Good Bye WINTER!

Hello Spring? Meteorological Spring began on March 1st and Astronomical Spring began March 20/21st, depending on your time zone.  Someone forgot to tell mother nature.

The longstanding rules for March are relatively simple:
1.  The crocus and daffodils will make their presence known just about the time you want to start crying into your snow shovel.

2. The magnolias will bloom one gorgeous morning quickly followed by a windstorm that will rip them to shreds faster than you can grab your camera. (As I type, winds are howling to 40 mph and will make it to 50 later.)

3.  Said winds and milder temperatures will make you want to go out and fly a kite, at which point they will either stop for the rest of the month, or will pick up to speeds that will drag you and your kite into the next county. (Although, that's not a big trick for us.)

4. In like a lion and out like a lamb..OR..Vicey Versey

5.  Little girls will be out and about in their frilly Easter dresses and new white shoes and tights and it will be snowy or muddy on Easter.  You could move Easter to the end of July and this will still apply.

6.  There will be three measurable snowfalls after the forsythia bloom.

See?  Those are fairly simple.

So last week I was cutting through the yard after pruning the apple and maple trees, trimming the deadfall off of last summer's  perennials, and I spied them.  There were only two, but they were there.  That was Thursday. On Saturday, the day of the Spring Scouting Camping trip, the boys were greeted with snow showers.  Not an all day event.  Not even a wide spread event.  No, it was one of those days were you could watch individual snow and graupel showers pass by over a neighbor's field, but not your own.

  One minute you could be standing in blinding sunshine, the next the skies would grow dark and the neighbor would be watching the snow fly on your place.  It made for some stunning photos. It made for interesting camping.

On Sunday, we decided to change our scenery a bit and head out and visit a long advertised Consignment Sale.  Every year Lodge 389 of the ZCBJ holds an enormous sale, with the benefits going towards the lodge.  If you cannot find it there, it doesn't exist!  8 rows of stuff 1/3 to half mile long each!  The walk from the car matches and exceeds that, but it is so worth it if for no other reason than to people watch and experience the bidding action.

There are three auctioneer trucks that resemble open sided food trucks.  The auctioneer stands inside and auctions off either one item, or a lot of items.  When bidding is done, the truck simply pulls forward, the crowd following.  It was a blast!  The auctioneers each had their own style, but all of them made calling sound like singing.  I LOVE IT!

One particular GIANT combine was fun to watch.  The thing was pristine even though it was 20 years old.  I HAD to watch to see how much it went for.  The bidding started at $25,000, but had no bidders.  It was lowered to $15,000 and went up from there.  Two older gentlemen, no strangers to country auctions, nodded their heads almost imperceptibly to raise the bid.  I swear I didn't even blink for 10 minutes.  Doc said he had an itch on his nose, but didn't DARE to move to scratch it.  To our, and everyone else's amazement, the combine sold for only $18,500!!!!  UNBELIEVEABLE!

There were ducks, rabbits, chickens, peacocks, miniature horses, goats, implements, junk, cars,

campers, boats, trailers, firewood, just an unbelievable amount of EVERYTHING!

We walked miles and miles.  We didn't buy anything but lunch, which was amazing!  Hot dogs, hamburgers (from Franks Smokehouse in Wilbur), pork sandwiches, soda, chips, and KOLACHES!  If you've never had a kolaches, think of it as a flattened brioche bun with a dimple of deliciousness in the center.  The filling can be poppy seed, coconut, blueberry, cherry, cream cheese, pineapple, apple, you name it.  It's the Czechoslovakian version of a little Danish roll.  I love them.  The women of the lodge start baking them weeks before the sale and wrap and freeze them.  I missed out on my coconut one, but was perfectly happy with my cream cheese, and Doc with his blueberry. 

I highly recommend visiting the sale if you are in the area this time next year.


Daisy update. 
She has just finished sitting for her 8th day.  She hasn't kicked any eggs out of the nest yet.  She gets up a couple of times of day to eat and poo.  A few of those times, Meriwether will go and sit on the eggs, but quickly gets off when grumpy Daisy returns.  Olive tried to babysit today, but refused to get off.  We had to move her to let Daisy back on.  Broody begets more broodys.  But I HOPE not in this case.

I am going to try to candle eggs the next time she gets off this weekend.

She's doing great.  Even when our temperatures dropped into the low 20s two nights in a row.  She just loaded up on food and hunkered down.  I made sure to feed her lots of mealworms as a good girl treat.


Acreage Update

I ordered 10 cu yards of fabulous composted earth from the local county composting site.  I got some last year with some incredible results.  This year I needed to repair some horrible landscaping errors by that landscaper we hired last year.  I also needed to fill in some problem areas in the yard due to years of neglect and erosion.  I used the tractor to move giant piles of dirt to the approximate locations, but the final spreading and feathering had to be done by hand.  After 5 hours of that, I could feel no part of my body, but everything hurt at the same time.  We are expecting rain, which should settle it all down some for me to rough it up a tad and throw some clover seed down.

I also purchased a drag harrow for the back of the small lawn tractor, or the large one, to drag compacted places in the hayfield to break up the sod a bit so that I can throw some forage seed down to continue to soften the soil and add nutrients as well.

I get all my seed from stock seed farm,which I cannot recommend highly enough!

I also purchased four large red bud trees for somewhere in the pasture, and a pussy willow, whose home I have yet to figure out.

The barn and garage have both had a thorough spring cleaning.  The yard ornaments are back in their fair weather locations.  The patio furniture is all out.  See rule #2,#3, and #6.  Yes, snow and a windstorm are coming.  Sigh. 

The Repeat Offender

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Yup.  That's our Daisy again.  She's a habitual broody.  She is now officially a hen, but just barely.  It seems she's gone broody every 3 months since the day she hatched.

 

I made a promise to the flock that the first one to go broody at the end of March or beginning of April would be allowed to hatch the newest additions to the flock.  Meriwether is my proven broody.  She's a sweet, patient hen, and a good and caring mother.  Daisy is unproven in this field.  She is persistent though, I'll give her credit for that.

 

Yes, I DO have an incubator.  In fact, the last hatching ended on Monday. Tuesday we caught Daisy sitting all day in a nest box, flattened out, growling and hissing like a vampire being shown the dawn.  I much prefer my own chicks be hatched and raised by a broody.  She hatches, knows when there's a bad egg, raises the chicks, shows them how to hunt, and integrates them into the flock. DEAL!

 

A quick text to a fellow poultry breeder down the road and I was headed home with 4 maran eggs, 4 cream leg bar eggs, and 2 quarts of ice cream. (I had to stop at the pizza place, it's right there! I'm pretty sure it's the law.).

 

Sure, I could have thrown my own fertile eggs under Daisy, but this go around, I'm adding a little genetic diversity to the flock.  I need another Maran rooster.  Zap is tired keeping up with all the henfolk, racing from one end of the acreage to another when the flock splits up.  Using one of his offspring as another rooster could end up being a genetic crap shoot down the road.  So new blood it is.

 

I also added an Olive egg, which should yield an even DARKER laying olive egg hen, and a Meriwether egg, which will give me a generation 1 olive egg bird, hopefully with its mom's sweet nature.

 

I set the eggs in a carton, in a bag over night.  This will allow any air cells that jiggled loose in the trip to settle and the bag will hold the humidity in.  (We're in fire season and the RH is hovering at 20%)

 

First thing in the morning when I let the flock out, I was please to see that Daisy was still ensconced in her box, pretending to be invisible, but ready to rip my hand off should I see through her disguise.  She was sitting in the bottom center box, which is a heavily used box.  I placed all the marked eggs into the upper right box, and pulled her from her toasty place. 

Usually this is where my broody hens hop back in to the egg filled nest.  Daisy took this as her morning alarm clock, stretched, and BOLTED out the door!  This is usually what she does when she is just PLAYING at broody. She will then play all day and sleep in the next box at night, like it's a Holiday Inn Spa.

 

I immediately became worried that this was another of her fake outs.  While I pondered the fate of the newly placed eggs: cake, cookies, or omelet, I heard a spine chilling growl and saw Zap try to approach Daisy.  She inflated to over twice her size, put her wings out and let out another growl.  Zap backed off and chased Lucy around the coop instead.

 

Daisy blessed the yard with one of those famous broody poops, started eating like a madwoman and then raced back into the run.  She then ate a ridiculous amount of feed and then filled up at the water trough.  Regaining her composure, she waddled up the ramp and stood in the doorway where she preened, and preened, and preened until EVERY feather was just right.

 

I picked her up and showed her the box full of eggs and she settled right in to her lumpy mattress. 

About an hour later, I went out to kick the web camera again, and found Daisy back in her bottom center box.  Well, if that's where she wants to be, then that's the spot.  I handed her each egg one by one, while she tucked them under her in their proper place.  And that's where she sits.

 

Later, when she is more attached to her job, we'll move her to the broody house. We decided to reassign the little City Bitty Coop as such.  It gives the broody hens a quiet place to spend the day without being bothered, or sat upon, by other hens.  After the chicks are a couple of days old, she'll come out with them and start playing with the rest of the flock.  Eventually, she'll return with them to the main coop, like they were always there.

 

 

In 21 more days, we should have a little parade of fluff butts.