Power outage

We lost power at the farm for a while last night, the funny thing was that neither Nikki nor I realized it until I went to make sure the birds had enough feed and noticed that their heat lamps were off. So at nightfall we built a fire in the firepit and roasted some marshmallows and got a surprise fireworks show from a summer festival in Port Washington. It was 15 miles away but we still had a decent view. Then the fireflies put on a smaller display above the pasture, it was a fun evening.

I've thrown everything I read about raising birds right out the window. They were supposed to stay in their bins for about 5 weeks and I was supposed to carefully regulate the temperature, decreasing it by 5 degrees per week. Well, I decided that was nonsense. The ducks were getting so big they were walking all over each other in there and the turkeys were pecking at the sides of the bin in frustration. So I separated the coop into 2 areas, threw some straw on the floor and hung their heat lamps from the ceiling and they are much happier. The turkeys alternate between resting under the lamp and making mad wing-flapping dashes all about. The ducks are still making a big mess, but they have a larger area to do it in. One of the ducklings has lost it's 'peep', it now makes a sort of croaking, strangled attempt at a quack. Still no feathers on the ducks but the poults are feathered over half of their bodies.

We had the last of the radishes from the first planting last night, more will be ready in about a week. I had to start pinching off blossoms from the tomato plants, which breaks my heart because I really want tomatoes but I keep telling myself it's for the greater good. Also took off a few blossoms from the peppers, the Hungarian Wax peppers had already gotten a good start on me so I let them go. The asparagus came up and skipped the edible stage and went directly to 3' tall fully seeded stalks, so we missed out on that.