ducklings hatching!

The ducklings are hatching! Reports from the incubator: out of 9 eggs, one wasn't viable, one has a pinhole and may not hatch, 4 have hatched and seem to be active and healthy, 3 to go! Plus of course the one lonely egg that Mama duck is still actually sitting on...if it hatches, it will be in the next day or 2.

The Scottsville Farmer's Market Tomato Festival was yesterday - what fun! Over 600 people attended, we had 16 tomato varieties to taste, and several demonstrations - including canning and Fried Green Tomatoes...yum! (late summer may find crispy, cornmeal-crusted fried green tomatoes on breakfast plates - if you are a fan, be sure to ask and I will make them for you!)

Also in Scottsville - coming up on August 9th, the 'Honey Dewdrops' return to Victory Hall. If you are planning a visit, include that show on your itinerary. They won the 'Prairie Home Companion' young artists competition this past year - and they live here!

If you are hoping to come in the fall - October 11 is our Fall Herb Festival, and the Saturday before that is Old Farm Days at Pleasant Grove...about a 15 minute drive, and a great way to spend a fall Saturday.

Well, you wouldn't know it from this - but there is actually a pond for ducks at the edge of the yard in the woods....yet they seem to like being around the chickens and us, too. Mama is the one splashing in the tub...Papa is the brown and white one on guard. It is interesting - we started with a flock of 10 - they dwindled over the summer (there was a fox around for a while) to just these 3. Both females take time on the nest, they both sit at night and the mama gets a turn off her sitting duty a couple times a day. They have laid probably 5 nests - so many would get up to 7 or 8 eggs, and then something would eate every egg in one night. The girls would find another spot, again and again...til finally, they began REALLY sitting on this nest of 7 eggs. In the beginning of this nesting, the ducks would lay an egg, and then visit the nest several hours a day to check and turn the eggs. They would return to the pond or coop at night, after carefully covering the eggs with hay and grass. After witnessing their first several failed attempts, and knowing we had oppossum and skunks around, we decided to collect the eggs when the ducks went in for the evening, and put them back in the morning before the mama's came back to lay again. In this way, we collected 10 fertile eggs that we planned on incubating, and the ducks ended up with 7 to sit on. Well, of our 10, there are 9 that are growing and viable...and the mama ducks have ended up with 2 shiny, hard big beautiful eggs that we hope will hatch for them. (the other 5 were discarded by the mama's over the past 2 weeks) With a little (ok, a lot of) luck, we think the incubated eggs will hatch within a day or so of the other 2, so maybe we will be able to give the duckings to a mama!

Garden, vineyard, baby ducks and baby chicks!

Too much time has passed since I wrote last!! The garden has exploded, the vineyard is FULL and beautiful, and we have ducklings being hatched. What to talk about first??

The garden...We have harvested beautiful romaine, leaf lettuce, beets, kale, collard greens, purple and white onions, garlic!, basil, strawberries, zucchini, yellow squash, snow peas, sugar snap peas, and now we are down to okra, and green beans. We just planted another batch of beets - oh, I forgot the corn! - and carrots, and we have tomatoes (lots of interesting varieties, including brown and white tomatoes), peppers and pumpkins still growing. The garlic is great - our neighbors at Best of What's Around grew LOTS of garlic....Matthew Holt said this is his 7th year I think for this garlic...this is just our first crop here. Every year, if you save and plant the garlic again and again, the bulbs will develop a distinct flavor unique to your yard, garden and soil type...no one else will have exactly the same flavor as their you! We are still of course attending the Scottsville Farmers Market every Saturday morning - this past week was just loaded with great stuff - including a very tasty granola made by a couple of young entrepeneurs...their free samples help their sales I am sure. :)

The vineyard...a little over an acre of Pinot Noir - not the best grape to grow inVirginia to be sure, but the original owners of the inn planted it over 20 years ago, and it still grows strong. We have the pleasure of Gabrielle Rausse as the man to tend the grapes and make our wine - who could ask for better?? The vineyard is gorgeous to stroll in the early morning, and late afternoon, and even in winter it is beautiful. We are planning to take out a few cedars beside the vines that, although they create a beautiful allee', house way too many birds and cast too many shadows. What began as a simple hedgerow 25 years ago is now a border of 30 foot trees - and it is time to remove some. I dream of paths between big hydrangeas and lilacs, that we can clip for flowers to keep in line.

I will post a few pitures in a week or so of our new little baby ducks and chicks -

Come see the glory of summer!