New Friends and Basil Mountain

As Judith hinted in the previous post, we have seven new friends in the garden! These friends are going to enjoy permanent residence in the prime real estate of our garden with a wide selection of the choicest  bugs and compost.  These friends are... chickens!  We now have six laying hens and one rooster, generously given to us by a farmer friend.  Although we all were a little skeptical about having a rooster, Colonel (that's our rooster) has done an excellent job of holding down the fort (or coop) and looking intimidating if a hawk flies nearby.  I am really surprised by how much I am loving the chickens.  They make our garden so much more lively, and they are bringing our farming experience to the next level.  I am so excited to get to know all of their different  personalities!  We worry about their safety because of the hawks, foxes, and raccoons here, but their coop is sturdy and secure and Colonel keeps a vigilant patrol.We have names for all but one of the hens.  Their names are Martha, Tom, Crow, Pheasant, and Francis.  We are open to suggestions for a name for our last hen!  So far we have thought of Pocahontas, Charlotte, Henrietta, and Gertrude.  Please leave a comment below with your vote or suggestion!This week we decided to give our CSA-ers a break from all of the basil, so we harvested it today instead.  With basil, you need to keep trimming it back in order for it to keep growing and tasting good.  Since it's been so hot recently, all of the basil wants to bolt and start flowering, which means we have to pick it before that happens.  We harvested so much basil today! We formed a mini mountain of basil at our veggie washing station.  At first, Judith and I thought we would fill eight 1-gallon bags with it, then we thought 12, and then 15.  Our final count ended up being 20 1-gallon bags stuffed with basil! That's 20 gallons of basil!  We both are going to make mounds of pesto today to freeze and share.