seeded after the last frost, go into the prepared garden beds. It's the month that the weeds start taking off and the month that all the seedlings are particularly vulnerable to drying out, and therefore need to be checked on daily. Suffice it to say, things will probably get a little hairy around here in the coming weeks. So for today's post I'll give a general update on all things Zen Acres, so that we're all up to date before the madness sets in.

For starters, the plants in the garden are doing exceptionally well. We've had fantastic spring weather with lots of rainy days. This time of year I pray for rain during the week (so that I don't have to water before I go to work for the day) and pray for sun on the weekends (so that I can work outside and soak up the rays). So far, mother nature has been cooperating quite nicely.

The peas are looking happy -
All the onions have sprouted (we'll be harvesting every other plant to eat as spring onions, leaving more room for the others to grow nice fat bulbs) -

And the broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, and kale has all held its own quite well since it's transplanting two weeks ago -
The arugula could not be any happier. Doesn't it look like a soft comfy blanket? If the patch were bigger, I might be tempted to lay down on it...
Last weekend I transplanted all the tomatoes out of the 4-packs which they were quickly outgrowing, and into individual peat pots. Here's what they looked like immediately after the upgrade - If you know Joe very well, you know that whatever space he is given, he will immediately fill it up. Plants are very much like Joe in this way... you give em more space, and they take it. Here's what the tomatoes look like today -

It was the same case for the basil, which doubled in size after I gave each plant a bit more room -

The peppers are the most impressive to me. Last year our peppers did horribly. There were a lot of reason for this - none of our plants started out particularly impressive, as they didn't get nearly as much sun as they would have liked since we didn't have a good green house set up. But we also did our pepper plants an injustice last year by interplanting them with the tomatoes. The tomatoes took off so fast that they threw all the little pepper plants in shade and then proceeded to strangle them with their unrestrained vines. I swear, our pepper plants this year are already as big as they ever got last year -

And how about the chickens, you ask? The babies are doing GREAT. They grow so fast and although they're voices haven't changed yet, they're definitely acting like grown chickens, running around the yard all day eating bugs, seeking cover when hawks circle in the sky, and quietly roosting at night. They demand more space by the day, and Joe has a hard time keeping up with them. Here is the latest day time arrangement, which seems like it should last a good while -
At night they go into a section of the coop for the big hens, which is not shown here. We still keep them separate, but I have a feeling that integration is imminent.

Speaking of the hens, they are producing like crazy - We get between 7 and 11 eggs a day out of our 12 birds. We're selling them to friends and family for $3 a dozen (if you're interested, do let us know!) and we eat a whole mess of them ourselves. We probably eat between 2 and 3 eggs every day of the week. Fried, scrambled, hard-boiled, deviled, baked in custard - you name it, we eat it. Free range eggs are much healthier than eggs from caged hens, so we don't restrict ourselves. They are higher in omega 3's, lower in cholesterol, and higer in vitamins. Check out this Mother Earth News article to read about why you should be buying your eggs from people like us - http://www.motherearthnews.com/eggs.aspx

We've had a few problems with keeping our birds safe lately. It's a very delicate balace the free-range chicken farmer has to find between keeping the birds safe and letting them live a happy and free life. They are prey, after all, so there are a lot of animals wandering around who would just love to eat them. You expect to encounter issues with foxes or other wild predators. But surprisingly we've had most of our problems coming from neighboring dogs. While Joe and I are quite fond of dogs, we do believe that dog owners should be responsible for keeping their dogs from eating our animals. Last week we had an attack that left two of our hens wounded. They seem to be recovering, but it's always a bit stressful to come home to piles of feathers all around the yard. I am always tempted to keep the birds safe by keeping them caged. But Joe always stands up for their freedom. Besides, we've heard many stories about wild animals making their way into a chicken coop, at which point the chickens cannot escape and a mass slaughter ensues. A case can be made that the flock is more likely to survive if they are loose and able to scatter, run, and hide.

We haven't quite made up our minds on how to best handle these issues. Joe's working on building a chicken tractor that would keep them confined, but still on the grass. One day we'd like to get some dogs that we would train to protect the flock. But for now, our chickens are still wandering freely about the yard, scratching and rolling in the dirt, or sometimes just lounging in the grass -