Garden Update: Front Garden in Mid-September

I have to confess that the front got a little away from us this year.  With the rain and the cooler temps, plant life did not struggle to survive as much as it usually does.  This was great for the vegetables (I picked more beans today), but not so great for the weeds.  It felt like a jungle out there.  Waist high weeds in the pea-patch (some would refer to it as our front yard but since we don't mean to grow grass out there I would take issue with that).

We probably could have harvested another bucket or so of peas, but to be perfectly honest and transparent, I am DONE with peas for the year! 

I've done this many about twenty-'leven times so far.  Or at least that's what it feels like.

But I do hate to let anything go to waste if I can help it.

Meantime, back at the ranch, you may have heard that we have had a population explosion in our chickens this summer.

Suddenly we had a brilliant idea: we would let the chickens take care of the rest of the pea-patch and the weeds.  Put the traveling hutch (aka, the Chicken Tractor) in the front yard and let the girls manage it for us. 

Convert the peas into eggs and voila, no waste!

Unfortunately, we discovered that the area was so large and so high that it was more than the girls could handle in a reasonable time.  And our neighbors across the street had their house on the market.  We really don't want people driving up and being scared off by a waist-high-weedy-pea-patch.  Really. Well, depending on who is looking....

This past weekend, Mr. Marvelous went ahead and took care of things.

That's the second mowing.

We'll still move the tractors out there (there's one in front already), and we'll let the girls take care of the raking for us. 

In the meantime things look a little better, don't you think?

  

And the neighbors got a contract.  Here's hoping they don't mind living across from The Chicken Lady and her motley crew!