Itching for Spring

The new cows are integrating well with the existing ones. They're all together in the same paddock, and are now eating from the same pile of hay. Everyone seems fine with the new arrangement.

The pigs are getting big; less than a week to go until we take them to the butcher. Ginger, the sow, is due to farrow (have babies) in the next week or two. Orrin built her a house of her own (separate from the one she was sharing with Buxley), to have her babies in. He put a bunch of hay in the paddock, and she will use that to build a nest in her house for the piglets.

We've got someone coming to stay with us next weekend, for an indefinite period of time, as kind of a work-share situation. He won't pay rent, in exchange for helping us out on the farm. So that's prompted us to get the suite finished as much as possible in the other building, so that he can stay there. He may be in our house at the start, but hopefully not for long. So far, we've gotten drywall up in the bedroom and half-bath (walls and ceiling), and insulation in both those rooms, as well as insulation in part of the living room. Having enclosed walls makes it feel like we're really getting something done over there. Today we swept out the bedroom, and put a bed, dresser and night stands in there. It'll be rather “cabin-like”, but it's looking pretty good. We still have to finish the plumbing and electrical, although both are fairly far along. We've got appliances in the kitchen and bathroom that are ready to go, once we get the plumbing and electrical finished up.

There are lots of salad greens in the greenhouse now. I picked 3 times this week, picking for our CSA members as well as for friends and family that wanted to buy a bag of greens from us. The kale in the greenhouse is looking good, and there's more available of that now, too.

None of the onions we planted a couple of weeks ago have come up, except for the green onions. Orrin did a little research and learned that onion seed has a pretty low germination rate if it's older than one year, which ours is. So we'll be planting a whole bunch more this week, with the newest seed we have.

I'm looking forward to getting into the garden and starting to prep beds, but that'll have to wait until the snow is gone. It's been a long winter, and I'm looking forward to spring.