"Gimmie Chiles!"

Our chickens love chile seeds.  Chickens co-evolved with chile plants to help spread their seeds, so they have no heat receptors that would make eating chiles painful.  They like all kinds and pick open the chiles to eat the seeds first.  There is anecdotal evidence that cayenne powder in chicken feed can prevent worms...not sure if all the chiles I grow could have the same positive affect but it can't hurt and they really relish them.  I pulled the plants out before the first frost and since we have all the hot sauce and powders we need, the extra chiles went to the girls.

New Hampshire, Dominique, and Partridge Rock munch hot peppers

Dominque with hot peppers

In the garden I have several beds seeded with cover crops (pictures are from a week ago, they are taller now).  We had our first hard frost of 27 degrees 2 nights ago, which knocked out the tomatoes, zucchini, nasturtiums, and hurt the peppers but didn't kill them.  Everything else was wilty with cold but promptly bounced back when warmed by the sun (parsnips, napa cabbage, cover crops, lettuce, arugula).  The kale laughed and just kept growing.  

Cover crop mix: forage radish, Austrian field pea, winter rye

cover crop

Aji Cristal

Veg from the garden

salad from the garden

Harvested my first cultivated mushrooms ever.  Wine caps from some spore I put on woodchips under our Sweet Bay Magnolia tree in early summer.  Score.  I tried them because I read they were fairly easy to grow - a good beginner mushroom.  Seems to be the case.  

first mushroom harvest ever: wine caps