Oh, and then it's spring on the farm...

We'll top off this record-blog-posts-in-one-day with some spring home, garden and animal updates! Right now we are very much enjoying having my Great Aunt Eleanor with us while my parents are in Florida. She always inspires me to keep writing this blog, because she spends a lot of her visit reading through the printed books of it. And she also sees our place through eyes of deep admiration and gratitude and awe,  soaking in the beauty of this place in a way that makes me yearn to do the same! More on her visit in a later post!

Potatoes are IN (and lots of rocks OUT)!!! Jason once again did most of the heavy lift on this, but I did help for the first time loosening all the soil for the trenching. Then he did ALL the trenching (3 rows 96 ft long)! Terah was more or less down for the count on the potato planting day, so she only managed to pop a few taters in the ground. Kali, Alida and I got most of the biochar seam in and planted potatoes with Jason coming behind and covering them. Now we wait for them to sprout. With potatoes, I particularly miss having rituals, songs or cultural traditions for wishing plants well on their journey in our soils. The process of planting potatoes gets easier every year as our soils improve. That said, to date we keep netting healthier but less potatoes. We are aiming for healthier potatoes and more of them. We do love white potatoes very much. It may be that one more poor harvest will have us looking for a new seed supply of a different variety.

We've also done a lot of path mulching and some weeding (plenty more of both to do!). I love the contrasting browns and greens of the growing crops and the mulched paths. I've done a bunch of dandelion runs for the pigs and they love when I show up with a bucket of them to munch! The other day I found one chewing on the plant with just the yellow flower sticking out the side of his mouth! 

Once we had all the rest of the biochar from the pit distributed (on barley and also raspberry beds), I had the fun job of filling the pit back up with the duff from underneath the last brush pile we made char from. It's a very satisfying job and I did it all. by. myself! Then Jason came along and emptied the compost coop, shoveling load after load on top of the duff and filled it to the top. I think he also found that job satisfying, but I would not say it was as easy as mine! I then came behind him and stirred the remains of the coop and had a new experience to me. I felt a bit like an accomplice to murder as I stirred the litter There were SO SO many mouse nests/homes all throughout. As they went scurrying, the chickens were ready for a hearty snack. I was glad for my boots as mice of all sizes ran around me. It was a wild time! I wasn't too surprised that they had some feed left over the next morning (some of them were full of mice).

On the animal front, the piggies are doing great together. I felt such relief the day I found them napping outside together with the two male pigs sandwich hugging the new little gal. Since they were adjusted and getting along, we were able to move them into their smaller moveable pen and get them started in the nut grove. Getting them into that pen proved difficult as the one pig decided he did not trust the new pen even after the other two were happily situated. Jason and I tried everything we could think of. Corn didn't coax him. Chicken scraps didn't coax him. Slop didn't coax him. Bread didn't coax him. Dry chicken feed didn't coax him. A back scratch didn't make him feel safe enough to cross. We finally gave up and went on with our day leaving the door between open in hopes he would cross on his own. It was Alida who got him into the pen! 

There are more chicks hatched and many more coming! The house ones got moved out soon after April 1 since they had proved themselves extra spunky and were already starting to get up on the sides and peer over the edge at what was outside the confines of their plastic swimming pool home. Alida and Terah wanted to get up early to see the chicks wake and so they did that before Alida and I moved them out. The day we moved them out we had a VERY sad happening - they were sitting on the electric cord for their brooder and that wiggled their door open just enough to let a snake in (Jason is not sure how many it had eaten before he found it). I can't help but wonder if that is why those chickies have been so skittish ever since. :(  One a more joyful note, I'm loving watching the first brood of mama and her 18 chicks range. And now there's another mama with tiny new ones getting settled into the compost coop. Chickens chores are slowly getting longer and slightly more complicated! That's spring for ya!!

We are still swimming (not quite drowning) in eggs! And we have SO many glorious nettles and perennial onions. So what could be better than perennial onion eggs on a nettle greens roll. A very Tangly Woods taste of spring!

There will be many more things to harvest once we start putting out all the plants growing on the seed shelf. It is the promise of many delicious veggies to come. 

Well it's late and I'm out of steam! So I'll close with some of my favorite yard/mountain/sky scenes and a favorite family picnic selfie. Bye for now!