The garden keeps giving

We have decided to grow next year's garden at home instead of the community Ppatch that has hosted us for the last 5 years.  So today I spent the warm afternoon pulling up soaker hoses and cutting down hollyhocks.  My parents always taught me to leave things better than how I found them and we want the next person(s) growing there not to have to clean up our detritus.

Hiding under dead bean vines was this turnip - the only one to make it past sprouting under my neglect.  I will serve it with tonight's dinner of barley risotto - if it is edible.

Where did he come from? Where did he go?

Indica named him Cotton Eyed Joe, after the old song.  In a move called sad and gross by some, we have purchased our Thanksgiving turkey live from a local aspiring farmer.  We have had him for 2 weeks now, and he is slowly adapting to life in a coop.  At the farm all of the birds free range across a number of acres and the turkeys roost in the trees.

Although this Blue Slate heritage breed towers over all of the hens, he seems a little scared of them, scooting away when one pecks the ground too close during feeding time.

I thought he would be louder, which had stopped us from raising turkeys before, but our neighbors don't seem to notice the noise he makes announcing that I have parked in the back.  He also makes these chirps that sound like he is underwater. 


Mostly he just hangs out with the rooster statue.