It has been a bit of a crazy summer. Overall we have had a way too dry summer and both my hens are crowing. Most of the garden died early on because of the lack of rain.
Due to illness we have been down to only two chickens. My husband thinks they are bored and in need of more chickens to balance things out again.
My original hen Buster started crowing years ago and she goes through stages of crowing and then she will go for a bit without doing it. It seems as if she is crowing for a longer period of time this year. We are ready for her to stop.
We live in a regular neighborhood and we always worry about the noise of our little Buster. We actually will bring her inside so she is less likely to annoy the neighbors.
Thankfully, she has become easy to catch over the years. One day I heard some other crowing, but thought that it was maybe the television.
But then I soon figured out that it wasn’t the television, but instead it was my other hen Nailie. I can’t believe that I now have two crowing hens.
I am convinced that our little Nailie wants to be just like Buster and so that is why she started to crow. She even molts the same way as Buster where the main thing that is noticed is the loss of the tail feathers. They usually look okay otherwise.
The bad thing about Nailie crowing is that we can never catch her. Fortunately, she does not crow quite as loud. Her crow is even one note shorter than Buster’s. I feel like I have dysfunctional chickens.
We had such high hopes for the garden this year. I like having plenty of squash and zucchini to make veggie pasta, but we think it was grub worms that killed them early on in the season.
We usually have an abundance of tomatoes to make a spaghetti sauce, but the drought has been bad. My husband did not anticipate such a dry summer so he did not use as much mulch as he should have.
I was really looking forward to some good corn and we usually have an abundance of beans. I like going for a spell without buying vegetables from the store. I think the fact that we did not have as much abundance from the garden has been a factor in me not eating as healthy this summer.
The lack of rain has been frustrating. We had a spell of extreme heat and we were just longing for a bit of rain. We usually use rain water that we collect in our rain catcher to fill up the pond, but we were not able to do that most of the summer.
When we finally were able to get several inches of rain, it was so refreshing. The below normal temperatures were pretty great as well.
I am looking forward to fall and a fall/winter garden. I am hoping we get some Jerusalem artichoke and radish in the garden.
I am not sure what else we will plant. Hopefully I will eat better in the fall and winter than I did over the summer.
Photo property of the Faithful Homesteader.
