A new, terrible predator has been stalking our land. In broad daylight, when no humans are round to witness the carnage, something has been roaming through the high tunnel and destroying our beautiful tomatoes – when they are ripe and ready to harvest, they are devoured, their carcasses often left hanging on the plants. When they’re not quite ripe, the beast takes only a nibble – ruining the entire fruit before moving along in search of sweeter prey.

The single, neat triangular holes left behind in the unripe fruits told me what we were dealing with – a free range chicken had discovered the promised land. We tried chasing them away when we saw crews come clucking around, but the damages continued, and escalated. One particular hen – a ratty little grayish yellow hen, was our main suspect.

A live trap was set for her, baited with the tomatoes already torn asunder. And when we came home from our travels that afternoon, the hen we’d suspected was, indeed, indignantly captured inside of the greenhouse, in a cage full of maters.

I made plans to rehome her – but put her in solitary confinement in the nursery coop for a day first … to see if the problem was solved with her on lockdown.

No.

It was too late. Perhaps she’d been the pioneer, but in the recent days she had taught the others. A dozen more tomatoes fell to their rapacious beaks before sundown.

So, Ratty gets to stay. And today after the harvest was done, I fought the vines that covered up some coils of fencing, so we could create a barrier, in the hope that our vine-ripened tomatoes and our free-range chickens can peacefully coexist once more ….

(that’s it up top, with pieces of thorny vines lying about ^ )

inside box Thirteen

We didn’t expect to be harvesting in the rain today, but the morning brought a whole lot of surprise moisture, making us run out to harvest the cherry tomatoes before the plants sucked up the water and split all the ripe fruits open. And then I got to balance in the rain on a ridiculously unstable ladder surrounded by poison ivy, to harvest the apples for today’s box. And I laughed aloud up there, realizing just how happy I am that this is my life, my work, my struggle. It was a joy to harvest the box today – I hope it tastes as good as it felt.

• Red Baron Apples – the regular rainfalls have made for happy apple trees
• Tomatoes That the Chickens Spared
• Chicken of the Woods – you will get haunted, most likely, if you let this sit in your fridge until they go bad. They’re very, very good! Our friend Mark found this in Interstate Park and traded them for some tomatoes and eggs … anyway, you can find recipes online or just tear or slice them up, then sautee them in butter – cover and simmer in oil/butter for ten minutes, on low. Pairs well with pasta, or risotto, or put it in a soup. Mushroom things.
• Cherry Tomatoes Saved from the Rain
• Cucumbers of the non-pickling kind
• Zucchinis of Tender Size
• Red Potatoes
• Kohlrabi – eat the greens too! Can cook em with your kale perhaps
• Kale
• Shallots
• Parsley
• a Melon of Some Sort or Another