If I could only get to those birds!

Dan calls Buddy 'the BEST cat EVER!'. He is very cute, but sometimes his 'bossiness' is a bit much. "King Biscuit" we call him. This morning though, was one of his cuter days.

Over the weekend, Dan installed a new storm/screen door on the back of the house so we can have a cross-breeze blowing through the house. However, Buddy thinks the door was installed so he can see the chickens even better (as this is now the best vantage point from inside the house).

This morning I went out to take some pics for the blog and when I turned around, Buddy was tirelessly trying to get out to the chickens (aka 'his girlfriends'). He doesn't seem to understand why he can see them and now even hear them(thanks to the screen), but not get to them! Buddy is all the entertainment a person needs.

Grow, Garden, Grow!

Some of our veggies are doing great! Others, not so much. Cukes and tomatoes are growing like crazy, but green beans are just kind of sitting there not doing much of anything. Lettuce is doing pretty well, but aren't getting as big as I thought they would. And even with all our poor corn has been through, it still seems to be healthy and is getting tiny little cobs on it.

Tomato Killers!

Hornworms are EVIL! We never see them on the ground, nor on anything except our tomatoes! Where do they come from? Straight from hell, that's where! One evening we pulled 15 of the fat suckers off our plants. The next morning 2 more. Tonight we pulled 2 more off. Annoying little buggers!

Just a thought...

Ok, so we've learned a lot since Spring arrived. Who knew sticking some plants in the ground could be so labor intensive and scientific? I'd like to know why weeds grow with no assistance at all.... yet flowers and veggies that you give tender loving care are so resistant to grow?!?

Rain & Corn - not necessarily a good combination!

One thing about summer in the Midwest- weather moves in fast and furiously. A huge rainstorm moves in early afternoon. Well, not much to do outside now. We decide to head to town to do some shopping.

Upon arrival home, our once proud, and vertical, corn is now horizontal. You've got to be kidding me! We chuck our cold grocery store goods in the fridge and head out to try and salvage our 9 rows of corn. First we carefully straighten it up and pack soil around it. It's mostly vertical now. It's late and we need to make dinner. After dinner we head back out to 'hill' the corn. This seems to help give it extra support. I'm curious to see how it holds up during the next rainstorm.

But what did we learn? Planting corn 1 1/2 inches deep is not enough to build a strong root system. Next year, we will plant deeper. Oh also, as a reminder for next year... plant rows 4 feet apart so we can get the tiller in between the rows. Good tip!

What does every farm need? That's right... a big honkin' tractor! In our case, a big honkin' tractor with a loader. Trouble is, tractors are expensive, and even more so with a loader. What we needed was a fixer-upper. And what better place to find a fixer-upper than eBay?!
Our tractor criteria was pretty simple: it must have a 3-point hitch, a loader, be within 100 miles of home, and be under $2,000 dollars. The search began.
4 months later (!) my eye caught a listing for the tractor in the photo above. It was the first one I'd seen that met all of our criteria. So I watched and waited. The starting bid was $1800, and I figured that it would soon ne out of our price range. A day passed with no bids. Another day passed with no bids. And another, and another. Finally the final day arrived, and I checked the listing every hour to see how high the bidding would go. Hour after hour, and still no bids. So, I figured that I was not the only sniper waiting for the last moments. Note: A sniper in eBay world is someone who waits until the last possible moment to place a bid, knowing that other bidders won't have time to react and re-bid. Sneaky? Maybe, but effective. Anyway, at last, with 60 seconds left and no other bidders, I placed my bid for $1801. By the time I clicked "Submit Bid" there was only 30 seconds left, not enough time to bid higher if another sniper bid $1802. On the edge of my seat I refreshed the screen every two seconds, fully expecting to be out bid. With the last refresh I saw the wondrous message "Congratulations, you have won this item!". Huzzah!! We had a tractor. Now we just had to get it home, and that is a story for another post.

Garden's Growing!

The garden is doing quite well! We're very happy that we aren't having too much of an insect or animal problem - which is really exciting considering we are growing completely organically - no nasty pesticides!