After a short and mild winter, spring has arrived at 5R Farm and gardening season is underway! The garden beds have all been spread with compost thanks to the contributions of our chickens as well as a friend’s abundance of composted horse manure. The cool season vegetable seeds have been started in the greenhouse – onions, leeks, spinach, lettuce, kale, chard, and broccoli, and the chard and onion starts that I overwintered in the greenhouse have been moved out to the garden. The strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries have all started to show spring growth, and I have been making lots of berry cobbler to use up the frozen berries from last year to make room for this years upcoming harvest.
The longer days mean that the chickens have resumed egg laying, and we are getting over a dozen eggs a day. One day last week the girls gave us 20 eggs in one day, a new record! Our newest 10 hens that are in their first year are laying like champs, and many of our older hens which range from 3 to 5 years old are still laying, way to go girls! Going out to the coops to collect a colorful basket of eggs is one of my favorite times of the day.
I’m very happy to report that both of our bee hives survived the winter, and there has been lots of activity outside of both hives. I’ll be doing the first hive inspection of the season on the next sunny day to check in on the ladies and see if they have enough room in the hive, or if I need to add another hive box to give them room to grow. I had thought about adding a third hive this year, but it doesn’t look like we will have time to get around to it this year since we are in the midst of making preparations for the turkey poults we will be getting next month. Stay tuned for pictures of the new members of our farm family.