County Fair Weekend

We entered a few of the vegetables and some of our herbs in the county fair this week.  We'll be bringing a few ribbons home tomorrow.

The herbs we entered, rosemary, oregano, and thyme, did very well.

More ribbons.

We were excited about our leeks and fennel, and so were the judges.  We were awarded first and third with a judges choice ribbon to boot.

 We entered photos and canned goods as well as breads and a cake.  We love the fair.  Even our oldest put together a lego hero to enter.

Meanwhile...

In the garden, we planted some seeds in the last few days.  Tomatoes, Luffa vines, winter squash, some summer squash to hopefully produce some male flowers, more mesclun mix, the next batch of carrots and beets, melons and watermelons.

All the lovely female flowers, nary a male in sight.

Layering the potatoes.

Spinach and Black Seeded Simpson.  We're trying to protect the eggplant seeds
against the pill bugs with the cups, but they keep the soil dry and slow the germination.

Red strawberries rarely last in our yard.

Sunflowers by the wall.

Early Girl tomatoes.

What are you looking at?

Can I eat that?

Baby bunny, not so "baby" anymore.

Which way did he go?

Starting the melons in the pots.

Peas.

Award winning Oregano. 

Beans in the new planter.

The grapes have begun!

Bunny Time

Did you bring food?

I don't know why she lays with her head under the water.  And yes,
there are two noses between Mr Thirsty and Bunny Momma.

They come to the door to check me out more often now.  I'm sure they just
want to know if I've brought Bunny Momma a treat.

Fun in the Sun

It was a beautiful weekend in Southern Nevada.  We did some weeding, banded some of the romaine to help it find it's shape, cursed whatever is eating the beans as they emerge from the ground, changed the straw in the chicken coop, and cuddled our future dinner.  It's hard (for me anyway) not to grab a bunny every time I'm outside.

We trimmed one of our trees, an African Sumac that is one of our wedding trees.  We saw some that were really trimmed nicely and realized that we could keep our tree looking beautiful without looking like a overgrown mop.  We did a big trim a while back, but didn't want to send it into shock so we only went so far at the time.  We did a little clean up on it today and it looks great.  And even better, we brought the chipper back from the property that last time we were there, so we'll be able to make chips to spread over our paths, or use as mulch by the fruit trees.

We finally got our potato seeds in the mail on Friday, and they went into the ground yesterday.  We got a variety, just to see what might work best here.  We have a white boiling potato, a fingerling, a russet-type, one that has a red skin and white inside, and another that is red inside and out.  We also had some that grew last year in the garden that we saved and planted since they started sprouting.  I hope they do well.

Some of the romaine is forming nice heads on it's own.  I tend to rip off the
outer floppy leaves to give to the chickens and rabbits.

One of the beans that the evil bean sprout eater didn't get to last night.
We're going to head out there tonight after it gets dark to see if we
can figure out for sure what it is so we can keep them away.

Peas, beets, carrots and leeks.

I've noticed this on the radishes before, and I think it's weird.
It's like the ends of the leaves are leaking.

Cauliflower

We found a celery hiding in the fennel.

Peas are grabbing the trellis, now we wait for the blooms.

They were bunched up in the nesting box for so long,
 they seem to be unable to sleep unless they're piled up.

We found two large trays a couple of weeks ago.  The trash guys pick up bulk trash every couple of weeks, and a neighbor down the road had created quite a pile.  As I would drive by, I look over to see if anything was salvageable and I saw two large trays.  Maybe at one time they were trays like you'd see bread sitting on when they refill grocery store shelves?  I'm not sure, but a few days before I noticed them, I had seen something on a blog about using the flats you get at the nursery that hold the smaller pots to grow a section of clover, grasses, and legumes to feed her chickens.  I thought it was a great idea.  It's hard to grow anything in their area, and using the flats lets you grow greens for them in a different area, then bring it over to them when it's big enough to fill them up.  And now I have two large flats that the hubby started for me with buckwheat seed.

Soon to be chicken food

The Bunnies Are Loose!

So, we waited until the baby bunnies eyes were open before picking them up.  It was agony.  Today, we noticed that one had climbed out of the nesting box.  It made us think this might be a good time to clean out the box, so we pulled them out and did some rearranging.  It turned out that Bunny-girl had actually had nine babies.  Eek.

Anyway, eight little bunnies were very confused when we put them back.  We had moved the box away from the back of the cage a little, thinking that we wanted them to have room back there if they got over the back wall of the box.

We went to check on them a little later and found them huddled together.  Out of the box.

Guess they liked the corner.

Even the look in Bunny-girl's eyes says, "Why are they out here???"

We stuck them back in the box and stuffed some alfalfa behind the box and shoved it back tight.  Now we don't have to worry about them getting stuck in the corner.

And as a funny side note...  a few weekends ago we were at a birthday party that had a petting zoo and were talking to the woman walking with the pony.  Her rabbits didn't have any babies right there around the end of January.  That's the time when they'd grow to be about the right size for her parties around Easter.  Then she asked if she could lease ours.  That's right, she asked to "lease" our baby bunnies.  Well, heck, if they could pay for some of their food and all they have to do is get chased around by some little kids for a few hours... why not?  We'll see if she calls next month.  The only downside is we should handle them a little more so they'll be a little used to people.  But then we may get too attached to future dinner.  I need to look up some recipes for rabbit, because right now the only name I've got is Stewie.

New Additions

We put a lot of seeds in the ground this last week.

Out in front we planted a few potatoes we had saved from the last harvest (the big order should be on it's way), some more black beauty zucchini and burpee picklers.  We also filled in the empty spaces in the front planter with more spinach and black seeded simpson lettuce.

In the back we planted straight neck summer squash, black beauty zucchini, a lettuce mix, Russian kale, early contender beans, slenderette bush beans, scarlet nantes carrots, catskill brussels sprouts, kohl rabi and champion radishes.

The other thing out in the back that is new are some new bunnies.  For the last week we had noticed our female bunny showing some nesting behavior.  She's been ripping out her fur and using the straw to fill in her nesting box, so we've been watching a little closer.  Yesterday morning, the Hubby headed out to give the chickens their yogurty oats and came back with the report of squeaking babies.  We didn't say anything to the kids due to the quick end of the first litter.  She had given birth once before and the poor little things didn't last the night.  I don't think any of us were really prepared for that one.

So the two of us kept peeking in yesterday and this morning I stuck my head (and camera) in her cage to check to see if they were all squirming around.  I'm happy to report that they are.

Snuggled up happily in their mother's fur.