chicks and sprouts

283 chicks from a Nebraska hatchery arrived this morning. They'll be cute and fluffy for about a week. Then they'll start feathering out and gaining weight obscenely quickly and we'll wonder why we're doing this as we water and feed them daily for the next six weeks. Then we'll fill our freezer with delicious farm-fresh 5-6 pound broilers (and our checking account for the ones we sell) and we'll be thankful that we can do this for ourselves, our family, and our friends.

We're brooding them all together, but when they're fully feathered, 100 will go 3 miles north to our friends' coop. We have room for 175 and the hatchery sends one extra per 25 chicks, so there are 11 bonus chicks. At least that many will die...



Now, a question for anyone out there reading this. This has never happened to me before, but this is only my second year starting seeds indoors. I am obviously Polish:

These are buttercup squash and half of them germinated upside down...roots growing up; leaves unfolding under the soil. Is it possible to plant seeds upside down? This one just had roots sticking up out of the ground. I gently unearthed it to find the leaves growing down:

Everything else has started growing correctly...except for the bell peppers and eggplant, which haven't germinated yet. They took longer last year, too. I'm really excited about my Armenian Cucumbers. They're actually melons that taste like cucumbers! Three more weeks before we can (safely) plant the garden!