Ducks on the Range

Judging by the weather lately, apparently summer is over. It even smells like fall outside, and the leaves are starting to change. It feels like September already! Hrmph. I'm going to have to speed up my winter planting I guess. Most of my crops aren't anywhere near done yet, especially the Tomatonater. It still has blossoms on it! I've given up completely on the kohlrabi; it has started to bolt, and the roots look nothing like what they're supposed to. Obviously something was wrong with that batch of seeds. On the plus side, though, Fiona and Buttercup love to eat the greens. I uproot the plant, shove it through the fence, and let them go to town. It's quickly becoming their favorite treat.

Gene and Storm went garaging sale prowling this weekend, and they brought me back the coolest vintage picnic basket ever! We lined it with egg crates, and it's a perfect egg collection device. You may have noticed from the picture that today's fashion farmer is wearing purple sparkle nail polish (I'm a trend setter!) I learned two important lessons today: 1) turkeys love purple sparkles and 2) don't wear open-toed sandals near the fence, no matter how good your sparkle toes look.  
I am going to make a vinyl liner for the basket, then I can also use it as a harvesting basket, because certain puppies who shall remain nameless ate my pink plastic harvesting pail. Apparently I shouldn't leave it outside when Ceri decides she's bored. Her plastic pool is suffering a similar fate. She just loves to chew.

Now that the Bedonkaducks have full access to the pasture area, thanks to a small whole Gene cut in the fence, I've realized that they love to play as well. And they're almost as destructive as puppies, at least when it comes to water. They have discovered the water bucket that the turkeys and the goats drink from, and have decided it's great sport to dump huge mouthfuls of dirt into it. I changed out everybody's water yesterday, and when I was doing the farm chores today, I noticed it was so muddy that bugs were walking across the top of it. I watched it for awhile, and sure enough, the ducks started playing in it. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, except maybe put more buckets out.