Monthly Archives: April 2012

Harem

Burn Day

Today, with some help from John’s friend Mike, we hauled and burned almost all of the scotch broom from the Neutral Zone.

A load, all piled up in the farm truck.

Burning two fires at once… We got rid of a few piles of blackberry vines, too!

The 5 acre pasture truly looks like a pasture again. We started working on the broom the first weekend in February, so it’s taken us just 3 months of weekends and a few weekdays (especially John.. Thanks, Dad!!) to make this much progress. Well done, team!

Kale and Hearty

Earlier this spring, we planted tow packets of old kale seeds in the south end of our hugelkultur. Being very cold resistant, they came up nicely. So nicely, in fact, that they were completely squeezed together, and required severe thinning.

Thinning is a thing I am terrible at doing, not having the necessary indifference to the tiny plant lives I’m throwing away. I just couldn’t make myself throw out so many, so instead, I replanted them. ALL of them.

So now we have an entire 20ft hugelkultur stocked full of kale seedlings! We’ll be rich with Kale in another month.

A Sailing Coop

After about a month of work, the rebuilt chicken coop in the barn is finally DONE!!! It has a new floor, new walls, a new door, new nest boxes, new roosts, patches in the chicken wire, and the coolest sliding hatch door ever:

Rich put his boating skills, and materials, to work and installed this sliding door, that works on a pulley system. We can open and close the door without going outside, or into the coop!

The little girls are learning how to roost on the new roosts Rich installed… all cozy and warm behind the new insulated walls.

The girls, all lined up and waiting for the door to be opened so they can go back inside.

And, bonus, the girls are getting bigger and braver, and I’ve been able to teach a few of them to climb up on me and visit (in return for some tasty mealworms, of course).

Spring Chickens

The weather has been absolutely miserable the last few days, and we haven’t felt all that motivated to go out and work on the farm much. In fact, if I do go out, mostly all I want to do is stand around watching chickens, it seems.. it’s so calming! We moved the chicks out of the bathroom and into their lovely new coop a week ago, and it’s fantastic! They all seem to be getting along just fine, and it’s great to only have to go one place to care for all of them.

Talina, feeding Shorty mealworms from her hand – we’ve got Nanny Ogg eating out of our hands, now, too. Those mealworms must be pretty tasty!

The whole flock, enjoying themselves in the yard during a brief moment of sunshine.

This Buff Brahma chick is taking the whole ‘dust bath’ concept to a new, muddy conclusion.

A photo of the girls, all 9 of them, the first moment they discovered that the door led to The Outside. Now they’re used to the concept and they love it!