I hadn't quite understood just how fast beans go Up, or how strong their little tendrils are. Because the cattle panel isn't tall enough for their tastes, I put in twine runners, and drop lines for them to climb up, and within a day they're twining around and going up. It's fascinating to watch. Before I had the twine in place, the beans were growing up beyond their supports by twining around each other, and climbing. The tallest of them was over a foot and a half over the top of the support. I'm happy with how well the beans are growing, and that barring some catastrophe wiping out the plants we should have a good harvest of beans this year. Obviously, as with everything on the homestead, don't count your beans, or anything else before harvest.
Next, we are stopping at the potatoes in their buckets. They are getting very bushy, and just going nuts! The Lady of the House has been keeping up on them, and they're definitely her baby this year. She's kept them filled up with manure, and watered the rare times that it's needed. For the most part this year watering isn't necessary due to the regular random storm bursts. I was also going to be talking about the asparagus that has recently flowered, but the photos didn't come out so I'll have to touch on that on Thursday.I'm not sure why, but so far the potato plants haven't been mauled too badly by bugs, and I'm actually going to put at least part of that down to the fowl we have wandering the yard, eating anything that moves, and much that doesn't.
At this point we're down to 1 Cinnamon Queen, Mr. Bond MkII, and 3 chicks for chickens, and two very lanky turkeys. The social dynamics of the flock are definitely in flux right now, which ends up with the one laying rooster regularly off on her own. The Lady of the House jokingly pointed out that she's just Far too mature to want to hang out with the teenagers that think they know best. The turkeys, and all of the other chickens are effectively teenagers, and don't really care what she thinks. The turkeys have also from time to time gone after her hard, and she probably doesn't feel too welcome with them around. I missed the real action, but the Lady of the House saw the dominant turkey, the one with less marking that's on the ground Above, head fully red attacking the Cinnamon Queen full force. No blood, but it was clearly problematic. I really hope that the pecking order settles out without major conflicts. Every time though we introduce new chickens it's going to have to be worked out again.
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The electrical netting is looking better and better.
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