Oh the weather outside is frightful...

The weather has just been nasty all week long, so we really haven't been doing much of anything. For the most part our plants outside seem to be taking it in stride -- but the onions, I'm sad to say, did not make it through the cold and wind. A moment of silence for the onions.

The chickens, however, seem to be doing just fine.

They grow up so fast: Stringer, Marlow, Avon and Prop Joe (I think; they get harder to tell apart as they get more chickeny)

I was pretty worried about them the first few nights -- it was getting down into the low 40s and it seemed like the light really wasn't warming the place up much. But they seem unfazed; they just keep eating and crapping the same as ever. It'll still be several (possibly as many as 15-20) weeks before we see any eggs, so for now all we get is compost out of them. I've been in there a couple of times to add to their litter; they absolutely freak out if you toss it near them -- they can fly pretty high, maybe 4 feet. Hopefully as they get bigger and heavier they won't be quite so airborne.

We have cherry trees we really need to plant, but it's not possible to even get near where the fruit orchard is supposed to be through all the mud (at the moment there are two sticks that someday might be plum trees there, so it's a little presumptuous to call it an orchard). We also have lettuce and cabbage starts that really need to go out, and a ton of seeds that need planting. Hopefully it will stop raining and hailing and blowing 40 mph winds before, say, June.