Happy Spring! Time for cleaning and snow.

Happy Spring! As you probably know there's been some significant snow fall up here. It was quite a transition for us since it was warm and rainy on Saturday followed suddenly by snow on both Sunday and a Monday.

Poultry petting as the grass shows.

Yes, this is a picture from this week. In fact, it's even less winter like today than it was when these photos were taken by the Lady of the House. Of course, there is prediction that there will be snow tomorrow, and Tuesday so we'll see how that actually goes. If we actually get snow that'll be fine, if not I expect the last of the snow on the front slope garden beds to be gone entirely by next week. Either way the poultry are enjoying the green, and chances to make their way around and eat anything they can find.

Kits, brooding hens, and planning for an overwhelmingly busy season.

I figured I'd open with a good shot of Dawn's Daughter's kits. Still searching for a name for her by the way so if you have any suggestions pass them on. As you can tell they are doing well. What I don't have is solid weight charts because this weekend was crazy busy, and I neglected to get weights. This morning was also a running way behind day so I don't have them from today either. I'll try to get back to that tomorrow, but no promises since there are some changes going on right now.

Before I move on to everything else though I figured I'd mention that Streak who bred with Remington Steel had her kits. She had 3 big kits, one of whom was born dead. A second of them died Sunday, probably pulled out on the wire still latched on which is unfortunate. With the other deaths in the shared nest with Splash, the nest as a whole is down to  7 between both. Twilight's nest on the other hand is going strong with 7 kits that are doing Just fine as we expect from Twilight. They're big, strong, and move too fast for me to get any decent photos of them to share today for which I am sorry. I'll try to have photos of Twilight's babies for Thursday, but again, no promises.

Chickens in the sun, eggs, and a patient dog.

The Chickens in a further sign of spring have found an open patch of ground that I didn't even clear off to do their thing on. Their thing right now seems to mostly be wandering around, pecking anything the wind moves, and sunning themselves which is a nice thing they've clearly missed. Right now the Chickens are all sorts of good news which is nice given how worried I was about them making it through the winter.

Starting the first seeds, inside.

I'm going to start by giving a shout out of thanks to our first patron on Patreon, I promise I won't say something every single time someone sponsors us on the blog, but I'm very happy that our first day on Patreon we have a patron.

So, now that spring has sprung, it's time to get started with planting, well, not out here yet, but let's take a look at our planting areas and what they look like at the moment before starting the first plantings. Above is where the garlic is right now. As soon as the snow melts we're going to have to pull up the paper we put down to protect the beds. There's also a few other random beds down the slope that had tomatoes and peppers last year, so this year they are going to have radishes and the like.

The start of something new

Life has taken a lot of turns lately for good and ill, and we've come to a  lot of transition points lately. As we hit a natural transition here on the homestead, the blog has also come to a transition that I've resisted for a few years now. Monetization. Fortunately given new options, it isn't going to be advertising. Before I get into that though, let's look at where the homestead is right now. Obviously a lot of the core of what's going on right now is the rabbits, so let's start there.

Mud season has (sort of) begun!

Today was a landmark morning for us, this somewhat unremarkable picture of a very happy Dorado shows something we haven't seen for a while. A water bottle with liquid water in it that hadn't been brought in over night. It's a wonderful change, and while we aren't going to be able to do that over the weekend, it's a very nice step towards "real" Spring.

A real taste of spring, preparing for melt.

Spring has shown its first signs as far as we're concerned, believe it or not. How do I know? Dorado is drinking from a water bottle that was out overnight. Not all of the water bottles stayed liquid over night last night, but most of them did, and had been liquid all day. Yesterday hit almost 40° F, and it stayed just below 30 last night. Of course today it's dropping all day, and it's going to be below 0° F overnight so we won't do the water outside thing again, but it's still nice!

The passing of the darkest Solstice.

The year is continuing to go on pace, and as of Sunday night the 21st at ~23:00 it was the darkest night of the year. Mix that with the new moon and it was very much a dark night to the darkest day of the year. But that means that the sun is coming.  I figured the use of the piece from the Lady of the House of the Raccoon counting out the time of Earth and Moon made sense for the time oriented post.
Something I was proud of on this darkest night of the year, it was the first time this year that I managed to not only keep the fire going all night to the point it was easy to start in the morning, it was a warm fire all night long. As of this point I've had the fire going non stop since the 21st, even when I've been gone to work for 10+ hours at a time with the fire untended. I thought it was a good progress marker at the darkest day of the year.



Now is the time of the year that we are in the dark, and looking towards the sun. The big difference the 23rd instead of the 20th is that now, we are starting to look to Spring instead of fight with how to make it through winter. We're starting to think about when to breed, when to plant, and what we're going to have time and energy for. It's a symbolic day, but symbols are important, especially when you live as close to the season as we have started to.

Happy Solstice.

Walking through what's left in the garden

Our rabbits are convinced they are abused, ignored, and mistreated. After all, we haven't given them enough pellets to be round in their obesity. Given that it isn't healthy for any creature to be as fat as they want to be they won't be getting every thing they want. Actually in rabbits it's particularly bad because when obese female rabbits won't produce kits beyond other health problems that come with it, thus rabbit weight is something we focus on.

Side note, the Lady of the House is now 36 weeks pregnant, and at any time we may go radio silent for a few days to a few weeks to address, well, having a child born. But for now, we're still here, and focusing on the final stages of the garden and winter prep.

First use of the vacuum packer, and new chickens!

Let's start in reverse order of the title, chickens first! No small part of this being that chickens are more photogenic than vacuum packing rabbits! So, these are our two new girls that are with us thanks to the generous help of friends of a friend in the chicken community. Turns out there was a chicken convention not far from us this past weekend! If we'd known we'd have gone, so maybe next year we'll make our way there.

Transferring seedlings, seedling station, and a dog encounter in this busy spring.

As is expected for spring a huge amount is going on around the homestead. Some of it expected and some unexpected. As you can see the babies are growing well and rapidly, but a couple of them had a scary adventure yesterday morning!

Starting seeds inside, and the garlic sprouting outside.

We begin today with the traditional bribery of cute rabbit photos before going on to talk about gardening later. The babies continue to do well, and are very sociable. They have definitely been harrying Twilight though, much to her frustration. At least she has stopped kicking them the entire length of the hutch as she goes by!

Baby rabbits and a barred owl visitor!

Spring is here! Snow is melting and we can see the ground in a number of places. Ignore the fact that there's still foot deep snow in plenty of places, we can see the ground! We can start getting frost hearty plants in the ground as soon as I can jam a shovel through it! And obviously with this warmer weather combined with their age, Twilight's babies are coming out of the nest on their own to harass her!

Spring is coming!

I can tell because the driveway is almost clear of ice on the actual driving surface, and the average level of snow is a little below knee deep rather than a little above knee deep. It is warm and pleasant outside by comparison, and the mist is epic. Obviously with the indicators of spring's impending arrival we are excited about a whole bunch of things, and our minds are whirling with how to most efficiently handle everything we need to do while still both working full time plus.

Coop planning part 3, cost cutting

In day to day life it is somewhat difficult to think how soon the coop will need to be built and go into action, but there are reminders. Up where we live there is still plenty of snow actually on the ground, and seeing the dirt below it is unusual. When we come down to the valley though I am reminded that while winter isn't over for sure, spring is around the corner. Snow is gone less than 10 miles from our house, and soon it will be mud season.