It's Cold Out There!

The weather here as been pretty cold as we have not had this much freezing temps since records have been kept in our area. Plant growth is minimal especially with the rainy days. But, this is exactly what climatologist predicted with an "El Nino" Year...cold and wet. Soil temperatures are about 59 F and might be too cold for our corn to germinate. It is hard to predict; some days it gets almost up to 80 F and then it is near 34 F the next morning.

We had one more chicken start laying eggs. We are at four out of five chickens laying now. It really is great fun to gather up the eggs and bring them home and see the egg container filling up instead of getting empty.

We are continuing to plant some of the cool season vegetables like the cole crops, mustards, bok choi. I planted some chard to see how that would do. We didn't have much luck two years ago. I am also having much better looking spinach this year. I tried the variety Bloomsdale on a recommendation from the feed store. So far it looks like this crop might work for us. We had really bad luck two years ago on this as well. I really think that variety selection and planting date are two of the biggest factors to work with on a successful crop.

The Dixie Chicks Lay Eggs!

Finally! After waiting about 9 months we finally have a few eggs to show for it. The chickens have started laying their beautiful brown eggs. We still don't have a camera so we couldn't take pictures but they were perfect size Grade A and tasted great. Jenn got breakfast in bed with fresh oranges and the kids shared her two egg omelet with fresh picked organic scallions and salami. Nate and Anna gobbled it up and wanted more but I had to tell them that there was only two eggs this time. It is amazing how excited we are over a few eggs, but we are all glad for the Dixie Chicks, as talk was increasing about how tasty they might be if they didn't start laying soon.

We have been planting some corn and beans at the farm this last week. We will be trying about a half dozen varieties and about three major types from fresh corn, popcorn, and flour corn. All these will be grown organically and I am starting early to get a jump on the pests. We also planted Contender and Provider snap bean to see how they will do early on in the season.