What a Crazy Week it's Been

Wow...I didn't realize I hadn't posted in a week. But then, I haven't had much time to actually do minor things like think in the past week, either.

After the rain finally finished, I got back out to the garden and worked on getting it finished. I only have eleven rows; I had originally planned to have sixteen, but I miscalculated and made the garden too narrow. For a guy who is pretty darn good at math, I screw up a lot of calculations. Maybe it's lack of sleep. Or getting old. I dunno.

Anyway, eleven rows. They are, in order of planting: garlic, potatoes, garlic, carrots, onions, onions, beets and red onions, lettuce and the rest of the red onions, and tomatoes in the final three rows. Almost seventy tomato plants, in fact. We are going to be swimming in pasta sauce this winter.

I sometimes feel like I'm not moving fast enough; it's mid-June, and I haven't planted anything in the other two gardens yet. Yes, we've added a garden in the front, shaded by a large tree so it's not in full sun all day long. This will make it ideal for peas and other crops that don't like being in the hot sun for hours and hours. Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower...all good.

And then there's the third garden, the original one I dug up when we first started on this incredible journey. That one is going to be an experimental garden this year. I'm trying the 'Three Sisters' method, which is actually indigenous to this island; the Micmac tribe used to do this. Maybe I'll end up teaching their descendants; who knows? Anyway, it's a mixture of corn, beans and squash that complement each other and grow together to create really nice harvests. I hope. We shall see; it's getting late in the season already to do this, so I'm not sure how it's going to go. But I'll be working on that tomorrow.

But today was a sort-of relaxing day. I decided that today would be strictly devoted to the animals, particularly since we added a few. We've got four baby chicks that were hatched by a friend of ours last week; they're in the kitchen, and they're all from our own eggs. We don't know what breeds they all are, though. Probably mixed breeds.

And last night, we went to a chicken farm near Summerside and met a nice couple who showed us their setup. I thought we had a lot of chickens; they've got several hundred. We were there to buy some of their Chanticler chickens. We have three of our own (the white chickens we received a few weeks ago), and while these ones are younger, we picked up sixteen of them. Some are roosters, but they make good eating if we have to cull a few of them. For those who don't know, the Chanticler is the breed that was developed right here in Canada; it's designed to withstand Canadian winters and still lay a bunch of eggs and produce great meat. And we now have nineteen of them. I'm looking forward to that.

But before we picked them up, we set up the outdoor pen for Samson and Delilah, our breeding pair of pigs. No, we aren't eating them; they're going to provide us with lots of bacon seeds next year. Here they are, getting accustomed to their new, green digs. Not that it will stay green for too long...

As you can see, they're only kept in by electric fence wire. I couldn't come up with a way to incorporate a gated fence into the setup without spending way more time and money than I had available. So, we went with this method instead. It was a bit of an adventure last night, as Delilah tried to crawl under the wire...which wasn't connected properly, so she made a break for it without being shocked. Samson naturally followed, and after we chased them down for twenty minutes, we had them back in. This time the wires were charged, and...Delilah crawled under anyway. She got zapped, but she was already halfway out, so she just bolted forward and out of the pen. But Samson didn't follow her this time, and she came back to be with him, only to be shocked again going through the wires again. Silly girl...

They spent the night inside this shelter (in a large dog crate, just to make sure). This morning, I let them out of the crate and watched them for a full hour to see what they would do. Samson got curious about the white string surrounding him, and sniffed at it. He then received a sharp lesson in how mixing electricity and biology is bad. It took him two tries before he decided he wanted nothing more to do with that nasty wire. Delilah, being female, was a bit more stubborn and needed another lesson in 'don't touch the white wire' before she finally gave in and settled in.

By the way, Samson is the one with floppy ears; he's a bit thicker, and he's got a rather obvious feature that's visible when he's upright or walking. Delilah's ears are straight, and she's skinnier than Samson. Otherwise, it's not always easy to tell them apart. In fact, I only realized the ear thing today.

Being pigs, they're rooting around in the grass and the bushes against the barn wall. The only thing I don't like about this setup is that it's behind the barn where we can't see them unless we take a long walk around. I'm hoping to install some cameras so we can keep an eye on them from the house, but that's not going to be happening any time soon. For now, we'll just do it the old-fashioned way.

Anyway, we moved them out because we had new guests arriving. Well, one of them arrived today. His name is Bob, according to Tanner. He wanted to name him Road Hog, but I nixed that on the spot. So, Bob it is. Here he is:

Unlike Samson and Delilah, Bob is destined for the freezer. And he won't be alone; we're picking up two more meat pigs this weekend past Charlottetown. After that, we're pretty much done with our livestock for this year. Within a week or so I plan to have their own outdoor pen ready; they'll be in the barn until then, and Bob's going to have to wait until Saturday to meet his new roommates. He had a bit of a rough day, with all the driving and moving around he had to do. But he's home now, at least for the next few months.

So, with today being dedicated to the animals, it was a more relaxing day. Except that the Chanticlers are small enough to fit through the fencing we had them in, so we had some fun chasing them around the yard to get them back. I'm going to have to build another coop just for these birds. Sigh...

In veggie news, we have our first crop of rhubarb in the freezer. We also have a lot of potato plants and onions sprouting up, as well as the first hints of carrots and lettuce peeking out from the ground. The beets haven't popped yet, but we'll get there. For now, I'm going to kick back and relax for the evening, then get back to planting and weeding tomorrow. Again, Sigh...