I’ve been a bit behind this week, so here’s my attempt at catching the blog up to our lives! The hens were not laying in the new nest box, so on Friday I reused some pieces of the old nest box and some left over plywood to modify the new box and make it bigger. It’s now 11×17 and the hens are much happier. We’ve been collecting eggs left and right again, which makes us all glad. We do still suspect an egg eater – I’m pretty sure it’s one of the red heads, so we’re working out a way to figure out who is the culprit. You may see a post about our first-ever adventure into home chicken processing soon.
Saturday we finally planted the spuds that we ordered in the neighbor’s garden.
We’re all excited about this gardening thing this year – you know the thing where our neighbor is working together with us to grow this (in his newly made bed) and where we plan to share our crops. He’s been getting as excited as me, and every time someone comes to our house, Rick jokes about me showing off my new vegetable bed as he motions over the fence. 😉
This is our first time with potatoes and we planted two varieties – La Ratte fingerlings and Dessire red potatoes. There were some extras that didn’t fit into his bed, so I might try another potato growing system in our back yard as well.
We’ve been enjoying our spinach and I’m so happy about those volunteers that came up early, since we’ve been able to eat from the garden so much earlier this year. I need to make sure to let the spinach go to seed from now on before we pull it for later crops! Woohoo!
Sunday’s forecast last weekend was for snow, but there wasn’t any. In fact it was pretty nice out. Rick’s been chipping away at the tree project, hacking a limb off here, cutting a branch there. We’re about to the point where we can no longer go at it alone and we’re going to have to bring in extra help to finish.
Our neighbor did get a chipper for us. It wasn’t in working order, but he and Rick think they can fix it with just an inexpensive part. It won’t do the bigger stuff, but most of the smaller branches can go through and it’ll be nice to have around to put the yard waste through before sending it to the compost bins. And bonus, it was free!
We also visited two garden centers on Sunday. We picked up seeds for the things we plan on direct seeding (the ones we didn’t order), got some onion sets, and I was a sucker for some savory and basil plants (three varieties!) that I plan on sneaking into our flower beds this year.
I was really tempted to pick up some tomato seedlings, but Rick convinced me to hold off a few weeks more. I think he knows how good I am not at keeping plants alive indoors. It’s so close to “when the danger of frost is past” planting, I can almost taste it. We’re on our last bag of frozen tomatoes from last summer’s garden. It can’t get here quick enough!
What have you been up to in these last few rainy April days?
On a side note, this here blog was just entered into the Circle of Moms Top 25 Eco-Friendly Mommy Blog contest. There are only three days left to vote but you can vote everyday. I’d love a vote from you! CLICK HERE to vote!
The Lazy Homesteader 
We had a home butchering experience last fall when our “hens” started growing spurs and crowing…We are talking about getting broilers this year, but are unsure if we want to go through it again…I’m a bit chicken…
We considered the same thing this year, but decided to hold off until next year when I’m not pregnant, and can help more.