Before too long in our neck of the woods,the deer "harvest" will begin. What a pretty way to say kill. At least call it what it is,whether you enjoy doing that or wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Good pictures,both of you. It's too bad something so beautiful can be such a pain in the patootie sometimes.

cavamarie, people have concerns about e-coli and I know nothing about that. I've used fresh manure in gardens almost every year I've gardened and I've never sacrificed fruit for foliage as you would expect. I've only had a problem once---in a spot where a ton of fresh chicken manure sat for a month before I could get it spread. Everything we planted in that drenched spot died. Mix the manure in well before you plant and I think you'll have results similar to mine, providing you, like me, need to apply nitrogen fertilizer every year. I have 16 chickens. I clean their house once a year (where I suppose, it's technically been composting)and spread it on my garden straight from the coop prior to planting. I used much fresher chicken manure in my early 20s---sometimes with dead chickens in it---which I got from a farmer. With really fresh manure I spread it three weeks before planting per advice I received from an "Organic Gardening" course I took in 1974. People always tell secondhand horror stories about chicken manure, but I've never heard a horror story from someone who's actually used it. I'm always worried that my experience with chicken manure won't pan out in the rest of the country, so rather than take my word for it, try it in half of your rows and see for yourself.

Here's an interesting article about chickens and gardens: That's What Hens Are For Basically, hens are safe in a garden but only if you set it up to be hen-safe. If you just let them out into some random garden, they'll eat it up and destroy it. Basically, there are plants they will eat and plants they won't eat, and some plants (like beans) that they'll eat but where most of the crop is too high for them to reach. So you need to keep them away from the plants that they'll eat, excepting what you decide to let them nibble on for their health. Also, you should never leave them around seedlings/small plants, even ones that they don't eat, because their scratching can kill them; however, established plants are generally safe against scratching. In turn, the hens reward you with free weeding, bug control, and fertilizer, and what they eat in the garden significantly lowers the cost of their feed (as well as makes their eggs healthier -- hens fed greens produce much healthier eggs).

Tonight was Round Two. Arriving home from a shopping trip to Dallas, I went into the chicken coop to turn on the heat lamp to keep the keats warm overnight and there was a big old long chicken snake stretched out on the chicken roost. Of course, by the time I turned on the lamp and saw him or her, I was already past the snake and it was between me and the door, so I had to go back past the snake to exit the chicken coop. (sigh) Several "hysterical woman" phone calls later, two sets of neighbors arrived, gloves and guns in hand. (We have the world's most wonderful friends and neighbors.) One dragged that ugly old snake out of the chicken house, the other shot it, and peace and calm reigned again. I did call DH at work to tell him that his "snakeproof" chicken coop, as he has repeatedly described it since building it--most recently two days ago--is NOT snakeproof. (I wish it was.) I believe we will spend his days off attempting to do some more snakeproofing. The good news is that, for the second time in a week, a snake got into the building but not into the bird brooder cage, which DS apparently did an excellent job of snakeproofing. And, I hate to say that for fear I will jinx us and the next snake we see will be inside the cage eating keats. And, by the way, fresh, home-grown tomatoes are an excellent "thank you" to give a neighbor who comes running to rescue your keats from a big ol' bad ol' snake. I gave one neighbor a bagful and promised one to bring one to the other neighbor tomorrow after I pick tomatoes. Only six more weeks until the keats are theorectically large enough that a snake cannot crush them and eat them. Of course, it still will be a battle with the other predators, but the guineas usually can fight that battle on their own pretty well. Ada, my cousin's cat was picked up and carried away by a red-tailed hawk about 25 or 26 years ago....and then the hawk dropped the cat into a pasture and it made its own way home, a little scratched up and bloodied, but it survived. However, from what I recall, that cat pretty much stayed inside the house after that....and that cousin had a big snake problem as well, but with western diamondback rattlers.....I'd rather have the chicken snakes. Dawn P.S. If the neighbors hadn't come to our rescue, I guess Kristine and I would have shot it, but we would not have dragged it out of the chicken coop first, because we weren't going to touch it....and we didn't really want to blow a hole in the wall.