April 1st, 2014

In in effort to maintain a Garden Journal here, as well as how to articles, here are our tasks today.
April 1st, 2014:
Warm weather at last. Upper 60's. Finally moving our new flock of 5 week old pullet chicks out of our downstairs workshop, and into the back garden shed, until the backup coop is built. We'll talk more about our chicken process later. So, this was also an annual day for us, that falls on a variable date due to the weather. That is, to clean the shed out and begin to organize for the coming season. We put away the Ice Melt/Salt from the long hard Winter of 2014. Those are accessible, as our last frost isn't until mid-May and we could still get a wintery mix, but they don't need to be stationed next to doors anymore. We took the Chicken Littles outdoors and they got their first sun and time on grass. We created a smaller "Play Pen Paddock" within the Chicken Yard, which is a fenced garden bed, the other flock, Chicken Bigs, have been on during some of the winter.

Our daughter joined the Littles in their playpen and socialized with them while the Bigs stalked around the outside and checked everyone out. We will do this for a while until we can integrate the two flocks. While the birds and girl child were getting some sun, we cleaned the shed and made space to put the pullet chicks in their cage in there. The goal is to create a larger cage on one side of that, to give them some growing room, while we expand our pre-existing coop and run. This also got them out of the workshop, as they really do create a ton of dust. We cleaned and cleaned and cleaned the shop, mostly done by Leah, the lady of the family. This is because Shane, is asthmatic and the dust was intense.

Also, today signaled the end of the Maple Sap run, and all day we were boiling off the last of our sap on the stove, making one more quart of syrup for ourselves. We pulled our jugs and buckets from our moderate "Sugarbush" area, and the last bit of buddy sap was tried, and spit out. Definitely the end of the season! It was a good one wi almost 8 quarts of syrup made this year.

A fitting end to a long tough winter. A day where the sun felt great on our faces and the work was long and dirty and when we were done, there were cleaner, tidier work areas and a bit more of a plan for our season's building projects and gardening calendar. Life is good, and the garden is waking up!