Wet


I'm grateful that we actually have temperatures in the 40s today - if this was snow our house would be buried up to the eaves. The pastures are turning into ponds, the tree wells about to overflow, and the pastured chickens are very, very soggy. According to the news, the wind will pick up in an hour or two, so I'm hoping the power doesn't go out (the sump pump has been going 24/7 since late last night, without it, the basement will fill up with water in a second) and the temps don't drop until the chickens on pasture dry out a bit. Yesterday was, finally, a nice spring day, and we all enjoyed it. Georgia ran around in her newest fashion accessory, courtesy of her Aunt Jo (and her awe-inspiring knitting skills) :


While she napped, we spent a few hours out in the gardens. It looks like the leeks will come back, at least most of them, and with a whole season to grow they should be ok. I still have a tray I'm keeping alive in the garage, as well as some extra seed, in case I need to replace any in the rows. I don't know about our first brassica plantings - they freeze-dried out there between the wind and all the frosts - but some are re-bounding. I'm trying to be patient with them... We planted onion sets yesterday, as well as our second round of mesclun (the first one is sprouting under a row cover), our first round of radishes and broccoli rabe, and a bed full of the rest of the cabbage seedlings. I spent a small fortune on row covers, so hopefully they'll afford a bit of protection from this northeaster. The warm weather seedlings, which should have been in the ground by now in a normal year, are struggling, but I've been fertilizing them with bloodmeal, bonemeal, kelp, and some dehydrated manure and they seem to be getting a bit more color. If it looks like we can't get them in the ground by Wednesday, I'll have to transplant them into even bigger pots.

We've had about half the flock on pasture for a week now, and so far so good. A few bold hens run through the electronet, shocks and all, to free-range, but I'm slowly but surely switching them out with hens who are more likely to stay put. We'll have about 50 birds in this set-up, and once we make some market money, will make a second movable coop and order another length of electro-net. Egg production is lower then usual, but we have a few weeks till market starts, and hopefully they will have adjusted to everything by then. One project slated for today was to make real next boxes for the pastured birds, instead of the jury rigged ones currently in place, but it's pouring so hard we can't get out and in there to measure or screw in the lumber. We did catch up on all the egg washing - one advantage to being totally housebound!
Although the pattern didn't arrive till after Easter due to postal service issues, my "big footed bunny" pattern finally found its way here and I was able to whip up two for Georgia and Alexandra. I tried the dress pieces, but I made the seam allowance a bit off, and they're a little too tight. I may still sew up some short pants for Georgia's...note last year's blue bunny. It's slow, but I'm definitely improving in the sewing department! I'm going to pick up a bit more around here, and then we're going to make a nice warm pancake feast for dinner, and watch some more of the TVD "Earl" episodes that we just got form Netflix.

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Posted: Sun - April 15, 2007 at 05:25 PM        

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