Just a week!

This may seem like a very small thing to some people further south, but up here in the North, we are suitably amazed (or worried, about the warming?). This is OUTDOORS:

This is APRIL 16th, fer gosh sakes, not May or June. I've had camping trips snowed out in May around here. That's kale in my doorstep garden, just one week after planting...without any hot box help or anything else. It seems so early, but it HAS been really warm. Last Sunday the chickens alerted me to the fine texture and wonderful qualities of the dirt in that garden...

If you look closely here, you can see that the hen's flinging dirt at the rooster...They love to dust bathe anywhere they can find loose dirt, which includes any garden plot we haven't yet fenced. My small perennial garden looks like an iris jail, but the fencing has been effective so far. Today WF fenced off the rhubarb, which was getting pecked to death. The tender kale sprouts are nicely fenced, now. That didn't keep Lutsen from exploring the wrong side of the fence, but she got plucked out quickly and told the error of her ways.

Another sign of spring is an instinct kicking in for one of our hens: broodiness!


We knew that this breed was prone to brood, which can be a good thing at the right time. But we're not feeling ready, with no place for another round of young chickens to live. This hen has other ideas, and is not deterred easily. We've tried taking her out of the nest whenever we see her in there, but she walks around with the fluffed neck of annoyance, then goes right back in. There's been a bit of debate about if we should let her sit, and a bit of guilt for taking away her eggs during this time of spring and rebirth and egg-centric fertility. But luckily these hens are quite tame and she's not gotten mean. We probably need to get more determined to make her change her mind, with some sort of "broody coop" wire cage, but we're not that equipped at this time. Ah, life... it gets a little harder to gather eggs when one of the chickens decides that she WANTS some of them. Hmmm....

I suspect, once again, that we're a touch soft-hearted for this. Wonder why...



(Not a regular occurrence, just tonight's performance during WF's attempts to get them all back in the coop. Guess she likes heights!)