homestead

After a great deal of fretting and coddling through the winter and spring, all of our 15 tomatoes varieties are ripening now. Sometime in September we’ll have a tasting report. Meanwhile, here are their names.

There has been plenty going on around here, chicken-wise and not, but today we say goodbye to Amanda. She was an easter-egger and at six years old, the most senior chicken we’ve had. She was sweet, easily picked up, happy to sit on a lap and always demanding “rooster attention”. This spring we’ve been surprised by how many eggs she’s laid (a lot). Amanda was the top of the pecking order, a firm and wise leader. The girls come into the yard from the run every afternoon and, shortly after stretching her legs a bit, she went back in the henhouse where she seems to have passed peacefully.

This lemon hadn’t been hanging on the tree for very long and yet the seeds inside decided it was time to sprout.