… in a small box with air holes.
Twenty Black Langshan chicks! They’re somewhat uncommon, taste great, and lay beautiful dark brown (with some purple) eggs. They will grow up to be solid black with an iridescent green sheen.
But right now, they’re living in a bathtub and falling asleep very suddenly, including standing up.
I found the first ripe tomatoes tonight! Lots more to follow, hopefully; the plants look good.
Thank God, the rain finally hit us! (The last three huge lines of storms drenched everyone around us, but missed us by mere miles.)
They have a barn to go into, and they usually hide in there for the hottest part of the day. I guess the rain feels good?
Over the weekend, we rented a trailer and picked up two pairs of cows from two different farms. One steer (destined for the freezer) and a heifer (she’ll be a cow once she has a baby, we named her Brigid) from nearby, then an older cow (Millie) and her calf from five hours away.
It took some bowls of sweet feed (think sugar cookies for cattle), but they might have forgiven us for the trip.
We’re waiting for a DNA test to see if the calf will be steered or remain a bull and become the herd sire.
… because the bees have arrived! A thriving hive will have tens of thousands of bees, only a dozen or so who will be males (drones). The queen and all the workers are female.
We came, we smoked them, we inspected, and we even identified brood, pollen, and honey and found the queen! Yay! Good inspection all around. And nobody got stung.
Your downstairs bathroom is occupied in the spring.
Almost two weeks later, still occupied…
Driving the dog nuts!
“Please, can’t I play with whatever is in there?!?”
We finally bit the bullet and ordered all the bee stuff, because we’re signed up for a nuc (short for “nucleus”, or the start of a new hive). The bees are coming, ready or not, so I’d rather be ready!
Husband is less excited; March Madness for him meant watching basketball while assembling a hundred frames for the hives.
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It took two nights of older son grabbing hens and shoving them in the coop door, but all but one of them figured it out tonight!
The last one left in the run looked a little lost and bewildered. She didn’t really protest when I grabbed her and tucked her through the hole.
Of course, they’re about to be moved to a more open pen that doesn’t have a ramp or a coop…
We’re watching curling.
The dog is watching those things (that would be the chickens) in *his* field.
He isn’t sure what they are, but they’re really disturbing him.
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Lepanto Farms 