Planting Has Begun

We started to plant this weekend.  We planted some lettuce and spinach and covered it with the new row cover.  We're hoping it will protect these early seedlings.

Digging the trench to hold down the cover for the row covers

Lettuce planted in two rows, trench dug...Ready to cover.

Row cover over lettuce and spinach

We tilled the potato garden and plan to plant Red Potatoes and Heirloom potatoes tonight when Josh gets home from work.

Josh tilling the potato garden

This weekend we were busy with chickens.  We got our first batch of broiler chicks and we moved our laying pullets to their outside summer pen.
We keep the broilers inside for 3-4 weeks until they are big enough to move to their outdoor movable pens.  They grow fast and are ready to butcher in 8 weeks.  When they are outside they have the opportunity to graze on grass and clover and eat bugs.  They are moved to a new, fresh plot of grass everyday, so they stay clean and healthy.
The laying pullets (females that haven't started to lay eggs) are 4 weeks old.  They will stay in this pasture pen for the summer.  They should start laying eggs when they are 5-6 months old.  These pullets will replace our older hens this fall.  We will then move them into the chicken coop for the winter, where they have an outdoor pen that they can go outside throughout the fall and winter during nice weather.  This past winter was wonderful for letting the chickens outside.  They do so much better when they can get out in the sun and scratch around in the dirt.  In past winters we've had so much snow that for most of the wither the small pen door was drifted over.

This is our chicken house where we brood the baby broiler chicks.  There are heat lamps inside the wooden boxes (brooders).  The brooders are raised just enough for the chicks to run in and out of the heat as needed.

Chicks drinking water.

Baby chicks finding the feed.

Johnny entertaining the chicks..."Are you my Mother?"

Pasture pen for laying pullets.

Laying pullets in their new house.

Our dining room greenhouse is still doing well.  Most of the plants are big enough to be transplanted outside.  Now we just need it to warm up a little to start hardening them off.

Cauliflower