If you’re like most people (myself included), you don’t make a lot of fried foods at home. Not only can it be a less-than-healthy food, with all the calories and fat, but it’s time-consuming and messy. That’s too bad because when it’s done well, fried food can be a tasty treat.
The other night, the hubs decided he wanted home-cooked french fries. Not the frozen ones you bake in the oven, but the made-from-scratch kind you deep-fry. So he bought some potatoes and oil and got to fryin’. This was the result: Read the rest of this entry »
20 Jul, 2010
Posted by: Trish Smith, admin In: Garden
It’s now mid-summer, and we’re at the height of the garden season. This means the tomatoes are starting to ripen, the corn is almost ready to pick, and the chickens are eating your pumpkins.
Yes, you heard me right – the chickens are eating your pumpkins. See, at our house, we have chickens. We got them in the springtime (which is when one usually gets chickens), and they’re now fully-grown. Raising them has been a challenge – we’ve had to deal with the poop, with figuring out where they’re going to sleep, with getting their food right – many of the same challenges we face as parents, actually )and thie chickens actually listen better than my six-year old does).
But what about the pumpkins? Well, yesterday evening, as I was weeding my garden, I noticed some of the chickens meandering through the rows. This is normal; the garden isn’t fenced in, and neither are the chickens, so they pretty much roam wherever they like. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw them pecking at something, and assumed it was a bug or a leaf. Lo and behold, when I turned to get a better look, it was a green (unripe) pumpkin they were attacking! I shooed them away, but it was too late – the damage had been done.
Fortunately, we have more pumpkins, but it wouldn’t take much for them to decimate the crop. So I have a dilemma: How do I protect my pumpkins from the greedy little creatures? Fencing in the garden isn’t as option – it’s about 30′x40′, so buying enough chicken wire to surround the entire thing would probably bankrupt us. It’s not even really an option to just fence the pumpkins in, as they’ve spread quite a bit and cover a lot of the garden by now. I considered putting brown bags over the small pumpkins, and removing them when they get bigger, a la apple growers, but I’m not sure if that would work.
Any suggestions? Much more of this and I’m afraid we’re not going to have a single pumpkin for Halloween! And I don’t think I’m ready to tell the kid that he has no pumpkins…
It’s July 13, which means (in the northeast) hot muggy days, or hot dry days, or hot rainy days. Notice the trend?
Yeah. Hot.
Well, there are ways to keep from broiling like a chicken this summer, and we’re going to share them with you. Read the rest of this entry »
