Ripe?

I took my sister in laws advice and put my green cherry tomatoes in a brown bag, folded it up, and waited.
I spent a week in mexico (thanks #jacqsbirthdaybash) and when I came back, some of them were red and the rest are on their way to being ready to eat. We made a salad the other day, used them, and they tasted great.

Just to rub it in, this was the view from my beachside bed x 6 days

This Means War

It makes me sad when I come home from work and make sure the girls have made it to the roost and I only count five butts. I miss my Penny. I'm not going to lose another one. 


Claire mad a good point. It's the circle of life and the poor Hawk was just hungry. It's the survival of the fittest. I understand that, but, I still hate it. 


I have waged a war on this hawk. I haven't see it around in the past 3 days, but It's been cold and rainy. I'm sure the first day the sun comes out it will be back. 


So, I have done a few reinforcements to the coop. I hung some shiny eye ball looking things in the trees to hopefully scare it away. Some people use old Cd's but I bought mine today at the feed store. Supposedly the shiny will scare it away. 


I bought some netting that I am going to hang throughout the run. Hopefully, this will make the hawk unable to swoop down and prey on the girls. 


Lastly, I bought a decoy. It's an owl. Supposedly one of the fiercest, most feared predators around. 
Check it out here: 


HAWK WAR

RIP........Sweet Penny

A hawk took her out today. 
Im sad................

Penny(in front)

Killer on the Loose

I have never really been a big cat person.  I have had them in the past, but as an adult never really wanted one. Their judging eyes and "making biscuits" on my face in the early a.m. were a real turn off. But now all of a sudden, I have an unwelcome feline friend. 


For the past few days, I noticed something having a field day in my garden boxes. Digging stuff up, messing up the irrigation, and pooping. I thought it was a squirrel or raccoon. The other morning, I woke up and much to my dismay I saw a cat sitting by the coop door, preying on the girls. Great. I ran out to the coop, watering the newly seeded rye with morning coffee, and shooed him away. I thought I had scared him for good. 


I noticed it here and there after the above encounter, but it never did much in terms of harming the girls.  It basically just sat and stared at the girls with curiosity but never went in for the attack. I stopped worrying really. I figured if it's been around this long and hasn't hurt them, it probably won't in the future. I came home from work at lunch to feed the girls and check on them a few days ago and got quite the scare from the new cat.


Disclaimer: I swear to you the following story is true. Just as it happened. This thing is vicious. 


Anyway, I'm feeding the girls and I suddenly hear a rustling on the other side of the their fence in the bamboo. I turn and look and the cat is in attack mode. It looks at me and with a swift pounce move, its go go gadget arm reaches high into the bamboo and grabs a poor unaware  pigeon. Seriously it just grabs this bird out of the air like it's no big deal. I'm standing there with my mouth wide open and I swear to you all of a sudden, I'm making some serious eye contact with this killer. At the moment our eyes meet, the cat puts the bird in it's drool dripping mouth and takes a bite out of it. If that cat could talk, it would have told me at that moment, "this is a warm up lady, your girls are next." 


Shit. 


So for weeks, I have been scaring(and this just means raising my voice saying, get out of here) this cat away. Again and again and again.


But I started feeling kind of guilty. I didn't want to be mean. I felt bad that if it was feral and didn't have a home, maybe it just wanted a little human contact. The other morning I decided to talk to it nicely. And wouldn't you know it, that little cat started purring, came right up to the fence, started rubbing on it and just wanted to be petted.  Well, I feel like an asshole now. 


So, the cat has become a part of daily life. Now, I worry if a day goes by and I don't see it. So far so good. We are all living in harmony together and well I must admit, I kinda like cats again now................as long as it doesn't touch my girls.