Veggie Garden & Chicken Herding

I feel we are little late on the garden this year, but we will see.  Currently we have the following planted from seed:
- Sunflowers
- Mammoth Mangel Beets (you may remember these from last year)
- Turnips
- Zucchini
- Sweet Meat squash
- Green Beans
- Sweet Peas (just starting to produce)
- Slicing Cucumbers
- Pickling Cucumbers
- Romaine Lettuce
- Butterball Lettuce

Currently up and growing are some green onions in the raised box at the bottom of the picture and a little over a row of Yukon Gold and some purple potatoes.

In the box to the right against our garden shed is Mia's Flower garden.

We should have started our tomatoes and sweet bell peppers a month ago, so they are still in our house by the window sill.

Much to our surprise earlier this year we found some Hood Strawberry plants that the deer had eaten down to the ground.  They are now thriving in pots on our deck and we are trying to place small pots under the runners to get them to produce more little plants.  At some point it would be great to get them back in the garden.

Here is Ethan watering them this morning.

We still need to get the Pie pumpkins, acorn and butternut squash and sweet corn planted.  We got some work done on the watering system, which is a mixture of soaker hoses and drip irrigation.  Getting it set up is very time consuming as the layout changes each year, but I am not big on just a broadcast sprinkler as I don't want to water paths etc, just to have weeds grow in them.  We are using more straw as mulch this year, but unfortunately after the kids got some laid out in paths the chickens got in and scratched around in it making a mess of the paths, we have since blocked their entrance portal.   

Chicken Herding & Sleeping Quarters

Now that Lily is more stable on our uneven ground she has taken to helping the kids put the chickens away  in the evening.  We typically put our arms out and try and herd them towards the chicken house.  Here is Lily trying her hand at it.

She did pretty good but I had to tell her if one got past her to go back and get that one.

The youngsters, live on the right side of our coop as you enter the door.  In the picture below you can see the nursery at the bottom left corner, and then we moved them into the pen on the right.  This use to house our ducks, and for ducks you just needed a short wall, hence it was only 3' high.  I added some chicken wire across to make it taller, but now that the chicks are getting larger they just fly over in the evenings when they are looking for a nesting spot.  Or as you can see, about 5 of them just nest in the bend of the chicken wire like it is a hammock.  

Even higher up, just below the ceiling these two were roosting.

At some point we need to put them together, and I don't think there will be too many issues since they have been able to see each other and get acquainted for so long.  I am just leery about letting the younger birds free range as they are smaller still, and could possibly get picked off by a hawk.