Just a Walk Around the Yard (with commentary)

This sunflower is enormous!  I am 5'10", and it now towers over me.  It's an Evening Sun variety and is loaded with what should soon open up into blooms the color of a sunset.  Pics to come soon.

Okay.  I know I talked big about pulling out the broccoli plant, but in the end, I just couldn't kill it.  I transplanted it to a pot on the porch.  This way, it still gets to live but isn't casting too much shade on the surrounding veggies. It still hasn't produced any flowerets, but we'll continue to keep an eye on it.

The fence is coming along nicely.  If the weather cooperates, we should be able to turn the goats out onto fresh grass within the week.

The little pickling cucumber vines are covered with blooms, and I've even cut a few of the earliest cukes over the past couple of days.

The only problem with that is that I've seeded the organic dill several times and nothing has come up.  I really don't want to have to buy bunches of dill from the grocery store come pickling time, so I bought some small dill plants to put in.  Hopefully, they'll have time to get a bit bigger before I'm ready to pickle.

Zucchini has been going crazy lately.  While my back was turned, this one got a bit too big to be tasty.  The chickens didn't seem to notice, though.

While I was feeding the zucchini to the chickens, these guys were sticking their heads out of the pen and eating my shorts (literally).  We like to move the chicken tractor right around the edge of of the goat pen as bug control.  When the goats first came to us, we noticed a few ticks, but since the chickens have been circling the pen on a regular basis, we haven't seen anymore. 

Our soil around here gets so compacted that I had never dared attempt to grow roots in the ground.  Now that we're using our own soil mix in raised beds, I am able to try out roots.  I have, however, no experience with growing them.  Luckily, the carrots, beets, and radishes help me out by peeping their heads out of the ground to let me know they're ready to be harvested.

Our kale sure is happy.  We only planted two squares with it, so I thought we'd eat our way through it pretty quickly.  Turns out, everytime I harvest it, more comes back in its place.

Some pickings from today.