If I hurry, I can still get my post done before the end of Monday. We just returned from a fabulous weekend trip, spending Saturday night with friends in Santa Clarita, and Sunday night at the Hyatt Regency in Indian Wells (Palm Springs area) with our son , daughter-in-law, and four young grandchildren. Yesterday and today were spent by the pool in decadent splendor, watching the kids splash and swim in the pool while I drank mimosas brought by the cabana boy. Sheer luxury.
We came home to find that our Plymouth Rock hen, Miss Hillary, has definitely gone broody on us. She was sitting on a clutch of eggs when we left. I removed the eggs, but she was still sitting on newly laid ones when we got back. Fortunately, she is a good-tempered hen and doesn’t mind when I gather eggs from under her.
I am now faced with a dilemma. Do I try to “cure” her of being broody by isolating her away from her nest box or dunking her in cool water (two suggested cures), or do I try to trick her into thinking that she has hatched chicks by letting her set on a couple of dummy eggs for 21 days and then putting a couple of newly hatched chicks under her?
I’m really not set up for taking care of baby chicks because we don’t have a brooding lamp, but Miss Hillary may be able to do that job for me. We have no rooster, so her eggs aren’t fertile, but our local feed store sells day old chicks. I’m seriously thinking of trying to use Miss Hillary as a surrogate mom, which would fulfill her maternal instincts and give me a couple of new hens for next year when my current flock of three is older.They’ll be three and four years old next summer, and some new hens would keep us in eggs.
Hey, you folks out there with chickens, what do you think? How long will my current hens lay eggs? What do I need to know to be able to allow Miss Hillary to attempt to raise some chicks? I know our granddaughters would love seeing baby chicks and watching them grow up. So would I!
Once again, I ate all of my harvests before taking any photos, so you’re stuck with looking at pictures of what is growing in the yard.
This is the view to the west from our deck in back. How small is our yard? Well, except for the nectarine tree at the lower left, these trees are on the OTHER side of our neighbor’s yard.
This is the sitting area on our deck, where I like to contemplate my garden with a glass of wine late in the day.
This row of snow peas is by the deck, and will soon block my view of the garden from the deck.
These are the first snow peas from the second planting of peas on this fence so far this year. When this second planting of peas is done, I’ll plant pole beans here.
So far, only two Granny Smith apples have set fruit despite the fact that the tree had a record number of blossoms on it. This may look like a big apple, but it is only the size of the end of my thumb at this point.
Of all of the flowers on all of the fruit trees in my yard, this one excites me the most. It is the first and ONLY flower ever on my 20th Century Asian Pear tree since I planted it four years ago. I don’t know if this one flower will be self fertile or if it needed a pollinator. My Shenseiki Asian Pear also had one and only one flower this year, but an insect chewed on it before it opened, so I have no hope of it producing a pear or being able to pollinate this flower. I should know in a couple of weeks whether or not this flower got fertilized.
Maybe I’ll remember to take photos of my harvests next week. I am expecting my first yellow summer squash in next week’s harvest, plus a prodigious amount of bok choy. Meanwhile, here is the harvest ending Sunday, May 26, 2012.
FRUITS
3 oz Lemon, Eureka
10 oz Limes
2 oz Strawberries
Subtotal 15 oz
VEGETABLES
11 oz. Artichokes
13 oz Beets, Chioggia
6 oz Bok Choy
1 oz Green Onion
Subtotal 1 lb 15 oz (31 oz) Vegetables
TOTAL 2 lbs 14 oz Produce plus 12 eggs
If you had a harvest, or to see what others are harvesting, visit Daphne’s Dandelions.
