Farm projects and Chocolate Eggs - Just in Time for Easter.

Dumpling had whipped up a drawing of the sign on one of his long flights at work and came back home ready to make his rounds to Home Depot. As I worked at the potting bench planting seedling trays beside him in the garage, a sign appeared before my eyes in a matter of a few hours It is amazing how much this guy can do with a day off and some tools.

Week full 0f spotting the firsts - first flower, first Swallowtail butterfly, harvesting first local strawberries and first day with temps in the 80's! Yippee......


Crazy how the onset of Spring has put the heat on us - actually feels more like a blowtorch! Chris and I have both felt the pressure to kick it into high gear and there is hardly a day that goes by we don't see fellow farmers working in their fields or opening their veggie stands. Driving past them on the way to work, I am a tad envious they get to be in the fields full time. Alot of our time at the moment is spent drowning in building inspections/electrical pre-inspections/re-inspections, permits/paperwork start-up rigmarole.

Neighboring Henley's farm stand opened to taste the first local strawberry. Yumm! Fields are slowly filling up with families out filling up their buckets with red berries.

Well spring weekends are packed for sure, and hopefully will be alot more productive - thanks to our friend - JD.

The loooonng awaited John Deere Gator has been welcomed to the Polantz household. Note:One happy guy in this photo loading up the goods! Smiling all the way home - Dumplin had been a man on a mission planning and saving and reading up for this purchase, ever since he set eyes on the farm. Pretty sure he researched every website/craigslist/tractor/farm store selling gators in a 5-state radius and finally found a used one in a lower price range with accessories he needed for bigger and better projects.

It feels like a luxury item, but at the same time, when you live in the sticks even something as simple as getting the mail, or bringing in the trash cans in is a hike. Nothing feels like a quick skip around here by foot. Not that we can't use the exercise, but out of time constraints, We had converted our bikes - both beach cruisers - into farm cruisers, complete with wire basket on front to zip around for tasks like collecting eggs, fetching tools, transfering plants, runing out to the coop or stand. Anything to cut the travel time down. Kinda hard to tote 2x4's and saw-horses around on a bike so dumplin had about enough of it. Of course i have visions of transporting buckets of flowers around in it as well when hes not lookin. :)

I have to admit, our first joy run around the farm at full speed, (picture us: wind blowing through our hair, giggling like school kids), the farm instantly felt smaller but in a good way, just suddenly more managable. After only a week it is like a beloved member of the family!

Well enough about Deeres and onto breaking Chicken news. One of our girls is in full blown momma hen mode! During daily egg collection, we noticed a hen being less than pleased about sharing her eggs with us.. Eventually we got the living stuff pecked out of our hands from a very protective lady bird... a hen that had gone "Broody". This term means she has shifted modes from laying eggs - to sitting and incubating her eggs in attempt to hatch them. Of course we have no roosters and the eggs are not fertile, but mother nature along with the rising spring temps and increasing daylight triggers this mode in some hens.

Awww..Here's our girl. She even looks different as she fluffs up and hunkers down on her nest and has this dazed/glassy look in her eyes.

Googling some info about this stage of a hens life, couldn't believe how her metabolism actually slows down to a screetching halt - so she doesnt have to leave the nest to eat as much. Her body temperature rises to help incubate the chicks, and while in this mode, she will only get off the nest about once a day to feed, water and poop, then right back to the nest. Also noticed some feathers she plucked from her chest to fill out her nesting box.

Well once we identified what was happening, there were two options - we could break her of this mode -by allowing cool air to circulate undersides off and her body temp would readjust to normal, or go ahead and order her some fertilized eggs for her to hatch.

Being the adventurous type, we opted to let her do her thing and get her some fertilized eggs.

It never ceases to amaze me what you can buy on ebay!! Had always wanted to add some some French Marans - which lay chocolate eggs - to our flock. Chocolate being..just a fancy way to describe how deeply rich brown the eggshell is.

Here the package arrives in the mail. Not-a one cracked either! gotta love the creative bubble wrap for the precious cargo.

Yep they are chocolate alright. The fertilized egg on top is from the French Cuckoo Maran ( how gourmet!) . Brown one from our Autralian Austrolorps and the green one from the Ameraucana. I think they will make quite the worldly and colorful Easter egg basket!

This will be a big egg-periment since it is her first time being a momma and our first time to help a hen become a momma but we will give it our best shot.

Here you can see, miss mother has her own separate condo away from the flock - quite spacious and is perfect for her to do her thang' without the other hens bothering her. Also we read that if left in the other coop with multiple nesting boxes, she may go back to the wrong nest after returning from her mid-day lunch break accidently sitting on the wrong batch of eggs.

Hatching takes about 21 days, so here we go.

This upcoming weekend is Seed-Swap and the week following that is the start of our first annual Rent-A-Chick program. We sold out of slots very quickly and kids are doing their much awaited count-downs. I am excited to take pictures of all the families picking up their little bundles of joy and experience their excitement! Can't wait.

Spring Showers Bring May Flowers

Spring showers have brought in the wind and rainstorms that blow the white bits of flowers off the Bradford Pear trees. Puddles of petals everywhere. They cover the property and collect in the ever growing pools of water around the farm.This shot sums up my morning trip out to the greenhouse to water seedlings. Drainage. One of the challenges of farming in Pungo. Maybe I should be growing water lilies!? Well the good news is, frogs certainly don't mind this ponding. The symphony of croaking night life echoes through the woods and has been amplifying in volume every night. Tadpoles on the way... bring on the future bug catchers! Weekends are turning into one big blur of planting. I regret not getting more sweet peas in during the fall. Couldn't resist starting extras though. The ones sprouting up look so healthy wish I had a thousand more! All this seed starting has made me realize I need to get on the perennial bandwagon, before I wear out. Thankful I had planted some last spring that are coming back and will return a little better every year, without any input of labor from me! This trend will continue -Lavender plants are starting to leaf out. Heavenly scent. My goal this year is to grow more flowers with fragrance, an attribute usually lacking from most commercially grown bouquets. Mints, lavenders, sweetpeas, rosemary, and as many varieties of basil as I can find (from lemon - to cinnamon). - and edible to boot!

If you reap what you sow, hope there is alot of fun in store for us this summer!

Wouldn't be a blog post without a picture of Dumpling. He is busy dreaming up the next project on the horizon - a new sign.

Silly me :) I just assumed we would use the existing sign and repaint. Then I find random napkin drawings around the house of the new designs he's got constructed in his head already. "Gotta match the building babe!"