Why did the chicken cross the road? To hide her eggs from the farmers. Now that we have ended their tomato-eating fun by fencing in the garden, the chickens have retaliated by lollygagging around in the road trying to get hit by cars. Egg production has dropped sharply. Or rather, the number of eggs we can find has dropped sharply. They have been spending a suspicious amount of time in the bushes across the street.
Thursday the three week old Cornish Cross chickens moved from the brooder out 
onto pasture. There they will enjoy green grass, insects and sunshine for the remaining four weeks of their life. Unlike our chicken rearing experience of spring, which involved elaborate emergency interventions and 24-hour surveillance, this round has been pleasantly uneventful. We lost one chick when it was a couple days old to unknown causes, but it is normal to lose one or two. Rolo broke into the brooder and took two chicks out to “play”. That dog had better start killing some rabbits.
A slow, gentle rain Sunday evening and all day Monday gave the whole farm a good watering and broke up my 15-hour disking chore. Our fall garden is brimming with lush green growth, which is good because the plants are under assault from summer pests looking for new hosts and a return of the cool season pests of spring.
In my eyes, the most beautiful thing on the farm right now is the 5,000 square feet of bare soil where I made the squash disappear. Good riddance! All that remains of the cucurbits is one row of cucumbers. A few days after disking in the squash, I pulled the row cover off the cucumber. It had not excluded the spotted cucumber beetles as I hoped it would but it did exclude the ladybugs. I know because the plants are coated with aphids and whiteflies. Oops. Since the vines are already blooming there isn’t much I can do other than hope the ladybugs arrive in force. Maybe there will be cucumbers in your box next week. Then again, maybe not.
