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Three weeks ago, the first of the year's broiler chickens arrived in the mail. 
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They are big enough now with sufficient feathers to keep warm without the aid of a heat lamp, so their new homes are movable, bottomless coops on the grass.   After experimenting with a hoop house style of movable coop that is tall enough for a person to walk into, which makes feeding and water extremely convenient but is highly prone to being blown away in high winds, we settled on lightweight but low to the ground coops that we built last year.  
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Continuing in the poultry vein...

Now that the weather has warmed up some - last week it was 80 degrees and today it's only 50, but you know what I mean - it's time to think about giving thanks. We plan to have fresh turkeys this year for Thanksgiving. We'll raise a limited number, so if you want a fresh bird for your holiday table, the time is now to place your order! We'll be taking orders for our turkeys raised on pasture until June 15.  Forget everything you thought you knew about turkey.  The flavor of one of these birds is beyond compare.  Email us for more information about how to reserve your Thanksgiving turkey today!
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But I have some photos to share, for what it's worth.  Winter is rough stuff, but it helps a whole bunch to share days with the most adorable baby the world has ever known.  But first, the annual Romeo kid photo, Christmas 2010 edition.
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In other news, the chickens are starting to pick up their egg production a little, despite the snow and cold.  I take that as a positive sign of imminent spring, and you should, too.  Finding the eggs that they lay can be a bit of an adventure, though, since some of them like to build nests in the big hay bales that we feed the goats.  It's like an Easter egg hunt every day, only without the candy.

Perhaps the surest sign of spring is the seed catalogs that have started to arrive almost daily in our mailbox.
Finally, this little video/photo montage of Ariel singing and strumming on the mandolin is NOT a sign of spring; it's just adorable, and I hope it will cheer you up some if you need cheering.  And if you don't need cheering, I admire your optimism.
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With the help of worms, of course!
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The garden is well established, and if I was a more consistent blogger, you'd know what it looks like now.  Very weedy.  But aside from the weeds, everything is coming up gangbusters.  Potatoes, tomatoes, cabbage, peppers, eggplant, lettuce, swiss chard, beets, green beans...it's all good.  I just don't have photo proof yet, because I'm a slacker.  So you get to see photos from over a month ago instead. 

Gardens don't just plant themselves, of course.  They need help.  They need worms, bees, chickens and humans.
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 Can you guess what this is?
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That was the scene in front of my vehicle one morning a few weeks ago.  I'm not sure what processing facility those thousands of chickens were headed to or which large-scale, climate-controlled, factory poultry operation they came from, but I think it's safe to assume that the ride on the back of a flatbed trailer provided them with the most fresh air they'd ever experienced in their short lives.
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The stench outside those poultry "houses" is unreal.  I smelled them even before I saw them as I was driving around Amish country one day in June.
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I think the differences between those birds in the truck and the houses and our birds in the grass are compelling.  I have no other deep thoughts than that.  We're so thankful for our local customers who purchase and consume our pastured whole chickens.  I think they find the differences compelling, too.
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