Failure & Things Done

Well, the eggs didn’t hatch yesterday as they should have, nor today as they might have. Even worse, I don’t know what I messed up so I don’t know what to change for the next batch of eggs. The only thing I can think of is they might have dried out a little once. Would that have been enough to kill them all? I don’t know. But we will save up another 40 eggs and put them in and try again. We really need to re-stock our flock and I like breeding them ourselves. We need about four successful hatchings. If we had a place to raise them (other than the basement, and we might before too long because we do have a plan drawn out), I would order some production eggers to add their genes to our flock. We’ve never had any before. We’ve had production meat birds -- never again. They are crazy, and sicko birds and really, I don’t want that energy in me.

Despite this failure, we got a lot done on this the first day we didn’t have to go to the doctor about daughter’s knee (it is healing well). I’ve got produce deliveries to make tomorrow, so we picked to order this evening. Tonight it will be weighed and packed in bags and chilled, and early tomorrow delivered direct. Early this morning we planted acorn squash plants and long-podded greasy bean seed in the white corn patch. The corn there is now about two feet tall. Planted about two-thirds of it I guess. This is much easier to do together because it is hard to keep up with where you are planting since it is in hills and not rows or even beds -- if we planted along together, I could plant the bean seeds and he could plant the squash and then we can tell where we’ve planted because there is be a squash plant.

We also checked on the garden I planted for a neighbor and caged the tomatoes. The potatoes haven’t come up as we’d expect so we’ll probably replant some of those. Her sweet corn is coming nicely, and about time to plant the second block of it. The beans have all broken ground.

I then came back up to the house and got ice cream and butter and bread all made -- with the help of the kids. And some dishes and some laundry. The usual things. The things that are always, without fail always, there to do.

When I went back down, husband had gone to where I have had some of the wasabi plants sitting out in their pots (to make sure the place is conducive for their well-being) and he had constructed a “wasabarium” -- a place in the seep flow of a runoff with a creek rock boarder filled with manure -- for me to plant my wasabis in. It was a total thrill for me to get to plant those out. I’m usually much more of the Kali force than say the Ceres force. So we next got out the machine a neighbor has loaned us for bush hogging around and mowed an area down front which hadn’t been mown at all this year. We just reclaimed it year before last I believe it was -- it had started to grow up in trees. I also mowed some in the front orchard.

Which, the garden is magnificent, but it gets to be this hot June weather and it always turns into something of a jungle. This year the difference is much more of it is jungled from plants we are growing on purpose than those that just happen to find themselves there. We cut our first cabbage today. We’ve got enough snap peas to sell some now. We’re steady getting strawberries. The bush cherries are ripe. So are about half the tree cherries. Some of the plums are beginning to turn. Potatoes are blooming, onions are bulbing. I’ve got to do more photos.

But the most unusual thing of the day was the fawn. White spotted Bambi-esque. Mowing, I ran over it. I heard this squeak even over the engine noise and stopped, saw fur under my front tire, thought “oh, must be a dead rabbit” and since I didn’t want to mow it, I backed up. When I did that, this fawn got up and ran off! Wow. I am terribly privileged to have seen that and NOT mowed it. May we eat him in a couple of years though. Truth be told, one reason we wanted to mow was to keep the deer from hanging out that close to the garden.

I am really glad to have the lasagna I made and froze a little while ago to fix for a nice but no effort supper tonight.