Rain and Raccoons

Last night it rained for the first real serious rain of the season. It was raining pretty hard in the middle of the night, but it's cleared up a bit now. Still, it's supposed to rain for the rest of the week. We're still picking broccoli, although the Belstar is almost all gone.

The younger seedlings are interspersed with lots of baby dill.

The broccoli crop has been prolific and delicious. We're still harvesting grapes too, and I still have a ton of juice.

The lettuces are getting big. These are the Drunken Woman Frizzy Headed.

And the blushed butter. We lost a lot of the DWFH in transplanting, but with the butter, we used the shadecloth, and had lots better luck.

The daikons, red radishes, and arugula that I planted last week are coming up strongly.

So what about raccoons? It's been a banner year for raccoons. Late last Thursday night, we heard the hens screaming bloody murder. We went out and there was a big racccon in the yard. He wasn't the least bit afraid of me yelling and waving my arms, so I had to arm myself with a broom. We also used the hose to shoo him away. When we checked the chickens, we found that one had been injured. The dang raccoon dug under the pen, reached in, and managed to grab a chicken's foot and pull it under the pen through the hole. The raccoon then bit off two of the hen's toes! Poor hen! We got her cleaned up as best we could, wrapped the wound, and put her in the hen hospital... in this case, a basket in the bathroom. She seems to be recovering, as she is eating and drinking. She's pretty content to stay in the basket now though.

We decided to go ahead and move the other hens to the farm. That way, when this hen is a little better, I can put her in the pen by herself to finish recuperating. Here the hens are in the pen on the way to the farm. There will be a bit of an adjustment period while they work out the new pecking order.

Last Saturday, we went over to 9th Street and cut back all the baby silk and Chinese black locust trees that were sprouting. We used a foam brush to dab Roundup on the cut stumps. Not organic but... those are really invasive trees. After a couple of hours of hard work, we went downtown to the "You know you're from Chico when" Facebook group reunion.

Where we saw this lovely woman: Miss Ami.

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What We're Eating
More Nathan food! Nathan brought over the first order: meat pie, bread, flatbreads, and sausage rolls. Not shown are the two packages of frozen sausages. Yum!

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