Johnny, Last week I picked up a bag of non-GMO, organic scratch for my son's heirloom turkeys and it cost almost $24 at Atwood's and, yes, it was more than twice the price of regular hen scratch. I was so shocked by the price that I sent him a photo from my cell phone and asked if that was the right food because I couldn't believe he was paying that much money for organic feed. Of course, it was the right one because they only carry one brand there. He can get other brands at several other feed stores in Gainesville, but Atwood's is right beside Wal-Mart and across the street from Home Depot, so usually is on his way to another store while the other feed stores are further away. Our chickens get non-organic feed, but since they free-range, they really don't eat much hen scratch anyway, preferring the plants and bugs they can find while out free-ranging between roughly 8 a.m and 6 p.m. I'm too cheap to buy organic hen scratch (apparently) although our son is not. His birds are really spoiled!

Maybe I could train our chickens to travel the relatively long distance from our chicken coop to our son's turkey coop (a few hundred feet) and they could sneak into the turkey coop and eat that pricey organic scratch while the turkeys are out free-ranging. Speaking of which, I was working in the front garden all day and in late afternoon I heard a gobble and looked up and saw the turkeys in the bar ditch headed for the road. They've never gone down to the road before. I had to run and turn them back around headed towards home, and they were not happy. Turkeys do not enjoy being herded in a direction they do not want to go. The males got all aggravated and put their tail feathers out and begin making what they consider threatening sounds. I was just laughing at them and their display of testosterone. I called my son and suggested he come help me keep his turkeys out of the road. My best guess is maybe the first grasshoppers have hatched in the bar ditch and maybe the turkeys were looking for a gourmet meal of early instar grasshoppers. I'll have to look today and see if I can spot any hoppers out in pastures. I haven't seen any in the garden.

I have no idea how much feed you could raise on ten acres, but it certainly is worth exploring. Sometimes I toss hen scratch on the ground for the wild birds and, if they don't eat it, it often sprouts. I've always wondered if a person could grow their own hen scratch just by using bags of hen scratch as their seed source. Of course, it all would be mixed together, which would not be conducive to proper growth and proper harvesting.

I hope someday y'all can get a grant for chicken coops and raise your own eggs. Wouldn't that be grand??? Nothing is better than farm-fresh eggs. When we give them to friends, it often alarms them because the egg yolks have a lot more color than they are used to seeing in purchased grocery store eggs. I have to explain that the better color is because our eggs are fresher and because our chickens have a more varied diet. It is sad that people don't know what fresh eggs look like. We have lots of chickens (and 70 new chicks on the way soon) that lay colored eggs, particularly dark brown, brown speckled, green and blue eggs, so a carton of eggs from our house does not look at all like a carton of grocery store eggs. I just love that. We don't have many chickens that lay white eggs, though some of the new chicks are white egg layers.

The problem with 10 acres of whatever you grow will lie in the harvesting of it. Obviously with a plot of land that large, you need something that can be mechanically harvested. I hope someday y'all can have a fruit orchard too. I love fresh fruit and grow more and more of it every year. Greens like lettuce, Swiss chard, spinach, kale, collards, etc. might be a good use of some of that space unless you already are growing all the greens you need already.

I'm glad you have volunteers coming to plant onions. I find planting a lot of onions to be slow and tedious work, and cannot imagine what it would be like to plant as many as y'all will be planting.

The hot weather is throwing me off. It makes me feel like I am behind because I am planting cool-season crops on 70 and 80 degree days. Of course, it likely is too early to plant warm-season crops because surely the minute I did that (if I were to do it, and I'm not saying I will), then the cold weather would return. I've never planted onions and potatoes in 70-degree weather before, and it just feels wrong. I shouldn't have to be watching out for venomous snakes while planting onions and potatoes. On the other hand, carrot seeds sprout faster in warm weather, so this is a great week to sow carrot seed.

If I can spend all of today in the garden, I might get all my cool-season crops pretty much finished today, except for the potatoes, and they are on my "to do" list for tomorrow or for Thursday, depending on the fire weather. Thursday will be terribly windy and I expect it to be a very bad fire day, so I'd best get the potatoes in the ground tomorrow because I'll probably be in the kitchen on Thursday cooking food to feed the firefighters later in the day. Fires are likely to be unavoidable in Thursday's heat and strong winds, but if we get lucky and don't have fires, I won't be sorry or sad. : ) I bought stuff to cook, but it is painfully hard for me to drag myself out of the garden and into the house to cook it! Planting time should be spent in the garden, not in the house. I'm not only planting and transplanting stuff, but weeding and mulching as I go. Weeds are sprouting like mad in the warm soils. I love the look of newly planted and mulched beds. They don't stay weed-free for long, but weeding can be a relaxing zen sort of activity at times.

Yesterday there were birds in the garden with me, and mosquitoes. I was happy to see one of those two. I also am not sure I've ever had to slap at mosquitoes while planting onions.

Our rainfall this year so far is less than 20% of average which is not a good sign, but since planting into dry soil is so much easier than planting into wet soil, I'm not complaining. I hope the low rainfall is not a sign of things to come.

Please keep us posted on your progress!

Dawn