Welcome spring...

...we've been eager for you!!  Here's how we spent some of this first full day of spring:

Welcome little one!  The girls both got to see the first chick hatch.  There are a few more pips but this is the only one to hatch so far today (except another batch should be hatching under a hen in the composting chicken coop).

Chick hatching is exciting every time - never seems to lose its thrill.  The peeping kept the girls running back and forth from their play to cheering the chick on.  They were patient enough that they both got to enjoy the big moment!

It's planting time!!  Let's hope we are done with super hard freezes or long cold stints because we could not contain our eagerness any longer.  All the peas are in the ground - let's hear for sugar snap, snow and hull peas (I guess we should no longer exercise any restraint and eat the remaining ones in our freezer...)

Kali is amazing; she is picking up gardening at an alarmingly fast pace and seems to be enjoying the work and sunshine and new skills thoroughly (her dad is not all that sad about it either!).  

It never ceases to amuse me how quickly the free-ranging chickens flock to where Jason is if he is in a garden with a tool in hand.  They snatch up the worms as fast as he unearths them.

It was such a lovely, lovely day today but this picture is actually an attempt to show what Jason and Jonathan worked on some yesterday.  I'm actually happy they aren't super obvious...  We are adding electric fencing to a large area and all the posts are in and ready for the electric tape.  This will hopefully increase our squash and corn yields and enable us to plant more things outside the main garden fence this year.

The soil in our garden is continuing to get richer every year.  It amazes us to see the soil healing and becoming dark and rich and easy to work.  These first four beds have peas, the second rotation of four beds has spinach (and we'll fill in with lettuce tomorrow) and the last four beds has lots of weeds and some lettuce that made it through - we'll be filling in with spinach and we got one whole row filled with beets this evening).

And who would want to eat inside on a day like today. We enjoyed our first (of hopefully many) supper at the picnic table!  A lovely first day of spring - and I'm not even mentioning that I didn't have to get up to an alarm this morning and I got to enjoy a long midday walk with my sister-in-law, who also happens to be one of my favorite people.  A good day!  Now to fold the laundry...