Spring Sunday
Despite doing the WORST task on our little spread this morning (deep-cleaning the coop it’s the worst - so much dust and sweat as we shovel bedding into tractor bucket after bucket), the day turned out fabulous. Sunshine and the promise of more ahead. Over the next month we will be getting most everything planted - it will be a busy gardening season with lots of remaining infrastructure work, as we need to create and install our new irrigation solution and will need planting holes burned into hundreds of feet of landscape fabric, then we have a greenhouse to assembly and a chicken run fencing and netting to re-secure. Boy, I sure am glad Steve is “retiring” in a few weeks!
Nastiest job, but now it is so much cleaner and can air out even more. That little yellow hen was injured earlier this week - she escaped from a hawk. She has a few pretty nasty cuts and lost a LOT of feathers in the process. We had her sequestered in the garage for a few days, but moved her out to the coop two days ago. She is a fiesty little gal, and I have seen her drink at least a little water. But her injuries might be bigger than we are hoping, because she has not had any appetite. And while she CAN walk, she really doesn’t do much of it. We are okay as long as the other birds don’t start pecking at her (it’s an animal thing.) I’m afraid I am giving her less than 50% odds at this point. But she’s doing her best!
We had to surgically remove the top crust of their outer run, which was rock-hard with old straw and uneaten food. Smelly stuff!
Meanwhile, in the pics below, Sammie is checking out the new swing that his father built for him. Mostly he’s just interested in the horn-scratching potential of the new toy.
Three hens digging for who-knows-what in my still-empty front porch planter.
Baby lilacs are waking up.
So many dandelions, which do not bother me at all, since the bees love them. I’m holding out from mowing for as long as possible.
Pretty soon! We killed off the grass between the beds, because we are laying our integrated irrigation system down and then covering the pipes with much. The rectangle of dead grass along the bottom is where the grape arbor will go.
One of the espalier fruit trees in the garden.
Steve’s welding of our broken tiller tine was declared a success, as he was able to till the garden beds with no problem.
And the asparagus has started waking up!
This variety is purple.
You can see the pieces of the irrigation system Steve will be installing soon. Fingers crossed!
