Free Range Ain't Free

I have been experimenting with free ranging my poultry.  My imagination ran wild with the notion of a symbiosis, birds picking gently through vegetable beds and removing unwanted insects.  These chickens and ducks are supposed to relish slugs, snails and insects, right?!  I started this garden because I wanted to feed my family!  So far all I have succeeded with is feeding my birds!

First was the ducks... They gobbled up all my greens and seedlings before they even had a chance.

Then I tested out a couple chickens... They didn't eat the seedlings but they did scratch up the dirt, disrupting any chance the seedlings had at life and ate the seeds that had not yet sprouted.

Lastly, the turkeys and our pekin duck.  For weeks it seemed like this was ideal!  Our Royal Palm hen even made a little nest in one of my beds (she's laying like an egg a day!) without disturbing the squash or sapling growing there.  But alas, this last Friday I came out to see all three of them climbing my herb spiral and nibbling my herbs down to the nubs.  Bahhh!  Up to this point the herbs seemed like the only greens I could successfully grow.  That didn't last.

I am going to try one more time to re-fence the garden area and encourage the turkeys to hang on the lawn with the rabbit tractor. I don't feel like I have many other options because the turkeys are too big for the chicken run and the ducks are not fond of strange birds.  Its too early to butcher these suckers so they better start behaving!

Vege-troubles

I feel like I haven't written very much about gardening and that is for good reason.  I seem to have some pest issues (althought some of my pests are domestic).  I have yet to catch any wild pests but I know they are there.  My attempts at growing cold weather veggies was laughable.  I started some broccoli and cabbage inside and then when I moved them outside they were stripped down to bare stalks.  My garlic has even been picked through and I have perhaps a quarter of what I started with. I should be harvesting radish and lettuce now!  Instead I am mourning over beds of whimpy, perforated leafy bits.

I seem to be having better luck with my warm season veggies.  I put out tomatoes en mass and have only suffered a few casualties but that was due to the weather.  Corn is coming up (now that there aren't chickens pecking it up), beans, squash, cukes, melons and quinoa.  I had been religiously keeping track of what I planted where until my notes seemed worthless because I had to replant beds so frequently.  Now I have a new resolution.  If it grows, it grows.  If it grows well then I will hopefully be able to save seeds from it for next year. 

Discouraged by annuals I went and boosted my spirits with some perennials.  More currant, elderberry and (new) some goji berry shrubs.