The hay man cometh

Bleth hith heart. Shane and his family backed up to the barn and unloaded and stacked three tons of mixed-grass hay.

The rubber-lipped iguanas take a proprietary pride in their full barn. They eat first, of course; then the goats; then the sheep, if the goats are feeling benevolent. We've set up a feeder outside the barn so the sheep don't starve, and plan to sell the goats in the spring. Buttheads.

The hay bales are stacked all the way to the roof joists – we'll have to get up there and pull some bales down so we can put the tarp over the pile, as the roof has some minor leaks. But the big animals have some serious food security. 

I missed my garden club meeting Tuesday to help bring in all the tomatoes and beans before the frost got them. We have pounds and pounds of green tomatoes since it was a cool summer.

They'll ripen slowly and we'll have sandwiches, and poke some into the freezer. C. pulled up the shell-bean plants and we have them hanging in the old entryway to ripen and dry.

And we actually got corn! C. planted two small stands of field corn. The robust black ears are Indian corn, and the little weedy one is "stained-glass" corn, from Barbara in my garden club. We'll start plants in the greenhouse earlier next year, and try for more. Maybe even some sweet corn, since we know corn is attainable.

And in another experiment, C. grew rice. What a nut.