Since my last update, our little stud muffin Tom the Turkey has graduated from teenager-hood to full blown big boy. He's tall...knee height to me...and handsome and proud. We lost one of the two hens that came with him to unknown causes a few weeks ago. Tom mourns her I think, and cuddles and protects the one that remains. Gwendolyn, his remaining girlfriend is a princess. She's very girly and dainty, and loves to be petted. If you ignore her, she'll just follow you around until you give her a little love. I have mad love for turkeys.
One of our four little bourbon red turkeys starting going down two days ago. We lost 19 of our chicks to a viral attack a little over a month or so ago, so I knew the signs. I pulled her out of the pen and put her into our "quarantine" brooder and starting medicating her. I'm happy to say she was well enough today to go back into the pen with her friends. We had just released the babies into the great outdoors the day before she got sick, so she was a happy little girl when she got to go out and sunbathe. Ever seen a turkey take a sun bath? It's a funny sight to see!
Our buckey chicks, who are now fully grown, are a whole other breed of cat. The males have recently discovered their, um, manliness. Those horny birds are harrassing my girls relentlessly. You hear them screeching in terror all day long, and sometimes into the night. The cocky little rascals have also formed a quintet of nonstop crowing. One starts, the others join in, and it continues all day. And sometimes into the night. All this nonsense, and still no eggs. These darn animals are going to be the death of me. :)
The summer garden...whew. After having such a success with my winter garden, I was thinking myself a gardening goddess. With the exception of loosing two plants to cutworms, everything I planted did extremely well. We were eating fresh salads everyday, and thanks to the over abundance of lettuce in our garden, so were our neighbors.
Summer gardening is a different matter entirely. I will admit to getting in over my head. We planted twelve raised beds, plowed and planted one 10x200 ft garden, and plowed and planted another that is about 50x100. Too much for a first year gardner don't ya think? I must not have thought so in the winter. I have changed my mind.
The corn and green beans were epic failures. The squash has done fair (squash bugs are the devil). Tomatoes, peppers, potaoes and cuccumbers have done really well. The sunflowers are over 10 feet tall. Pumpkins are struggling, picked a few melons, with a few more growing on the vines.
The zucchini... I think the corn stealing deer must have been urinating steroids on those darn plants. I have never seen that much zucchini at any one given time in my life. I've given away grocery bags of it. I've stuffed it. I have 15 gallon bags of it sliced and frozen in the freezer. I've shredded and froze enough to make 26 loaves of zucchini bread. I've cooked and canned it in several quarts of veggie pasta sauce. I've made 36 pints of zucchini jam in a menagerie of flavors. There is still more zucchini in the basket on the counter, and more coming in on the plants. If you're on the market next season for monster zucchini plants, I'm saving seed.
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