In which I somehow rape a zucchini...

Well, it turns out that this whole "dying off of bees" thing sucks. That, and we're pretty sure Mark made it a personal vendetta to kill them off before they killed him off, because apparently he is highly allergic and they could kill him. Unfortunately, some of our plants are not self-polinating, which led to this unfortunate afternoon, in which I had to rape a zucchini plant, quite against it's will indeed.



Do you all see how sassy I am around our farm? It was freaking 99 degrees out today and I'd already ridden one horse, so I wet down my hair and put on a baseball cap. Whoever said that riding horses is a glamorous and elegant sport has some rather severe misunderstandings. I mean, it IS... about half the time. But when the rest of you time is spent working on things around the farm, suddenly it becomes not so elegant.

I digress. That was me with a boy zucchini flower, preparing for some unprotected pollination.



My life is no longer glamorous.



However, my peppers pollinated just fine.



These are black peppers. Don't hold out any hope. We've killed the peppers somehow every other year.



The garden this week





Look at those maters!



Starting to ripen.

And alas, BOUNTY! We have cucumbers coming up like crazy.





Victorious me, harvesting cucumbers just moments after the zucchini rape. Does anyone know how to rape a melon? I don't think they're self-pollinating either.

In which Agnes plants a victory garden...

Mark was out weed-eating the garden and around the chicken coop the other day and we were pleased to discover that our ladies had planted their very own garden. We'd fed them the cracked tomatos last year and lo and behold, plants have sprouted up behind the chicken coop.

First you plant the seeds...

Then, you fertilize like mad...

It's a bit more petite than our big garden...





And it definitely requires the supervision of a lady in red...



and a Gertrude to watch:



The horses were pretty unhelpful, having provided compost for this whole endeavor..











But Agnes is queen of all things cute.