Early to Bed, Early to Rise

      I had this strange illusion that I should sleep in this morning.  I’m not quite sure what I was thinking this morning (or any other morning) this fantasy sneaks into my head.  There’s always something to do around here, especially when it’s not quite too hot and finally done raining.  (As we only really had two days of non-rainy weather in the last week, I’m complaining about this.  For those of you who are dealing with a drought, I wish you rain.)  So, instead of trying for a few more hours of sleep, I pulled myself out of bed at 7 o’clock to start the day off right, following Benjamin Franklin’s advice: “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man, healthy, wealthy and wise.” 

      Each morning I am greeted at the door by eager kitties.  This morning there was only seven of the eight digging into the chow line.  (Whitey was probably off hunting somewhere.)  I’m going to tell you now that we spoil our farm cats.  They not only get dry food, but wet food twice a day, and if they are really good or bring back a pest and eat it all, the occasional treat (i.e. expensive cat food).  Yes, we call them farm cats, but they are treated more like outdoor housecats.

      By the time I attempt to call all the kitties in to feed, and bypass them through another door, its already warming up.  Now, I’m not one for summer weather, (fall followed by spring are my favorite times of the year) but the neglected raspberry patch is calling.  For the last few days, we’ve been on a family camping trip, so everything is running a little behind. 

      That includes the harvesting of the black raspberries that are overflowing on their bushes. With mixed berry jam already behind me with last year’s crop, I’m considering some more black raspberry jam (now that we’re running low), black raspberry pie filling (because a good purple pie in December is always a treat), and if I have enough… raspberry lemonade concentrate (a new experiment I’d like to try).  We’re a little less than two pounds into the harvest though, so we’ll have to see just what we’ll be doing will all those berries! 

      Harvesting the peas was on the schedule next.  What I can tell you is that second year pea seeds do not germinate well.  We tried to keep half of the pea seeds of Burpee’s “Easy Peasy” we bought last spring and plant them this spring, we might have had three dozen of the 450 peas planted come up.  The plants do fabulous with more than 10 pods per plant and pods stacked with 10+ peas each, but don’t waste your money by trying to save money on bulk seeds and only buy what you’ll plant in one season.  We’re presently looking for a different variety for the fall pea crop as no one near us carries large amount of Burpee’s seeds and last year’s 450 pea seeds, kept us in peas all year long! 

      The hulls of the peas will go to the happy chicks this evening, who were eagerly snacking on broccoli stem for the morning feeding.  At six weeks old, they’ve been looking a lot more like chickens then chicks, but with the rainy spell we’ve been having, they’re still stuck in their brooder until we do the final touches on their new coop and build their run.  One of the three roosters was extra curious as to what I was up to with my camera, and tried to peck my lens (although the camera was outside of the brooder)!  Out of the three roos, he certainly has the nicest of the combs thus far, and isn’t usually the escape artist from the brooder (while the others certainly are). 

      Something we discovered the hard way: By week 6, the food side of the brooder worked a lot better with straw then shredded paper as they kept insisting on tipping their waterer and flipping their fresh produce pan.  The paper matted down something gross with all these spills, but the straw works beautifully, and they enjoyed exploring the new material for a few hours the day I put it in. 

      Since we don’t make our own straw, we have to rely on others for it, and we find that straw can be quite costly, especially for our garden and the chickens.  Thankfully, last year and this year, our landlord has allowed us to rake out the leftover straw that fell through stacks of bales in the barn and use it for the berry bushes, garden and now chickens.  We get free straw (minus the backbreaking labor) and he ends up with a clean barn ready for new bales.  So, if you excuse me, that’s my late morning’s work in the shade inside the old Pennsylvania Barn.