Chickens discover gooseberries

This weekend I harvested gooseberries and learned several things.

1. One variety has thorns, one has less. The thorny bush is scheduled for departure this autumn. I have visions of using layering to propagate a living edible hedge around my community garden that may have holes big enough for ground squirrels and rabbits, but may deter deer!
   This variety seemed to produce slightly smaller berries, many more berries and ripened before variety #2.
2. The other variety is not quite thornless but awfully close, had larger, fewer berries and ripened later than it's thorny cousin. I hope to again use layering to propagate a few more of these and add them to the front yard. It wasn't nearly as painful harvesting this variety.

Gooseberries ripen and then fall off the bush as easily as mulberries do. This means there were a lot on the ground. I scooped up many of them and fed them to the chickens. The girls seemed to love them!

First fruit

Red Lake currants

Our Red Lake currants are red, beautiful, juicy, sweet and sour and are the first fruit to yeild from our front yard orchard (second if you count rhubarb as the first). The gooseberries are big and just starting to turn purple.

We won't have enough to do anything but eat them by the small handful, but I'm looking forward to future years of currant goodness.

Last weekend my niece Catherine and I went to Old World Wisconsin, where we sampled some black currants. Now there's an acquired taste. They would take a lot of sugar to make them palatable to me.

Chicken word of the day: cocotte: prostitute.

Gooseberries starting to ripen with just a tinge of purple.

Everbearing rhubarb.