Haying season started last weekend here. We made over 500 bales of good hay and delivered it to our first customer. We have more cut down that should be ready to bale tomorrow and Saturday. That will finish the first customer and move on to a second.

From that second customer, we will probably be getting some Chinese Silkie chickens. I am hoping they will give us some hens, but if they are all roosters, then we will most likely just be adding to the freezer.

The chickens are growing nicely. They’re enjoying having some sweet hay to scratch in, and I let them out to free range for the first time just the other day. They enjoyed it, hopping around and testing their wings. Chanticleer started crowing a few weeks ago, and now he crows every morning, in the middle of the afternoon, and sometimes rarely at other times. He is a good guardian, too, sounding the alarm when a cat saunters by or a sparrow flies over, and herding the girls back to safety when he feels he needs to.

The garden is doing reasonably well. The potatoes look really nice, and some of the tomatoes are setting small fruits. I had some trouble getting the beans and peas to come up due to root rot fungi in the soil, but now there are plenty popped up from the replacements I put in. There are still some issues with the lettuce being spotty, which I am hoping that a little more water will solve. Radishes are going to be ready soon, and kale and turnips not too far behind that. Zucchini/squashes are getting some of their big true leaves, so they should start to grow very fast now. We also planted potatoes, broccoli, and a few onions in a ring around the base of the old silo, so we’ll see what those do!