Last Blast of 'Winter'

I feel the need to put 'winter' in quotations this year... most of the year, it was so mild and lovely, it really didn't feel like winter at all! Officially, it has been my favourite winter of my life. Wish they were all so wonderful! True to form, however, winter decided to rear it's ugly head for a week there... we had some dumps of snow (which didn't last long!) and some colder temps... I blame myself, as it only gets cold when I plant my gardens... lol!

The cold snap didn't seem to do much harm, however... I have radish and arugula coming up already. I LOVE seeing little green things coming up! I also planted my first ever asparagus plants... Jersey King and Purple asparagus. I won't get any crops this year, but should be able to start harvesting a bit from them next year. I've been working on filling and planting the rest of my garden beds... I am getting there! I now have 35 beds all ready to go, most of them planted already. I was so happy to have my goal of 50 beds in this year, but now I see it probably won't be enough for everything I want to do... I am going to slowly start building more as I go, and just keep plugging away at it.

I went up to my friends' greenhouse last week to check on my little seedlings. Everything is doing fantastic! The little cabbages will be ready to plant outdoors in just a couple of weeks... then I have to figure out how to keep the deer from gobbling them all down. grrrrr... deer.

A friend of a friend also gave me 30 more laying hens. This are just your regular run of the mill hens, but suddenly I have eggs coming out my ears... I am working on building up a good new customer base on those, too, so my fridge doesn't fill up completely with eggs!

I sent out an email to all my customers last week, to get preorders for meat chickens. I have now officially sold 46 chickens! I ordered 75, so I will have 20 for myself, and a few extras for some late orders. I am super happy with that! The little poults will arrive in a couple of weeks, and they should be ready for processing in early June. It will be nice to have a bit of extra money coming in at that time, too.

I am now off my EI self employment program, which is somewhat scary, but I am determined to do whatever it takes to make a living from my little farm, and I know everything will work out just fine!