Turkey the cat and the Lettuce disaster

One thing that people do rural areas is dump animals that they no longer want as pets; I have animals and couches and other stuff show up on the side of the road. It's an unfortunate part of being close to the city. The animals usually starve to death, get hit by cars trying to run somewhere, get eaten by a coyote, or a farmer kills it because it's preying on livestock. Feral cats are deadly to small poultry.


I caught turkey the cat killing my little turkey poults. The big turkeys were too big for her, but she killed 2 or 3 before I finally lured her over with some food. She'd been someones cat and was tame and friendly, but was obviously nursing kittens and was starving. So I didn't begrudge her the turkeys, but I did have her spayed. Notice that the tip of her right ear is missing. That tipping is how you indicate that a feral cat has been spayed. She seemed friendly, and I was ok with her being a barn cat. I took her home to tame her a little more, and ended up keeping her at the house.

Turkey the cat is in robust good health. Spayed and with a full set of vaccinations ($11 at the feed store) she's one of the few animals that survive being dumped. We managed to trap one of her kittens as well, a little white spitfire that is not at all tame. the kitten has been living in a dog carrier in our living room for a month or so now, so that we can tame it down enough to allow us to handle it and get it spayed or neutered when we figure out what sex it is. It still hisses and spits and claws, but it's getting a little calmer every day.

So tonight turkey decided to jump up on the light table and managed to knock over a tray of lettuce sprouts.
it takes about 2 hours to replant 288 lettuce seedlings. Curious to see how many survive.

Vegetable starts & farmers market

This is the first of the vegetable starts for this year. Tomatos are pretty popular, and I've also planted some early-season lettuce that I'll plant under cold frames.
Germination rate is pretty good this year. Maybe 80%.

I'm starting 500 tomato plants this year to complement our chicken, pork and eggs at the farmers market. 50 or so of these plants will be planted, the others will be sold later in the year as either either 4" or 6" potted tomatoes. I've also planted lettuce, basil and rosemary. The basil this early is an experimental crop for me. This is the first year I've had a greenhouse, and I'm curious to see if I can get enough heat in April or May to get basil to grow. I know I can in June or July, so I'm spending a couple of bucks of seeds and an hour or two of time to see what happens. The rosemary is fairly cold hearty, so no worries there.