What's Happening Around The Farm

The little bantam hens are only laying three or four eggs a day, but even that is more than I can eat. I've begun bringing eggs in for a friend at church each Sunday, which so far seems to be a perfect solution:

I still don't let the chickens outdoors, though I hope I can do so in the fall. Though our fox population seems down, I now have seedlings and new plants all over - and I remember when I first got the chickens and the little hens raided my garden, first eating all the tomatoes, then eating all the plants:

The two baby fantail pigeons are amazingly healthy and smart. They jump down from their nest to join the flock and explore, then jump back up and peep for their parents to come feed them:

Their nest is on a ledge, just above the food barrel and someone else's nest on the floor. The babies frequently jump down and get friendly with the bird on the floor nest. I expected a defensive reaction from the adult, but so far everything has been friendly. The babies hang out with the nesting pair on the floor, then socialize with the flock, then hop back up on their ledge and call to be fed:

When I first moved here, there was a woven wire fence stretching halfway across the middle of the south field. It was dilapidated and of no good use, so I began removing a couple of sections each summer. This year there were only two left, but I hadn't had the energy to dismantle them. Then one day I was cleaning out the barn and saw there were only two sections of fence, so I drove the tractor over there:


Instead of the slow and careful dismantling I did previously, this time I used the tractor bucket to pull the fence and posts up out of the ground:

I got them all firmly held in place on the bucket and drove them out the gate and around by my work area:


I carefully removed the fence from the posts, then folded up the wire into two sections, put them in empty feed bags and dropped them in the trash bins. Now that awful, useless and potentially hazardous section of fence is gone forever:

The little garden I made where I'd removed most a giant stump was looking hopeless, but it improved a lot as the Yarrow and Chives began to grow. There appears to be some Globe Thistle coming along, and the Heliopsis, Delphinium and Veronica I bought at end-of-season sales are helping make my little garden look like it might work:

The stretch of Sunflowers is growing so fast that any photo I take is obsolete in a couple of days. Many of the plants along the fence are already over four feet tall. There are much smaller seedlings in the front of the strip, but they get the most sun and are therefore still likely to do well as the summer progresses:

And then one day, the first Daylily bloomed. I couldn't remember the variety name, so I looked up my last year's order. It is called "Chicago Arnie's Choice" and it appears as if there will be a lot of them. By the way, I've been calling them Day Lilies (two words), but it appears as if the correct name is Daylily (one word). I will try to remember to use the right word in the future:

What is this mess, you may ask. It's the northeast corner of the barn, where the traffic cones I used to use when the cattle crossed the road are nestled in giant Burdock and Ragweed. It's a good thing I don't have allergies: