Springing

Well... I started the year with a goal of two posts a week between Chicken Mama and myself. Hopefully we can get back on-track with that.

Spring is here! And has been for a month. According to the weather records, we had one night below freezing during the month of March. We hit 80 degrees for the first time on the Ides of March. Virtually everything is blooming early: the pear tree finished blooming a long time ago, the apples are blooming, even the poplar seems to be getting ready. A freeze at this point of the season si going to devastate a lot of crops.

We have also been springing into action. The last two weeks have been pretty much non-stop:

• Pruning all the fruit trees (a bit late, I know).
• Planting new apples trees!
• Fiddling with chickens, as usual.
• Going to south Georgia to pick up bees for the Beekeeper's Assoc. and re-starting our hives here.
• Desperately trying to get a proper feed bin built for the two tons of chicken feed that arrived a week ago.
• Hopefully the broiler chickens will go out on pasture today because the next batch should arrive from the hatchery on Friday.

It is all starting to look good now that we are catching up on a few things. The farm will look even better once we get the next project finished: building a moveable "egg mobile" for the birds we've been raising since Thanksgiving. Sales have been slower than expected so we may have quite an abundance of eggs soon...

All of the work is fun, but it gets stressful when so many time-sensitive things are happening all at once. I was talking with a friend from Church about how I hope next year will be a little easier because of the work we're cramming in right now. He said, "No, it never gets easier. Next year you're going to want to add more (expand)." He's right.

There are two things I really look forward to: (1) seeing this farm in a few years and (2) resting on Sundays!