Tough lessons

It's been a rough few days.  I mentioned before that we "threw out" the dud eggs from our incubator, or at least what we thought were duds and when my daughter and I cracked them open to learn about them, we found that three of them had living chicken fetus kicking around in them.  It was very sad and my poor daughter put them down so they didn't have to suffer anymore.  Well two days later, our two oldest girls were outside playing with our kittens in the grass (they're around 4 weeks old) when our nine year old tripped and landed on one of them.  It was very severely injured and very obviously going to die so my oldest came and got me and asked me to put it down for her.  When I got out to the yard, Petunia was licking her injured baby.  It was heartbreaking!  I did what I had to do and hope I never have to do that ever again, then I buried it.  I wouldn't allow the kids to be anywhere near while I did all this.  It was too much.  On the other hand though, the way my oldest came running and screaming into the house, I thought that one of my own children had to be dead which just about scared the poop out of me.  So, it could have been something far worse.

"Tiger"

Hubs is clearing the fence line around the back of the property and plans to take down some of the already existing 4 foot fence to use around the goat pen that never seems to be penning any goats.  They are more curious than cats and almost as destructive as children.  That's quite a combination.

We're thinking about leasing the land behind us that's about 60 wooded acres, to raise goats on.  It could be what gets us through the coming depression.  Even if we're wrong about the depression, I'd still like to get into goat farming.  While beef is my meat of choice, goats just make sense for us and the land around us.  They're also in higher demand than what's available, so I hope it's a win win situation.

The kids and I harvested and shelled our cowpeas today and we've all learned that we love raw ochre.  I have avoided planting ochre because I hate the mess of preparing fried ochre from scratch even though that's one of hubs all time favorite foods and he practically begged me to plant some.  While at the store back in June, I found ochre plants for just a couple of dollars for a pot containing ten plants, so I thought, why not.  Now we're starting to harvest some and when they're about finger length (3 inches) they are super delicious.  I love the way the seeds taste and I even like that weird, somewhat slimy, texture they have.  I also passed on planting any cucumbers, although I did buy seeds, because they aren't one of my favorite veggies since they instantly give me the worst indigestion ever in the history of indigestion.  Some friends, however, gave us a few of they're cucumbers and I made refrigerator pickles out of them and they are AWESOME!  They're a lot like bread and butter pickles with more crunch.  They make a good side dish as well as a sandwich topper or snack.

So, I'm learning what I need to plant in the future and I'm learning a lot of other lessons that might come in handy if times really get hard.  For example, I think I'll put peas near the bottom of the list for a while because they just don't seem to be very prolific or hardy.  I definitely need to start my garden sooner for things like my beets.  Mid summer harvested beets = yucky beets.  I need to plant a LOT of beans.  LOTS. 
And, I need to learn about squashes.  Last year was my first year gardening and I didn't have any trouble with most of the things I planted, especially the squashes.  This year my squash plants are dropping like flies!  They aren't producing much either.  I have two measly spaghetti squashes out of 4 or 5 plants, two pumpkins out of 3 or 4 seeds and one of them is almost dead from bugs.  Zero butternut and acorn squashes...plants all died and while the watermelon and cantaloupe plants are alive, zero melons developing.  I don't want to use any chemicals and I'm pretty ignorant still about gardening, so I have a lot left to learn.  Trial and error teach me better than anything but I think I need to put more effort into the books if I'm ever going to get the hang of clean gardening.

Egg update:  As best I can tell of the eggs I can actually see through the shell, they're all developing (of the new bunch (clutch?) that is.)  My first group of eggs should start hatching by Friday if not sooner.  Hopefully not too soon though.  The thermometer reads 99 most of the time but occasionally gets up to 100.  I don't want to mess with the temp anymore though because I'm afraid I'll really mess things up for sure.

Rainbow and blue skies after a big storm this past week.