15
Jun
2021

March on the Farm

A bunch of photos from March, plus a video. 

March was filled with prepping for our garden (starting the fencing project, starting seedlings, and planting a few things).

We also enjoyed watching our property wake up and starting to see green on our land for the first time (since we moved in right before winter).  

 

My dad made this chicken feeder and it’s funny to watch the chickens put their heads inside.

After the shell-less egg in February, and the chickens getting more calcium, that particular chicken started laying again. The eggs started off almost white in color and then progressively got darker each day until they were back to the normal brown.
These are in order of the day they were laid, front left to back second to right.
Our seeds that we planted at the end of February started sprouting!
We bought the fencing supplies for our garden area.
Aida caught a vole… the first time we witnessed the cat’s doing their rodent control duties.

Planting more seeds for our garden.

visiting LaRhea the chicken’s grave after the snow finally melted enough for us to see it again

Compost pile finally starting to get hotter
seeds sprouting and growing
On March 13th, we hit a milestone of our 100th egg!

The earth started waking up and we saw signs of spring on our property
Since this is our first year here, and we moved here in late fall/early winter, we had no idea what kinds of plants and such are growing on our land. One morning we discovered these green leaves/stems poking up through the grass in the garden area. We thought that maybe they were crocuses or daffodils.

 

Foggy evening
A few days later, we saw progress!
We were consistently getting 3 eggs a day now

Still spending lots of time in the tree fort
More signs of spring
One morning I came out to check on the chickens and saw that they had knocked down the containers where we keep the scratch and grit. They had never done that before so I was a little confused, thinking that they must be bored and trying to get into things…

Then when I let the chickens out to graze a bit, Beth was not interested in eating anything but was acting really strange. She just kept flying/jumping up onto the chicken coop and peeking in the windows. I thought it was so strange… I finally figured that maybe she wanted to go into the coop so I opened the door to let her in. She quickly ran in and went to one of the nesting boxes…and then I realized that the little door (that leads to the chicken run) at the back of the coop was still closed. It turns out that Jershon had let them out like he normally does, but he let them out the front and they followed him into the run…where he forgot to open the little door. So this whole time they had been out in the run with their food and water, but they couldn’t get into the coop. They were getting increasingly uncomfortable because they really wanted to get into the coop so they could lay their eggs. Haha.

The flower opened up! Daffodils!
Jershon takes the most flattering photos of me. haha. We started our garden fencing project.

In January we ordered a bunch of stuff for our garden… seeds, bare root berry bushes, fruit trees, flowers, etc. We knew that the shipments would start arriving sometime in March, and then on into May. So in Mid March, we got our first shipment – strawberry plants, a lilac bush, and some blackberry plants. We planted the 4 strawberry plants and lilac bush (and the black berry bushes)… only to realize the next day that what we thought was one strawberry plant was actually a bunch of 25 strawberry plants. So we had to dig the 4 up, and plant 100 strawberry plants. haha.
Still working on the garden fence project

Planting the lilac bush… which we realized a few days later was actually 10 lilac bushes. Haha. So just like the strawberries, we had to dig them up and plant 10 bushes. Someday we’ll learn how to read. 🙂
Ever since learning about my great-great-grandmother’s conversion story, I have wanted to have my own lilac bush someday. So I knew that would be one of the first things we planted on our land. I wanted to plant it in a more private place that would represent some of that sacredness of Thilda’s experience and perhaps foster revelatory experiences of our own someday when it is big and tall. So we planted the lilac bush near the chicken coop area… and then planted the other nine out front to act as a privacy buffer from the road.

 

Discovered onions already growing in our garden. They must be perennials.
It was fun to see the progression of the daffodils every morning.
Merv’s fur started to be pretty funny. He started shedding his puppy coat and winter coat… but for some reason didn’t shed it on the top of his head. So he started looking like a lion with a mane.
Seedlings growing fast!
Still working on that fencing

Recess break to cuddle with the kittens on the deck
The previous owners casually mentioned that there was some wild asparagus growing somewhere on the property… so when things started coming back to life in the spring, I started being on the lookout for anything that looked like it could be asparagus. I ran across a whole row of these purplish plants one day along the tree line next to our side pasture. I wondered if maybe it was asparagus at first but figured that it wasn’t. I didn’t know what it was though. (spoiler alert… we later found out that they were peony bushes).
Cat nap

Buds on one of the lilac bushes
Strawberry plants growing!

Planted our first fruit tree! This one is a fruit cocktail tree. It will produce nectarines, plums, and peaches on the same tree.

Watching the chickens graze

This tree (Honey Locust tree) is made up of giant thorns

Giant moon rising
Gorgeous sunrise
Towards the end of March, we started noticing a lot of giant bird activity in the sky. Hawks and Turkey Vultures. The first few days, it was kind of fun to watch them…

 

This is what happens when you have a million projects going on all at the same time. You end up with a ton of tomato seedlings (among a ton of other seedlings) that never got thinned out. I separated a lot of these out and transplanted them.
Evelyn enjoying the early morning sunshine
On March 30th, One of our chickens got attacked by a hawk. Miraculously the kids happened to be outside and heard the chickens going crazy. They ran over and saw the hawk in the chicken run trying to attack Sofia. I just happened to be walking outside at that moment (tender mercy) to get a bucket and the kids told me. I ran over with a stick and yelled at the hawk and it flew away. Sofia took some damage but she seemed to be doing pretty well and we were pretty sure that she would survive.

Lots of onions

Researched some cheap hawk control methods and decided to put up some brightly colored yarn across the top of the chicken run. So far, so good. We haven’t had any other hawk attack problems since.

 

End of March egg count: 146

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