Emergency Tomato Harvest

We were due for some rain over the weekend, but though the clouds closed in on Friday, the rain failed to show - until Saturday night when I was woken by the sound of a deluge!

Sunday morning, Adrian and I were in the hoophouse, where I've been keeping an eye on the oh-so-slowly-ripening tomatoes, and gathering everything that had a blush of colour, lest the rain cause splitting, and the loss of our small tomato harvest.

 

There was minimal splitting - possibly because we still have the plastic down around the growing area to minimize water absorption. The ripest have been eaten, the splits given to the chickens, and the rest set in a single layer to colour up on the dining table. Today I picked a smaller basket of tomatoes showing a bit of colour.  Soon I'll have enough ripe tomatoes for a batch of homemade salsa, with sweet onions, tomatoes and the last of the Fall cilantro thrown into the blender. I just have to figure out how to grow citrus and the limes will be accounted for..... Better late than never! 

Jodie and her foster mom.

The chickens, who are notorious for hanging out under the picnic table in the rain, enjoyed a break in the rain to run about. Jodie is getting big and testing her wings, though is quickly put in her place by the two elder hens.

Growing Up Fast

Jodie the foster chick is three and a half weeks old, and the bunnies - at a week old - are soon to be opening their eyes.  Our two neighbourhood cats are very interested in the back yard right now, so I took a quick pick of Jodie this morning, then had to trick her back into the dog run when she took flight and ran off for a bit of freedom.  She has wings, and knows what to do with them!

Not too please with being confined.

 

Sakura's litter of seven kits are furred out in various shades from grey through brown and black.  Cute little ears and feet everywhere!

 

Close-up of a sleepy little bunny. 

 Chun Li's litter of three - a much darker, solid colouring.

Noticeably bigger, sleek, and full of milk - but just as sleepy.

 

We bred our two other does on the weekend - though one of our girls was not interested in the process, and I'm hoping that putting her back in with Notch the next day results in a pregnancy. We prefer to breed two girls at the same time, in case of problems with the mother, or litter size.  

A Very Busy Day

At a week old, Jodie the chick is starting to get some wing feathers in, and is following her mother around the yard like an old pro, watching and learning. She can move surprisingly quickly, and hop into the garden beds, so she had a wonderful time exploring and digging - and eating what her mother found for her to try.

 

We were busy hauling lumber and working in the backyard, so we let the two of them out for a few hours with some supervision.  Nugget took a couple of nips at the little one, so she went back in to the chicken tractor to consider her actions.  Jodie observed Celine delighting in taking a 'dust' bath after being confined to the safety of the dog run on the grass all week, and joined in beside mom, wiggling herself into the bark mulch and sand.  We stood and watched - it was absolutely adorable.

Work was started on the outside rabbitry extension today, and later chores included examining the hoophouse plants for damage while chopping back the squash, cucumber and tomato plants in there to encourage the ripening of the already-existing fruits and veggies. It could be a raccoon (?)  The neighbour has had some of her ground-grown potatoes eaten, and that has to be a big disappointment. Could be the same opportunistic animal, as there are a lot of gardens in the neighbourhood, to tempt them, and we've run across both racoons and opossums in the yard.  I was able to harvest quite a few cucumbers, so I'll need to find that recipe for dill cucumber slices soon (the problem with having too many preserving books sometimes!)

Tomorrow we hope to finish the building project, and  I need to finish harvesting the potatoes we grew in buckets, and pot up some plant and herb divisions with the extra soil from that process.  Some of the divisions are moving out to the front yard, to help fill in our plantings. I also plan to harvest the Alisa Craig onions which I grew from seed, and to tidy up a few eyesores which have been on the to-do list for a while, but ignored because of the oppressive heat of summer.

A hive inspection tomorrow (it was overcast until late today) will tell us whether the colony is indeed doomed, and then we will need to think about harvesting most of the honey and wax before our weakened colony is robbed.  The girls are still working hard amongst the blossoms, and I want to find a balance between letting them cap their finished honey, and risking robbers finding the hive.