catching up...

We ordered our chicks a week late so that we'd have enough time to get everything ready after the snow finally melted. We were worried that it might get too hot for them going a week later into the summer. We didn't think we'd lose so many chicks early on because they've smothered each other trying to stay warm! We're down to 276 after 3 weeks - AND - the 100 chicks that should have been moved up to our friends' coop have not been moved yet, so it's getting a leetle crowded and (if you don't know anything about chickens) they do not have the best toilet ettiquette so it's getting pretty nasty. Turning up the fans to ventilate the extra ammonia wouldn't be a problem IF IT WEREN'T SO STINKIN' COLD! Next year we're doing this in the fall. It will be warm when they're young and need warmth - it will be cooling off as they get big and fat. We won't be working against the weather - trying to keep them warm when it's cold and cool as it gets hot.

This is just a picture of one of our lovely lightweight Lakenvelder hens. I love these little foragers and their small white eggs. Those broiler eat a TON. These hardly eat any feed at all.

Now, usually you need to protect young trees from rabbits in the winter. We have a 5yo apricot tree that was past that point, but thanks to the snow, the rabbits got to enjoy the upper branches of our tree. This is 8-feet up, people!

I think the poor tree is dying so it's trying like mad to reproduce, which means there will be a million apricots for us this year (I hope - will these ripen or will the tree abort them before they're ready?)

Speaking of produce that I don't know anything about, I have my rhubarb plants in a horrible place. I harvested my two plants and made one big strawberry-rhubarb crisp before they bolted. This doesn't mean I have to start over, though - I can transplant this, can't I?

In another part of the yard, our raspberry patch (everbearing yellow) was flattened by a snowdrift, and it looks like we're just going to have a huge mat of raspberry that's going to require some dividing and conquering in the fall.

Finally, I have a picture of a hole in a willow tree. There are a few of them from woodpeckers - or maybe a flicker. I just think it's amazing that a bird can make a hole so perfectly round like that, don't you?.