"There comes a point in the spring when winter is finally over and one can dream of things to come. Making plans for the garden, ordering seeds, the spring air is refreshing, birds are singing announcing to all who will listen that there are good things to come, warmer weather, spring rains & flower blossoms. Here the often caprices and unpredictable Mother Nature has sworn an oath to thoughtless alliance with those who are best able to serve her. They apply themselves year after year, to extract the perfection from the potential which she provides.” ~
Haut-Brion The Film

This means having the patience and wisdom to wait when others are planting, tilling & fertilizing. Knowing when is the right time for you and your land. Even more important is being ready to act when the time is right.

The warmer weather in early April brought a relief and a opportunity to get some soil prep work done much earlier than last year. We have started our seedlings at this time and have had some good results so far. Mostly tomatoes and peppers as seedlings but I’ve already planted some peas and potato. They went into the ground after lots of amending to the soil.

I’ve tilled the ground after the frost was over. Then added manure and tilled again. Added compost and tilled again. And just to make sure I’ve tilled the gardens about a dozen times. We get our manure from a great farm that uses the manure to fuel their methane powered farm. The manure is cooked at such a high degree that virtually all the weed seeds are destroyed.

The plan for this year is not much different than last year. To put it simply, the idea is to grow organically & healthy food and preserve as much food as possible by either freezing or canning. Oh and this year we plan on installing a windmill for “homemade” electric energy.

This year we will be more prepared for the apple & pear harvest. (At least that is our hope) We plan on making apple cider in addition to apple/pear sauce, jams & jelly's, pies and anything else my lovely wife comes up with.

The Signs of Spring

Well 2 weeks ago our farm looked like this...

Snow and muck and then mud...

Frost in the morning. You cold still see your breath and we were (ok I was. Trinity was just as happy to go out and make a snowman or snow angels as she always ways) REALLY really REALLY ready for spring.

Now... the snow has melted and I'm seeing the signs that spring is here.

First sign that spring is here...

A caterpillar crawling across the brown grass.

Another sign that spring is here is that the snow for the most part has melted. Looking out over our land there is only a few spots of snow left. Last week we had 40 degree weather that was continual over a week. The fog was like pea soup and the mud was gross, but it sure melted the snow in a hurry.

You can see a bit of white in the background.. it is an area that doesn't get much due to the trees.

BUT more exciting is that I can see the garden. We are already planning on this summer's crop.

In fact we have a few seedlings started in the basement already!

Another sign of spring...

Tulips are starting to shoot out. (hope it doesn't snow a foot next week)

One SURE fire way to predict that Spring is TRULY here and not just a quick thaw before we get walloped again.. the birds. I heard the red-wing blackbird today and then I saw it!!

The One thing that makes my heart soar!

The robin!! Not only did I see one, I saw 3!!! I was only able to photograph one, but trust me on this, there was THREE!!

Yep they wouldn't be back unless spring was here to stay.

And one of my favorite things about this year's spring is our rooster Boo-Boo Chicken.

He just loves struting his stuff for the hens in the sunshine and crowing up a storm.

A surprise for us this spring was Bunny. Who is bunny you ask?

Well bunny was a beautiful chicken. We ordered a special breed that lays colored eggs and not the brown you are thinking,,, but they lay greenish or blueish eggs. We hopeed to have a dozen ready by Easter. WELL... she turned out to be a he.

YEP! Bunny is a rooster and he is as twidderpated as the next rooster.

So Trinity asked me why is Bunny jumping on that chicken. I replied that Bunny wanted a piggyback ride. To which she replied... "Well it isn't a very fun piggyback ride. That chicken isn't moving... "

It's ALL my Fault!!

So... last night at about 10:30 pm, Daryl asked me how the babies were.
The "babies" are the newest batch of egg layers that we received about 3 weeks ago. Of course when we got them the weather was pretty darn cold, so we made a makeshift area for them in the basement. Both Trinity & Blossom (our cat) thought that was the neatest thing EVER!!


Trinity would check on them every day. And talked to them constantly, "Baby Chickens it is time to go to bed now!" or "The baby chickens are making noise because they are happy I am home now." Or my favorite, "Baby Chickens stop making all that noise I'm trying to eat my lunch!!" All yelled down the stairs from the kitchen.

Blossom would just sit in the basement watching the little fluff balls and thinking "cat thoughts". She never bothered them, but I'm sure if one had gotten out and started running she would have pounced!

Sunday we cleaned the coop. We took all the nasty sawdust out. Screened it for poop to add to the compost pile and disposed of all the sawdust to be used later this spring after the snow melts. It was a smelly, dusty and icky job (as usual...). Then with the nice new area set up we moved the babies to the coop. They were a little freaked out and I think are still huddled in the corner.

The Rhode Island Reds adjusted to the cleaning of the coop with no problem, but of course this isn't their first time. The Barred Rocks didn't want to come back in the coop. They didn't know what was happening so we had to chase them in. They had been out in the yard and their poor feet were covered with cold mud.

This is Boo-Boo Chicken! He is named after Donald Duck's chicken on the new Micky Mouse Clubhouse cartoon. He is our only rooster at this time. Beautiful isn't he...

Darn hard to catch too. Need to get a "chicken catching tool..." I have no idea what that might be, but I'm sure there is something out there. :-D

SO... back to last night. When Daryl asked me how the babies were I realized that I hadn't been out to the coop all day. (It had been a very busy & stressful day). And I also realized that meant no one had closed up the coop for the night. Now this is not the first time that has happened, but nothing bad has happened before....

Daryl comes back to the house and says, "Kris get your boots on and come out. We have a problem!!" I grabbed my camera and this is what we found in the coop.

Yep a Redtail hawk! Beautiful isn't it?!? The thing didn't make a noise. I went in with a shovel to push or steer it towards the door so it could escape (and YES, Daryl wanted to shoot it first, but I talked him out of it). I approached the bird and it just sat there with its wings expanded. And when I touched it with the shovel.... well... it fell over. Yep, just fell over and lay on its back. We think the bird is young and just over stuffed it self on our chicken.

Daryl came in and picked it up and we carried it outside. Thing never made a noise, but it did poise nicely for the pictures!! We actually set it by the garage first on some bricks. But then we were afraid that if it was their when our house guest returned home, it might get run over. So we put it on the deck and there it stayed all night till this morning when it finally flew away. It flew off when Daryl looked out the door at it.

SO the moral of this story.... Close up the coop at night and hawks (and other predators) can't get in and eat your chickens. But it is still cool. The only thing that would have been cooler... finding a Bald Eagle or an Owl in the coop.

All things organic are NOT created equal!!

If you have been following our blog, you will know that we found a place to buy organic chicken feed, but the drive time is 4 hrs (round trip). SO in an effort to save money, gas and time Daryl has been researching and calling feed mills that are closer to us. Well we found one.

Yeah!! It is only 40 min round trip and the price is actually a little cheaper. It is a win-win situation... Right? Well.. not so much. As soon as we opened the bag we could see that the quality was not as good. And the list of ingredients... "Organic Plant Material" What?!?! Organic plant material? Heck I could grind up grass and say that.

We also noticed a decrease in egg production. Now we did expect some drop in egg production due to the winter lack of light. (Chickens need like 12 hrs of light to help them produce eggs), but even the lack of sun light didn't fully explain the lack of eggs. We went from getting 12 eggs a day from our 12 birds to 7 or 8 eggs a day (and sometimes less).

Our theory is that the feed mill realized that people were asking for organic feed, but really didn't understand the what and why of that request. They probably looked around for something that was similar in price, not realizing that those of us that are serious about organic and natural food are willing to pay more for better quality. So, back to driving 4 hrs for food. We are going to go to this close mill though and see if we can get them to order from the same place as our other guy.
The list of ingredients on the good stuff:
Organic grain, Organic corn, organic soy, etc... Each item listed out