Garden Growth

 Some spring updates from the farm:

  Our February additions to the flock are growing! At nine weeks now, everyone is outside, with no light, and lots of room to roam. We've given them an unused shed and Donnie's been adding on to their run. These two are our trouble makers. Above, our sicilian buttercup is eyeing me up as I tried to put he back into the run. To the right is Morty, our polish (hen) sunbathing, clearly unaffected by my arrival. A few of these hens are for sale since we just do not need 15 new hens!

We've got lots going on in the garden. Peas, strawberries, oregano, chives, asparagus (for the first time is coming up nicely!!) and other greens are popping up.

Lots planted, lots in the green house! We are ready for this summers excellent veggies. This weekend we got some potatoes in the ground on one side of the yard and some squash in the other. 

Here's a few of the pictures of what's going on 

It was a little too sunny to take great pictures, but here's a few attempts.

The lovely chives on the left.

A terrible picture of our asparagus we cut this weekend. Any tough ends went to some very eager hens. Now we'll just wait patiently for new stalks to pop up where we cut these down. One already is from the cut I did last week. It's much larger too, SO happy we're finally doing the asparagus right!

Strawberries are flowering : ) We've got wild and planted strawberries all over the place in our yard. These are right next to the pea box. Hopefully, since its all fenced off those pain in the butt rabbits and deer won't get them this year!

Just a few more days and we will have ripe, red strawberries all over the place. What better way to take a break than snacking on strawberries fresh of the plant?

Above is our enormous oregano plant. It's sort of growing out of control at this point. Good thing we use a lot : ) 

If not we've got great plans to dry some out and use it all winter. Maybe next year we'll get around to controlling it some

Some of our tallest pea plants. Conveniently half of them were ruined by our adventurous pullets. But, we've still got a few dozen plants growing! Lotsa pea coming soon.

Just a few more days and we will have the beginning of our frutis and veggies.

The real arrival of springs comes with bleating lambs

April fools day was quite exciting for us. While they are almost a week late, we finally had our first lamb! Mom was still at work, and I was going out to see how everyone was doing. Nina was laying next to this little long legged fur baby. Our first little ram lamb! 

Nina is the perfect mom, just like last year. Her little lamb is sweet, quiet, and absolutely adorable! Especially in his grey sweater that Mom bought this past winter.. I'm pretty sure they are puppy sweaters, but it works. Don't worry, there are more cute lamb sweater photos below!!

 

  

Next mom up was Raindrop. By the time Mom was out there this morning at seven here baby was completely clean and already making little lamb bleats. Everyone easily moved into their individual pens with the shake of a little grain. As always she is a great mom to her little ,white female lamb. 

Olivia was last, for today, (Mellie is still expecting too) With her white female lamb. She's REALLY loud, and was not being cleaned or fed at all. So we stepped in to clean, warm her up and show her where to get the food. It took a little coaxing, and I had to squirt her in the face with milk before she finally latched on. Silly lamb was trying to suckle from my fingers. We'll keep an extra close eye on her, just to make sure she's nice and healthy. While being cute and loud, she's also wiggly. It was almost impossible to get a picture of her this time. The one of her lying down on the left was a small fall. She was back up and moving around within seconds. Maybe we'll name her wild thing.

Here are everyone's day two photos. Well minus Nina's baby. He's three days old. I went out and everyone was sleeping peacefully.  '
Not quite positive, but her little boy may be named Randy, unless of course anyone has any better names they'd like to offer up : )
The girls are still un-named. The picture below is little Raindrop's baby, I think she needs an elegant name.

 Everyone looks healthy and is eating. Even if Olivia needs a little coaxing to feed her noisy babe at times. We'll start looking for the perfect homes for our lambs soon, so if you are interested please contact us as soon as possible! We already have a few people who we've spoken to in interest of lambs. So hurry hurry!

As I've said, spring is finally here, these nice perennials popped up right off the front porch. It's nice to have a little color out there.