We have had quite a productive summer in the gardens this year, despite the cloudy, fungus-loving weather conditions. Many cucumbers and different varieties of tomatoes, with Red Brandy Wine being our favourite. The boys grew their own tomatoes quite successfully this year (Golden Sunrise), learning to pinch off the suckers, trellis their plants, harvest regularly, weed, and spot for fungus. We've been eating watermelons weekly for a month now, and they are still coming. The boys have a huge pumpkin to carve for halloween, sadly they will have to share as a rat got to the other one before we harvested it. We have lots of crown prince pumpkins to make into soup, and butternut squash to see us through to Christmas. Many potatoes are being stored in our fire place (we think we might grow a little less next year). We've also had the luxury of homegrown salad, pesto, and other veggies - dwarf French green beans have become a sure favourite. The Guinea Fowl coop became a thing, fina
This year, we are trying to establish a Guinea Fowl flock in Zone 2. The area is ideal for them because it is further into our farm (less chance of a dog attack), and there are less cliff edges - so they are much less likely to accidentally fly down the ravine, only to get stuck and spend a very noisy few days trying to return to their flock. There will also be an abundance of food for them (earwigs, caterpillars, slugs, weed seeds), although we may never be able to grow corn in the area as that is warned to be a favourite of Guinea Fowl. Our current set of 16 keets are over 3 weeks old. We have roughly half lavender and half brown/grey, with one that is a mix with lavender wing tips. The brown/grey genetics seem to be slightly weaker in the first week of hatching. One had splayed legs that had to be fixed, and two others had crooked feet that also needed to be isolated and corrected. All have survived and are doing well, even the weakest one which is still half the size of its siblin