Agriculture

I felt a sense of satisfaction yesterday as I got in the car to head to the Berkshires to my friend, Tom. Things were going well. Though it was still light out, I had easily lured the chickens into their coop with cracked corn, enabling me to close them in without worrying about predators entering in the darkness. More important, I was bearing with me my contribution to the evening: long, fat, meaty Turkish pole beans that I had volunteered as the green vegetable for dinner. You may recall my difficulties growing Turkish pole beans this summer. My first planting seemed to be doing fine when suddenly, over the course of a couple of days, all the vines shriveled up. The next planting, in a bed enclosed by a fence to prevent rabbits munching on the vines, failed to make it because something larger, I assume a ground hog or raccoon, knocked down the fence and ate the vines. This bunch of beans represented my third try, planted in the beginning of August, in a gamble that we would not have an early frost.