Spuds, Cukes, and a Chick

Adrian harvested half of our potato harvest last night, while I ground up 8 pounds of cucumbers so that I could can dill relish.  I actually thought I would have enough cucumbers to make some dill slices on the side, but our harvest fridge (our second fridge in the basement, that holds bulk onions, potatoes, blueberries, eggs, milk, zucchini, etc. etc.) had seen fit to freeze some of the cucumbers at the back of the bowl.  I turned the temperature dial up this morning! I wound up actually substituting a bit of zucchini to round out the recipe.

The zucchini, cucumbers, onions and garlic I used in the recipe were all out of the garden (I used the onions that had sent up flower stalks, and damaged bulbs of garlic, since they won't hold in storage).  Fingers crossed that this relish tastes good, since I've had a few let-downs in that department over the past years with new recipes. Some *very* vinegary beet slices are still sitting in the pantry because I assume I'll find a way to use them, and can't bear to think of all those hours of work wasted. 

Since the kitchen was already a bit of a mess, and the food processor dirty, we also made salsa, tabbouleh and zucchini muffins - and then rewarded ourselves with a dinner of local corn after the pints of relish were processed on the stove outside.  You know the garden is in full swing when you're eating dinner by nine!

Celine and her little chick are doing well.  There were no more chicks hatched out, so I removed the remaining eggs on Sunday, to let Celine focus on mothering. I gave them a leftover cob of corn for their private breakfast, and watched Celine peck pieces off the cob and drop them for the chick to eat.  There was a little pasting on the chick's butt, so I quickly scooped it up - to the annoyance of Celine, and pulled off the dried poop - to the annoyance of the chick.

Supplies were purchased to expand the rabbitry with outdoor cages, and that will be our evening project this week.  Spot's ears are still giving him slight issues, so I have been swabbing them with oil to lubricate and to suffocate any mites that are in the ear canal, and leaving him outside during the day to get more sunshine and wind exposure.  The look he gave me this morning was somewhat reproachful. Chun Li and Sakura are both beginning to nest, which is a good sign that we will have kits in seven days. I'm very interested to see what our cross-breeding results are, and the moms seem to have become less agitated over the past few days.