Cluckers

The chickens have been growing and no longer look like chicks. They had to be moved out to the garage to a larger brooder that we made from a shipping crate/pallet. With more room they are running around, flapping their wings trying to fly (it is more like a controlled crash that moves them a couple feet at a time). We have started building the coop, also out of salvaged shipping crates which I have yet to take pictures of. The gals love to roost on the sides of the crate and are getting more and more curious about things out side of it. Here are a few of my favorites in the newest batch of photos:

Growy Things

Things are growing around here (and amazingly I am not killing them)

Rhubarb- for pie of course, there are three plants this is just one of them.

Peaches are starting to set on the tree.

The shamrock squash seeds that I got from Novella all sprouted and will get put into the garden once we get the horse manure mixed in this weekend.

The heirloom tomatoes are starting to put out their first real leaves, soon they will need to go in separate pots. For now they seem to love the sunny open window, lots of light, lots of breezes.

The cats are loving the warm sun these days too, maybe they are trying to photosynthesize too.

Tomato Tamato

This last weekend I took a class on starting tomatoes from seed at Love Apple Farm in Ben Lomond with the owner Cynthia Sandberg, it was a blast! Cynthia is a self professed tomato freak and she grows 100+ varieties every year at Love Apple Farm. She has a wide range of classes on tomato growing, herb growing and veggie growing; for more info go check out her site.

This is my flat, incubating away on its little warming pad to keep the soil around 70 degrees F. There are 3 seeds in each cell and 48 cells, so a potential 144 seedlings.  All the varieties I picked from Cynthia’s seed bank are heirloom varieties so I can save the seeds and plant them next year (assuming I don’t kill them…), they have great names like Bloody Butcher, Julia Child, Green Sausage, Berkeley Tie-Dye and more. I was going to just pick 8 and sew 6 cells of each but as the seeds came round I just couldn’t help myself so there are a couple cells of some, one of a couple, 4 of Julia Child, etc. Hopefully I will have a bunch to share.

For information on how to grow a good tomato check out Cynthia’s post here.