Another lesson learned the hard way. Who knew chickens loved tomatoes?
The hens spent weeks strolling the garden, only eating the bugs. It was great. Natural bug control! Then…..one day……I found this:
Couldn’t see deer tracks, so blamed the bunny rabbits. I grieved a bit. Last time I planted a salsa garden in the community garden plot, someone stole every single pepper plant just before harvest. Sorta felt cursed. All 18 plants looked this bad. Oh well.
Still, the chickens looked innocent. Only eating bugs and weeds when we worked together. Smart little ladies…..until one day….one made the mistake. She attacked our tomatoes right in front of me! What nerve!
Soon the whole flock was decimating the tomato patch. Efficiently picking the near ripe ones, pecking holes in the skins and expertly devouring all the flesh inside. It called for an emergency Fleet Farm run for fencing. In the meantime, I picked a few bowls of green tomatoes to get them before the enemy did.
Up went a hastily improvised fence that so far has kept about 98% of the carnage at bay. But what to do with bowlfuls of green tomatoes?
Green tomato salsa!
And it turned out awfully good.
So there, chickens….. We win.
6 Acre Dream 
We have chickens…or chooks as we call them..love them, but they can be quite cheeky! 🙂
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Yes, they can indeed! When our ducks and chickens were all little fluffy things we called them chicklings. Just kept it simpler to have one word:)
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Cheeky chooks! We have some Wyndotte chicks at the moment, hopefully they wont get to our tomatoes… It’s great that you still made use of the produce.
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