Quiet Season?

The last five months are a blur of busy, busy and more busy.  In short, the days were long and the happenings were many. Our chickens started laying eggs in late July, and quickly earned a great deal respect, as they became the pets with  a payback. We left all our animals in the care of some fabulous pet and garden sitters for a trip to Colorado for a good friend's wedding. We enjoyed visits from friends and family, and had so much fun showing them our new corner of the world. We watched the days get shorter, and the to do list get longer with the addition of Miss Madeline, our latest (and last for hopefully a good long while) pet.

Miss Madeline, aka Miss Kitten, or, usually, Maddie is a grey tabby cat who joined our family as a complement to the chickens.  Her purpose (other than entertaining us with her kitten antics, and keeping Stella Dog company while we're away during the day) is to keep the rodents, attracted by the constant buffet of chicken food that they scatter around the run of their coop, at bay. We've been thus far successful at keeping things clean enough to ward off any hungry rodents, but have noticed some tunneling in the run lately, and Maddie will hopefully be solving that once she's old enough to have free range of the yard.  She's proving herself to be quite the hunter already, with spiders being promptly caught, played with momentarily and then devoured, and her poor stuffed bird toy has died a thousand times over by now.

We are slightly worried that she'll continue to view Stella Dog as the best recipient of all things hunted--currently bringing Stella her catch doesn't arouse much interest from her, more of a "what do you want me to do with this stuffed bird toy?" look, but I have a feeling a dead mouse might elicit more curiosity and potentially be viewed as an excellent snack. Things to look forward to.

The first year of our garden was productive, despite a colder and rainier than usual summer. Our tomato plants, of which there were about ten, yielded enough tomatoes for us to get sick of tomato sauce and can enough for most of the winter.  We won't make it through the spring or early summer on our supply, but I'm neither interested in canning that many hours, nor tending more than a dozen or so tomato plants. Because we didn't have the long spells of hot, dry days the tomatoes didn't start ripening until mid-September, for the most part, a full six weeks later than last year. On the flip side, we still have tomatoes turning red on our counter right now.

We planted enough basil to satisfy our basil-loving household--I think we had five basil plants in all. Two japanese eggplants produced enough little eggplants for a couple of dishes--the weather slowed these guys down a lot.  Our green beans, or future dilly beans, as the case may be, were very productive! And the kale and chard, well, they weren't the super-producers our last year's crop was, and the chickens managed to eat every leaf that did grow, so we need to reassess the deep greens for next year.  The salad greens were amazing this year--after failing to show up for the party last year. The strawberries were being eaten by everything but us this year, and we were underwhelmed by berries for our breakfasts and desserts. Potatoes were a garden favorite again. Maybe because it's like a treasure hunt when you dig them up, or maybe because they multiply to greatly, but I love garden potatoes.

It's November now, and we've finished putting the garden to bed, with a liberal blanketing of leaves and some hen house manure mixed in they'll sleep until spring. I am experimenting with some cover crops--crimson clover and fava beans, in a few areas of the garden too.

Our attention has already turned inward, and we've resumed the front bedroom painting project we left off on the first sunny day last March.  A key element to living in this climate is learning to live the long days to the fullest, and sleep in the winter. Like the garden.