The conundrum of chickens.

Obviously I'm using old photos today given that this shows Boris and our old girls, but I wanted to talk about chickens, and letting them express their chickenness. There's a balance to be had as long as you don't have infinite money with chickens. It's the balance of safety versus comfort/freedom that comes up in many ways.

Continuing rapid changes.

This weekend we had a really nice time with a fire pit and a lot of good friends visiting, and in the interests of that, we got the cleaning of the yard that was so desperately needed done! It also reminded me of just how much I like cooking over wood, despite how inefficient it is over an open fire. I shifted things around in the fire pit to make a shielded cooking area with a radiating fire box, but it's still much cooler as a cooking surface than if I had a purpose built cooking area. Probably not a project for this summer, though it very well may be given some of the other changes around the house.

The biggest change is we now have a housemate. I offered to use an alias for him, but he's fine with just being himself. Lucas is now going to be living with us, and he's going to be working at one of the local stone quarries. He's the gentleman that provided the tools and expertise on building the stone floor in the kitchen, and in addition to being handy, he's indicated he'd like to help out around the property. With that, we'll see what becomes possible with more help around the property on a regular basis!

A season of reds and grays.

Sorry about not posting yesterday, we had some computer trouble which meant I couldn't edit photos to post. We're in the red and gray period of the year, and the orange netting over the chicken run really blends in a lot more than I expected it to. It won't soon enough, but right now it blends in just fine. As you can see the chickens really enjoy being out in it. One of our friends has offered an electric fence charger, and as soon as we can we're going to take her up on that.

Seedlings, starts, soil, and the winds of fortune.

It's a rainy, and kind of gross day with the volume of mud out there, but it is most certainly spring now. The Earth is beginning to thaw, and soon I think we'll start to see growing and living things even outside of our little indoor start. As you can see though, the indoor starts are doing quite well. I honestly should probably pot them up now since many of those little potlings have too many seedlings in them, and we don't want them to be entangled any more than they already are.