I just had to jump in and agree with the previous poster who mentioned the great book "Gardening with Guineas" and the awesome message board moderated by the same author (known as "Frit"); http://guineafowl.com/board/list.php?2 I found the book first as I was interested in guineas because they would NOT SCRATCH at dirt/plants like my chickens do. (We practice organic gardening and love the help w/pests.) I provided the guineas a mirror and dust pit which also keep them happy and away from my house. I must also mention that I find their poop much less icky! ;-) I love my chickens but they make me insane when they scratch all my mulch out of the beds and eat my flowers. I've finally made a run to keep the hens locked up more (tho they are still let out frequently). I LOVE the silly silly guineas tho - they do not hurt my plants and are so entertaining and helpful as they roam our pastures eating bugs and weeds. We do have a large farm, set well back from the road so neighbors aren't really a problem. Their noise only bothers me occaisionaly if they come up and interrupt a conversation by "barking" at the stranger to our farm. I did follow all of Frit's great advice; started keets in my house w/handling, transitioned out to "nursery" pen in my chicken coop for another 6 wks, then allowed them out. They share the coop nicely w/my hens, eat the same layer feed (now that they are grown - turkey starter w/AMP as keets)although in early spring hormones(?) made my dominant cock a bit mean to the lowest ranking hens and scary for my small kids. They are very good about "going to bed" but they'd like me to close them in earlier than my chickens. On the rare occasion I've left them out too late they have had predator loss so I feel that following Frit's set-up works best. I do gather their (many)eggs to eat. It can be hard to get them to lay in the coop as they want to be more secretive and make nests in tall grass. Right now we've even got a bunch of eggs in an incubator and are eager to see if they hatch. If we get many keets I'll be sharing with all my chicken friends who are now excited to try guineas too. I highly recommend guineas and wish you much fun with them!

They don't have to be "old" to bloom - just mature enough and growing in suitable conditions. I even have them blooming in 4" containers at the nusery and mine bloom at home consistantly. Sempervivum tanslates loosely to "live forever" and these are some of the hardiest of the commonly grown sedums and succulents, most species adaptable to conditions from zone 4 to 9 and from full sun to dense shade. They are not fussy about soil conditions as long as drainage is good. They propagate themselves most commonly from offsets - the "chicks" - and can spread densely and rapidly in areas where they are happy. Many plants produce unusual inflorescenses - I'm not sure I'd label them as strongly as alien life forms.....LOL! Yours are only still in bud and I'd recommend allowing the flowers to develop fully before you remove them. They are really very attractive and bloom in shades of pink and yellow.

Susan, You asked where all the 'brave' souls are who intended to plant fall tomatoes. I think we're all still here, but the thing to understand about fall tomatoes is that some years you 'need' them because the spring crop is playing out and its productivity is decreasing. Other years you don't 'need' fall tomatoes because the spring tomatoes are still going strong. I can't speak for everyone else, but my spring crop is in amazingly good shape, so I don't 'need' new plants for fall. That was a decision I made in early June, by the way, because early June is when I would have started seeds for fall tomatoes. I also could have started new plantings for fall from cuttings a week or two ago and still could do that now, but there's no reason to do that with the spring plantings still going strong. I suspect that if I kept records, I'd see that I do a fresh planting for fall about half the time, but not last year and not this year. I have grown longkeeping types and they are OK. Their flavor is nothing to get excited about but it still is superior to grocery store tomatoes. The key to success with longkeepers is that you have to have a place to put them where they can ripen slowly. I use the tornado shelter as a root cellar, so I have that. Depending on the space you have in your house, you may have room to store them and keep them as they ripen slowly. They are worth the effort if you don't have a lot of tomatoes frozen, canned or dehydrated to get you through winter. Since I started dehydrating so many in recent years, I haven't bothered with longkeeping types. The ones I've grown have included Longkeeper, Red October, Yellow In Red Out, Reverend Morrow's, Old-Fashioned Garden Peach and Winterkeeper. Sunray is another one that lasts forever on the kitchen counter even though it is not normally described as a longkeeper. Larry, I'm sorry the drought there is causing you so much trouble. I spent a huge amount of money watering my garden in June (the June water bill was three times higher than the May water bill, and the May water bill was twice as high as the April water bill) and would have lost everything if I hadn't irrigated. The rain that arrived here in late June/early July has kept it going a bit longer, but I'm pretty much at the point that if rain doesn't fall here in July, I may not be able to keep the garden going much longer. It is a simple financial decision, you know, because at some point you spend more to water than you'll get in produce out of the garden. Several times in recent years (2003, 2005, 2006 and 2007 come to mind), I've just basically turned off the water and said "I'm done" and let the garden die, and that was after having a water bill in the triple digits. It is the hardest thing in the world to do, but water is very expensive here where I live and it takes enormous amounts of it to water a huge garden in clay soil. So, you certainly have my sympathy. If it doesn't rain here in July, my garden may not survive until August and that's just the reality of a low rainfall year. Even in a good year we don't get enough rain in June, July and August, and we're not having a good rainfall year here in Love County. We go for long periods with no rain and then get so much at once that much of it runs off instead of soaking in. Diane, Here's the difference between Tim and I. Let's say we cut up a couple of big ol' maters and made BLT sandwiches for lunch. After the meal, if I am cleaning up the kitchen, I look at the two or three slices of tomato left on a plate and decide to eat them right then and there so they won't spoil. They are so yummy! If he is cleaning up the kitchen, he puts them into the refrigerator and NO ONE eats them because of the way their taste and texture change. He doesn't even eat them!!!! So, when I see slices of tomatoes in the fridge, I take them out and feed them to the chickens. I don't know why he doesn't just eat those couple of slices himself, offer them to me, or feed them to the chickens. Ezzirah, To keep that fresh-from-the-garden taste and texture, never refrigerate tomatoes. It basically reduces their quality to little better than that of the tasteless red 'excuses' for tomatoes that most all grocery stores sell. You'd think after well over 25 years of hearing me say "don't put the fresh tomatoes in the fridge" that my DH would understand not to do it, but in this case, it just goes in one ear and out the other. The funny part is that he doesn't eat them after he sticks them in the fridge. My DH is VERY spoiled. He is so used to always having tons of fresh garden produce around that he isn't very good at eating leftovers of anything. It drives me nuts. He is great at putting stuff in the fridge, but not at taking it out, reheating it and eating it. That just drives me nuts! (What is the point, after all, in putting it into the refrigerator if you aren't going to use it?) Sometimes I think men shouldn't be allowed in the kitchen, but then he cooks a lot in the summer when I'm canning a lot and sick of being in the kitchen, so I can't very well order him out of 'my' kitchen, now can I? Dawn

RachelEllen, I know you didn't ask me, and Maria's description is wholly accurate, but there is an easier way to pluck chickens if one is plucking several at a time: Put a steel drum full of water on a brick platform and arrange a torch burner beneath it so the water comes to a rapid boil. Grab a (freshly killed) chicken by the feet with some loooong tongs and dip it in the boiling water for a few seconds, then fire up your plucking machine! There are different configurations for plucking machines, but ours was a motorized horizontal cylinder with soft rubber fingers protrubing from the drum. One holds one's scalded chicken by the feet above the spinning cylinder and it ever-so-gently pulls all the feathers off as it rotates quickly. It's the only really fun part of the process to be honest. More than ten chickens can be plucked this way in the time it takes to hand pluck one. As for slaughtering your own chickens, it can be done quickly and with dignity by just about anyone. Your best bet is to ask someone who has several (get a referral from the place that sells you your chicks) that need dispatching and ask to come help/learn.