Ok, it's really, really spring now. For real.

Apple tree still alive, unmarred by deer, and
surrounded by violets.

Yesterday, we harvested the first huge bunch of kale from four plants that we over-wintered. This morning we sautéed some and topped toast with our girls' eggs, local salsa from the CSA, and the kale. Add a side of hash browns made from local taters, and it was a great saturday morning feast.

This does make finding a corner of table on
which to eat breakfast a little tricky.

Most of the herbs I was certain had died are looking great all of a sudden, the strawberry plants look ready to get down to business, and I transplanted a ton of healthy tomato seedlings into larger pots this morning. Yesssssssss!

I also dug out my seed potatoes from the back of the fridge, cut the ones that needed separating, and set them out on newspaper to dry. If all goes well, they'll be in the ground in the next few days.

The kitchen is back in production mode.

But perhaps the most spring-y part of today, is that I did our first round of canning. Huzzah! We had a few of the lemons left that Alex's aunt and uncle sent, and managed 4.5 cups worth. I love this stuff, and I love giving it out to people, which means you can never have enough. The curd is yellowier than I was last time we made it because the girls' eggs are so much more colorful than the ones you get in the store. It's gorgeous.

I finally got little jars!

If you are interested in trying it for yourself, the recipe is below. Adapted from Sheri Brooks Vinton's Put Em Up Cookbook because I like my curd tangier and thicker than her recipe suggests.

1.5 sticks of unsalted organic butter
1 c sugar (preferably raw or unrefined, fair trade and vegetarian)
1/2 tsp salt
4 eggs (our girls eggs are a little smaller than the store-bought kind, so I add a 5th sometimes)
1 c lemon juice (from 5-ish organic lemons)
1 T lemon zest (or just whatever comes from the lemons you juiced.)

Combine all in a double boiler, and whisk until it's a custard, around 10 minutes. You can store this in the fridge in an airtight container for 2 weeks, or can in a water bath canner for 10 minutes so it's shelf stable for a year. Yumm-o! If you don't have lemons, limes or oranges would work too.

Now We're Getting Somewhere

Things are really moving now. Although a frost over last weekend (while I was in Las Vegas and Alex was in Ohio) did kill our early girl tomato, the rest of the place is looking quite alive. The chickens are so much happier now that they can venture outdoors more. They are also eating less food, which is nice.

This might be my fav - yes, that is our old Christmas tree, sitting behind the blooming azalea. The Azalea also hides our compost pile, so it isn't getting trimmed any time soon.

The peonies are poking out of the ground at the rate of about a foot a week. Buds are forming! I can't wait for the hot pinks and baby pinks to shower our yard.

In the raised beds, we are trying something different this year. Last year our greens were devoured by cabbage worms, and I hated spraying them. Now we're trying row cover to let them get established before we expose them to the little grubs. Water and light still comes through, and a lot of our kale overwintered, so we are only a week or so away from our first harvest!!

Hardy herbs are rocking, despite my refusal to weed them properly.

The Yard is Waking Up!

Plum seedling, now with little buds!

We've already planted a few new seeds in the yard (vit and snap peas), though nothing has come up yet. Well, not nothing. I'm mostly convinced this tiny shoot (below) is vit and not a weed. Mostly.

A weed? Or the first sprout of the season. I vote the later.

But the plum tree has buds, the rhubarb (2 of 3) are emerging from the ground, and our experimental kale overwintered beautifully. Tomorrow I'll do another sprinkling of lettuce and other greens and the season is underway.  We need lots more dirt (maybe delivered?) and two more raised beds built if we want to double our space from last year to this.

Garlic, planted in fall, shooting up in the mulched raised bed.

PS: yes, all those little round bits are Winston's contribution to the garden this year. Bunny poop is the only animal poop you can add directly to the soil. It is nutritious, but not so filled with nitroge that is hurts the plants.

Of Broody Hens and Pink Mold

Last week we were worried Desi was sick or injured. She wouldn't leave the coop and insisted on sitting in the nesting box all day. Alex and I both had work all day, so we didn't really confirm that anything was really wrong until the following morning, when we found Desi guarding FOUR eggs under her chest. Oh no, a broody hen!

We put ice cubes under her and stole all the eggs. She looked miserable, but didn't budge. Then we isolated her in the run. She flapped around, and tried her best to get back into the coop or rejoin her fellow chickens. I felt like the meanest chicken owner in the world. But 10 hours later, when I tested to see if she was cured, she pried the door to the coop open with her beak (!!!) and went right back to sitting in the nesting box in less than 2 minutes. The poor girl had to sleep outside for 2 nights to cure her motherly inclination. Thankfully it was warm. Yesterday we let her go to bed with the rest of the chickens and, finally, she didn't try to hatch any eggs. Phew!

Broody hens are tricky because they are so single minded. She didn't eat or drink anything unless she was isolated and didn't have anything else to do. If she had access to the nesting box, she'd just have sat there until she died of dehydration, since those eggs will never hatch. Broody hens can also be mean to other chickens, and keep them from getting to the nesting box. Farm wisdom says to cool down their bodies (hence the ice cubes) and isolate them until they forget about egg hatching. The poor girl spent all afternoon out in the rain yesterday since she had to be separated in the pen, and the pen has no roof. She looked like a drowned cat.

We're also struggling with seed starting this spring. The potting mix I bought from Home Depot is the worst. It's like oil -- it doesn't so much mix with water as resist it. So the self watering container isn't doing a lot. The seedlings we started in a different mix have sprouted, but now there is the weird pink mold stuff on the outside of the containers. I need to try to transplant them into larger containers, but I worry that the root system isn't established enough to take that kind of trauma. Le sigh. Worst case scenario is we focus on the direct seed plants the most and buy seedlings for tomatos, peppers, and chard. Worse things have happened.