Blue Heron Farm Alpacas

fall has fell, now it's summer and hotter than . . . usual, as my father use to say. . .at the slightest provocation.

The animals are thriving (well, except for that one chicken who is getting pecked bald, and the mssing cat), and the garden is flourishing. I am currently inundated with squash (zucchini and yellow -- any takers? All the neighbors are well-supplied.) As the crop began overflowing the vegetable drawer in my refrigerator, I thought: zucchini bread! Only to discover that two loaves of (very tasty) zucchini bread only require one medium squash, shredded (and a great deal of sugar, which is probably why it's tasty). To use up my supply, I'd have to bake dozens of loaves! And my squash are rarely "medium." They're too small to pick one day and they're baseball bats the next.

But the glut of squash pales in comparison to the coming deluge of tomatoes. Last year I had trouble keeping up with the output of four tomato plants I bought from Burpee. This year, having ordered the same Burpee sampler, I was gifted with six additional heirloom varieties courtesy of a nearby organic farmer who hauled off, in return, several tons of manure for his asparagus beds and rice paddies. So I now have more than twice last year's number of plants, all thriving and setting fruit. I see lots of salsa in my future.

The broccoli and the lettuce are done, but I've got a pumpkin vine that looks like Jack's beanstalk (it's climbing the support on the far left), and the pepper plants are with peppers. I didn't plant eggplant or cucumbers this year, although -- actually because -- both did so very well last year. Eggplant caviar, eggplant soup, stuffed eggplant and, of course, eggplant parmesan lasted well into winter, and I finally succumbed and made pickles with all the cucumbers. (Which can also grow undetected into baseball bats, I discovered.) But I don't like pickles. So the mason jars sit, gathering dust, in a cupboard. I also planted cantaloupes, because the single most delicious thing I have ever tasted was the one (only one) cataloupe that ripened last year before the beetles got the plant.

Moving out to the barn, I have discovered that three hens -- including the one whose feathers are gone on her back between her wings -- reliably produce three eggs a day. Which is 21 eggs a week or, roughly, 84 eggs a month. Since several of the neighbors also have chickens, I have to go farther afield to unload the occasional dozen eggs on an unsuspecting Therapeutic Riding volunteer colleague or my cousin and her neighbors. They're very tasty eggs -- don't get me wrong -- but how many eggs can one person consume?

According to the internet, one way to stop chickens from pecking each other is to put vinegar in their water. Now why would that work? I am baffled. I did order a "no-peck" spray, which led me to discover that chickens don't like being sprayed with some mixture of all-natural (but presumably bad-tasting) herbs. We'll see if it works.

And the guineas -- ahh, the guineas. Low men (and women) on the fowl-intellect totem pole. The one who thought he was a chicken is now excluded from the coop -- vociferously and, if necessary, violently -- though he still hangs around like a poor relation. That one is the only survivor of the hatch I did last fall, and the other two are his parents. His mother recently made a nest in one of the horse stalls -- a stall frequently occupied by a horse, a goat or a large dog -- and started laying eggs. Since there was no way in hell that was going to work out, I moved the batch, which numbered seven, into the guinea stall which is secure. But she continued to lay in the horse stall until the dogs discovered the bounty and ate all her eggs (I think she had eight at that point -- I was about to steal more, but Dolly beat me to it.) She then apparently washed her hands of the whole reproductive business and hasn't laid any more eggs anywhere -- that I can detect. So I'm incubating my cache of seven. Maybe the third time is a charm and I'll have more than one survivor.

The geese are much more successful parents. This picture  was taken the beginning of May, just after the goslings hatched. The picture below was taken today -- my, how those children do grow!

Soon, Mom and Dad will teach them to fly, and they'll probably be off by the end of July.

Last week, while checking the perimeter fence, I noticed that that Faith and Dolly had, presumably, killed something and partially buried it in the far corner of the pasture. I couldn't tell what it was -- the neck of something, perhaps? -- and I wasn't missing any family members, but I sure wasn't going to go poking around the remains. So the next time Jeff came for a training session with Barry, I asked him to check it out. He did, and it turned out to be. . .a ferocious,  ancient dog bed with a faux-fur edge. Where do they find these things?

Actually, I am missing a family member -- Amelia Earhart, one of the barn cats, emulated her namesake a month or two ago and vanished without a trace. Historically, in the mornings she would always greet me on my way to the barn, and she and I would round the corner to find Cinderella sitting on the barnyard fence post, waiting for us. Then one day she wasn't there. Or the next day, or the next. But today at the vet's to have Otto's ear checked, I was introduced to an adorable long-haired white kitten someone had found in a storm drain. Perhaps her name is Snow White? Stay tuned!