They’re stupid. An example:

This is the current temperature tonight. 29 degrees. It’s cold.

These are two turkeys who decided roosting on the top of the house was a better plan than going into the coop tonight with the rest of their turkey family.

Need I say more?

…For Killing Harvesting!

But we really mean killing when we say harvesting. Or processing. Which are both nicer words for what amounts to murder. Whether you’re yanking onions from the ground, ripping pumpkins off the vine, or removing the head from a chicken, it all ends up dead and on the table. And I think that’s just fine. I’m all for growing/raising/harvesting/murdering…whatever you want to call it.

Our garden was quite the murder scene this year. And by that I mean it was a big FAIL! We started out strong. I made tons of notes on different veggies and different varieties. We bought seed trays and started them in plenty of time for things to sprout, grow, and harden.

But everything went to hell because life gets busy and weather doesn’t cooperate. So we ended up with a lot of dead plants. But dead in the not useful way.  I managed to kill over 300 hundred plants including a variety of herbs, tomatoes, peppers, squash, and sunflowers.

We’ll try again this winter but scale it back and time things better. It will also help if I actually get things planted in the garden in a timely manner. That was another factor in the Great Garden Disaster of 2018. The potatoes were the only things that went in at a somewhat acceptable time. Everything else was late (like middle of July late) or didn’t go in at all. So we got lots of nice looking plants and vines, but very little off of them.

I did find out that even though the started tomato and pepper plants looked like hell, they did beautifully out in the garden. The tomato risers that Tracy and Evan built also worked amazingly well, and I think smaller versions would work for other viney veggies.

Here are my sad beets. They weren’t completely sad in this picture, and I actually was hopeful we’d get at least a few small ones this year. But notice how some of the leaves are missing or half missing?

That’s because we had this to contend with…

The turkeys and chickens played a major role in garden issues this year. Anything that actually got big enough to pick had all sort of holes from these guys. Next year we’ll be putting a fence around the garden. It won’t keep them out completely, but they won’t be able to just take over, either.

Our end of year vegetable total was about 50 pounds of potatoes, a ton of summer squash that nobody else ate so the pigs got it all, 10 good sized zucchini, a couple of bags (sandwich sized) of tomatoes, and about two dozen small onions. Oh, and two very sad little carrots. The blueberries, raspberries, and apples were also a complete loss this year, but I can’t take credit for that. Weather seemed to be the biggest factor and the majority of people I talked to had the same issues with fruit and berries.

So that’s the garden for this year. There are still some tomatoes out on the plants that I’ll pick and put in the freezer, and I may get a few more decent onions. But for the most part everything is done and I would rate this gardening season as a bust.

Luckily the protein end was more successful…