My Wild Homestead: Turkey visitors and transplanting blueberry bushes that aren't thriving.

This morning first thing I went out to feed the farm animals and I noticed that the cats and also a wild turkey were concerned about something. It turned out that turkey was a mother and her poults had scattered a bit, somewhat because of the cats but also some went into the fenced chicken run and were foraging a bit. The baby turkeys could fit through the 2" gaps in the fence and the mama turkey could not. I could tell that the cats were worrying the turkey mama so I put them indoors and then tried to shoo the one remaining baby turkey poult back out of the farmyard fence. At last the turkey family was reunited and went on their way together. I really enjoy our wild turkey visitors and I think the extended fencing has limited the way they previously visited our land. Hopefully they'll find a new path further back so they can again wander the perimeter of the chicken yard. No really good pictures, I only have my phone camera at the moment and it doesn'[t do well even with zooming in for anything that's more than a few feet away or fast moving.

Mama wild turkey anxiously waiting for her babies.

After animal chores I got a few small jobs out of the way and then right into my main project of the day. I have a bunch of blueberry plants that just aren't thriving where they are located. This is because there is a massive, grand old maple tree over that area, it blocks sun and also blocks rainfall to that area. I think the maple must have a massive root system too and monopolizes water. The blueberries have been there between 3 to maybe 8 years in some cases I'm going to move them to better locations. I should have done this sooner but we do have blueberries in other areas so i was leaving these ones thinking they needed more time. I think when the road crew cut down a couple of my best high bush blueberry bushes on the other side of the road it got me thinking that I'd like to get more blueberries to make up for that loss. Time to try and get these other plants more productive. There are probably 10 plants that need moving, I was able to transplant 4 blueberry plants today. I transplanted two high bush blueberry plants to the chicken yard and two lowbush plants to the areas near the arctic kiwi plants. There are already some younger blueberry plants started there. It's a big job and jobs that involve a lot of digging aren't my favorite but it needs to be done. I'll get some more transplanted tomorrow. I found some weird yellow necked caterpillars on a blackberry bush near where I was transplanting some of the blueberry plants. I had no idea what they were and then saw a post on a state farm group asking for identification of those same caterpillars. Theirs were on blueberry plants. Strange but useful to get my answer without much effort! One of the smaller projects today was spreading a bunch of garlic seed, or more technically bulbils, around the fence perimeter. We find that our garlic plants that go to seed naturally produce more in the garden the next year so why not put some around the orchard area as another deterrent to wildlife who may be looking to get into our fruit and nut trees. maybe the garlic smell will put them off and maybe we'll end up with semi-wild garlic growing around the perimeter in a couple years. I think that's about it for today and it's enough!

Garlic bulbils to spread around.

Mo checks the garlic bulbils out but doesn't eat them, good Mo, I would have taken them away if the chickens did seem interested since too much garlic would not be good for them.