Around the farmyard 6/1

 All the animals are finding ways to keep cool. I refreshed all waters and pools when I got home from work and set up the young chicks in a shady spot. The big chicks (rescue bantams) were exploring around the shady elderberry bushes while the adult birds sought their own shady spots or cooling dirt baths. The ducks got in their pools or even a puddle. I notice pears rowing well and possibly apples but peaches and nectarines won't happen this year, most likely. I don't see fruit starting and a state agriculture newsletter reported that the late freeze in May was too hard on peach, nectarine and some other trees. 

First frosts how did the gardens fare? And super late surprise peaches!

We've had two frosts so far this autumn. The first about 2 weeks ago, didn't do any damage to the vegetable gardens. The second frost, which was last week did kill some plants but not all. The affected plants were all summer squashes, bean plants , cucumber plants and some tomato plants. Most flowers are still fine as well as greens, beets, some beans,  a couple winter squash/pumpkin plants, some tomatoes, peppers and the few potato plants still in the ground. One surprising survivor is another peach tree which is looking set to bear ripe fruit soon! I really did not think this tree would give us anything because it still had tiny green peaches a couple weeks ago. I pulled some off to see if that would help and the remainder are looking to be nearly ripe now. What a treat that will be to have fresh peaches when it's very nearly winter for us. I brought 6 in the house to ripen but taking a chance to leave the majority on the tree and reassess day by day. As for our GIANT pumpkin plant, it topped out at about 50 feet long! It grew us 5 nice pumpkins which now decorate the front walk area. A few more pumpkins are coming along on another plant.

Some plants succumbed to our first freezes.

While others are still growing strong

KitKat is always a great help and entertainment when working the gardens.

And some surprise  very late peaches are nearly ripe! This is our Reliance peach tree and this is its first year bearing fruit.