Spring, wherefore art thou?

When I look out my office window, all I see are fields of white.  It is the tail end of March and we still have lots of snow left on the ground. Unlike last year when we were in T-shirts and some neighbours were getting their fields ready to plant, I am still sporting a winter coat in the evenings and wearing insulated boots.  

Yes, the red-winged blackbirds and robins are back but I am sure that all of them are checking their travel itineraries and wondering what went terribly wrong.  We just sheared the sheep and I think a couple of them have the OSPCA on speed dial.

The sap is running... sort of.   We are having on and off again runs where one day it runs like crazy and the next two to three we get nothing at all. We only tap a few trees around the yard to produce enough for our use.  We are hoping to get about 8 litres of syrup and we are well on our way to producing that.  This year we are trying a turkey fryer to boil down sap and then we finish it off and bottle it in the house. This summer I hope to put up a little three sided shed that I can put a wood stove in to boil sap down outside the house.

This spring brought a new Maremma pup to the farm. His name is Zeus.  He is about 4 months old now and is a pen with two 8 month old lambs.  Unfortunately they do not have the temperament to correct his puppy nips so we will be putting him in with the rams today. They will teach him what behaviour is acceptable and what is not.  He also is getting introduced to our other dogs: first Mayla and later Titan. Mayla, is on reduced duties due to her multiple dysplasias.  Zeus was purchased to replace Mayla when we are no longer able to keep her comfortable. I still have a hard time believing a breeder could sign a health guarantee for Mayla and then totally dishonour their guarantee. This is definitely a case of buyer beware.

Shearing the sheep revealed developing udders.  Lambing starts in about 5 weeks.  There is lots to do before then.  I just hope the fields start drying up and growing so we can put the ewes out soon after the lambs are born.  

We just set up an incubator with 31 Partridge Chantecler eggs.  We have lots of orders for chicks and mature birds so we will be filling the incubator at least twice this spring.  

The day lilies have started to sprout.  Hmmm, maybe spring is not too far behind,

TTFN,
Laurie   

Puberty comes to the Chicken Coop

Cock a doodle errrrrr. Ahh pubescent roosters in their first crow.  Like human boys when their voices crack, the roosters just don't get it right at the beginning.  It sounds like someone decided to choke them half way through a crow.  That is what we heard when we first entered the barn this morning.  Cock a doodle errr. 

We purchased day old Partridge Chantecler chickens at the end of September and they finally have moulted into their adult plumage.  The five hens are a beautiful liver chestnut with black partridge marking on their feathers; the roosters have a glossy chestnut head and mane and irredescent black/green tail and wing feathers - stunning birds and Canadian winter hardy.

I am teaching them to come to a foil pan with cooled oatmeal, a trick I learned over 20 years ago with my first flock of layers.  I teach them to come to the banging on the bottom of a pie plate full of oatmeal and then entice them into the coop for the night.  They love the oatmeal and come running.  Once the spring comes and they are outside I will post a video. Actually somewhere in the archives of CBC television is a video of my first flock doing just that. Thankfully the footage of me crowing at my rooster to get him to crow for the camera ended up on the cutting room floor.

During the transition to laying eggs in the spring you often get very odd sized eggs from tiny to huge.  When I got one of the huge eggs (probably a triple or quadruple yolker) I entered it in the Rural Delivery Great Canadian Big Egg Contest.  The egg won and was shipped to the World competition (or more accurately the eastern seaboard of North America) where it came second.  As a result of that success I was on television once, the radio at least three times and in the press a couple of times.  I figured that I deserved a seat in the Senate after that (seems to be all the qualifications required).   By the way, the chicken died.


Now I have to enter the strange and wonderful world of poultry fanciers to find a Chantecler rooster from an unrelated line.  Then in the summer I will start breeding and hatching chicks for sale.


It's cock a doodle dooo  Stupid rooster, get it right!


TTFN
 Laurie