Spring 2018
Super zero-cold winter days vanished to breezy-warm Spring-like weather in February. People told me 'Spring is here!' I didn't believe them for I'd seen snow in April in my lifetime. Sure enough, we got another foot of snow (more or less) in Early March.
I had neglected my farm ordering because I wasn't yet ready emotionally as we're building a house and living 15-20 minutes off-site from the farm. Any days I spend at the farm are 'all day' in the cold, sometimes snuggling my cat Sophia in a recliner with a cold breeze blowing across me--not good for staying healthy! One warm day I decided to prune the tea and the raspberries, which is a spring decision. But then it snowed before I actually got very far.
One day I spent a few minutes in a farm store purchasing garden seed, finding all I wanted for a single garden, no CSA this year. I decided I only wanted one pole bean (lol!) instead of twenty. I was envisioning Spring but not feeling it yet in my bones. I can't start seed indoors, for we will have to move from where we are staying on (or before) April 1st--no 'April Fool's' joke! However, April 1st is Easter! Thus, my herb seeds are still in packets and not in sunny southern windows of my 'new' house that is not yet ready for occupancy, and won't be until the plumber says so. Our son tells me that I can't have anything personal in the house before passing the final 'Residency Permit'. Are herbs in a pot 'personal'? Probably so.
This has been such a stressful winter that I want Spring to come, but I also want to be ready for it...ready with our house construction completed, ready with herb seed started, ready with baby chicks ordered.
Baby chicks?! Such ordering demands I begin laying out a calendar for Spring and Summer and Autumn of 2018. I try to exclude holidays for ordering dates so that baby chicks don't sit freezing in some mail truck behind the post office. Then I must project ahead the 'Butchering Dates' and that sometimes involves other people as well as reserving the chicken wagon (I still call it a 'Chicken Buggy' even though the Mennonites from whom we rent this equipment do not use horse and buggy). Then, too, because we only have one Brooder Pen and one Range Shelter, I must schedule in 'Pasture Dates' and I messed that up a little last year, so I'm trying to be more careful this year. To do four batches of broiler chicken meat birds, I really do need another Range Shelter pen, but not the same year we are building a house, my husband tells me. I wish my grandchildren were older so that they could build a pen for me, but they just build tables that wobble. And they tell me that their next project is a tree house, so no pen for me :-(
When I see a Baby Chick in a Farm store, I will know I must order now! But I seldom visit farm stores, mostly visiting construction stores, electrical shops, plumbing stores, Lowe's and Home Depot. Will there be time to care for baby chicks? There must be, if we're going to have a farm! Yes, we have the Angus beef grazing in the meadow, nibbling on the early herbs growing in the swampy area, and we have the laying hens ranging in the muddy and slow-growing grassy areas of the field. Thankfully, the hens are laying over 100 eggs per day after being slack these coldest winter days. Perhaps the hens think it is Spring. So perhaps I should too!
Spring! Spring will come whether I'm emotionally ready or not. How many baby chicks to order? How many do you want in your freezer? Because that's what determines how many we will raise. You, our customer, keep our compass steady when the crazy winds of change threaten to blow us off course. Thanks! for being there.
