The hills have turned golden around here. One of my favorite things about these East Bay hills is the contrast between the golden grasses and the dark green oak trees. We have many California Live Oaks around the farm, some of which are
huge. A giant of an oak tree fell down this past spring, but I am happy to say that it is still alive and green (for the most part). The goats are thrilled to have such a large tree within their reach so the lower branches have been stripped of their leaves due to goat munching. |
This month we finished up our Bacon, Carmen Hass, and Zutano avocado varieties. We are bringing Fuerte and Hass for the rest of the month. After that, we will then move onto GEM avocados. Our Fuerte trees are so happy but aren't giving much fruit. Because of that, we have replaced half of them with more GEM trees. It was sad to cut the Fuertes down, but after gathering only about 30 avocados from 30 trees, it was the right thing to
do. |
Coyote Houdini-- A farm mystery had started to develop.
About every other day a was coyote digging into the avocado grove from the pasture. This was new since before coyotes would get in from the park around us. On top of that, we could not figure out how the coyotes were getting into the pasture in the first place. One morning, two of our chickens were attacked. They were scratching around in the pasture when the coyote pounced. Fortunately this coyote must
have been new to the chicken-catching game, because it dropped a chicken and ran away when I yelled at it. Both of the chickens promptly shuffled back to their house and are now doing fine. But as I ran after the coyote to see how it got into the pasture, it had vanished. We decided to put up game cameras on our lowest fence to try and see how they were getting in. To our surprise, the coyotes literally went straight through the fence. That's right, the 6 inch square holes that make up the fence that borders the park
surrounding the pasture and grove. It was crazy to see them squeeze through as we rewatched the footage. Now that we knew the method of how the coyotes were entering, we planned how to prevent that from happening. My daughters and I put up chicken wire on the fence, leaving a 5 inch gap along the bottom to allow all the rabbits, snakes, skunks, squirrels, and
any other little animals to pass through. The mystery had been solved! We have not had any coyotes digging into the grove or taking chicken since then. |
Weed be better off without them-- Being organic means the weeds are our biggest enemy. That especially prominent this time of year. We try crack
down on the weeds early, but if get started too soon they just grow back. It seems that all the wonderful winter rain was just what the thistles wanted. They came this year like we haven't seen in years. It is a happy
sight when I see the goats munching down deep in the weeds, but even they can't keep up with all of them. It will take the teamwork of them and our weed whippers to keep the weeds under control. |
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