The five young chickens have been moved out to a grassy pen near the orchard where the adult chickens live.  They will have to grow a bit more before they will be able to hold their own with adults.

This picture is the view the cat gets when he stands on top of their pen to admire them.

The five little chicks are now pretty big.  The weather was summer-like and they spent the day outside.

Although it did not drop much below freezing, it snowed last night.  I hope the fruit trees are okay.

The cherry tree is in full bloom.

The apple blossoms are looking pretty, too.

We have installed a weather station in the middle of our garden.

These next few pictures show Susan and Brandon planting quinoa.  Susan is spreading seed and Brandon is carefully using a rake to cover the seeds.  Quinoa is pretty hardy in the face of cold weather, but cannot pollinate properly in hot weather.  We are planting early to hope to avoid problems with high temperatures.

Hi,

I am Mocha, the Dora's Garden spokesgoat.

 

I heard this story about the Easter Bunny laying eggs and I thought it was worth a try.  So, I crawled into the shelves my chicken friends use when they want to lay an egg.  No eggs so far, but I'll keep trying.

Cheerfully yours,

 Mocha

That's me!  I'm tilling the north end of the field in preparation for seeding a cover crop.  The soil has suffered for about 100 years from growing, cutting and adding chemical fertilizer when stuff won't grow.  We are going to till the vegetation into the soil and grow some wheat which will get tilled into the ground (mostly).  After two seasons, we will move on to the next ten acres.  (We are thinking we may harvest some grain for the chickens.)

This is Brandon, our employee.  He is weeding the garden.  That looks like a row of garlic coming up to the right.  Yesterday, he planted more garlic.  The garlic I planted in the fall will be harvested in July.  We will see when garlic planted in April is ready.  There is a lot to learn and the garden is our teacher.

A few posts back, I showed you a picture of the hole I dug to expose the irrigation main line so a flow meter could be installed.  Here it is after the installation.  Note, the meter is new and reads almost zero.  We did test for leaks so it isn't quite zero.

Some of our fruit trees are showing a lot of buds.  These are two old trees that produce old varieties of apples you no longer see in the store.  I believe the variety is "Winter Banana," which strikes me as a strange name for an apple.  We also have "Snow White," "Standard Delicious," and "Winter Delicious."  There are also a pear and a cherry tree and we grow some plums.