Monday March 16th… Winter sends it’s note… I’m still around…

Friday is the official start of Spring this year, but old man winter still drops us a line every morning, just to let us know he is still around. Yesterday the temperature climbed to nearly seventy degrees and even higher if you were out in the sunny areas, but overnight, everything still freezes and in the morning when I get up it is in the low thirties, so you can still feel the presence of winter. Any day we could fall victim to his clutches again, enduring a pile of unwanted snow, even though it will yield to the returning warmth of spring the next day… but if ol’ man winter decides to flex his muscle, it’s possible yet during this month.
Today will be an excellent day to empty and clean the old chicken and duck house, spray the cherry fragranced disinfectant, spread new wood chips and clean up their outside runs of accumulated matter from over the winter. There is not only the regularly removed fecal matter, but also remnants of unwanted things, like corn cobs, dried up fruit peels, etc. which would be better removed and the area rakes smooth again. It’s not nearly as hard a job to perform now, as it is in the winter, because the ducks and chickens may be left out to range free all day long, which gives you plenty of time and room for cleaning the barns.
The main barn will have to wait until it dries a little bit more, due to the many trips across the lawn with the Cub Cadet. Right now, the lawn is too wet and it would be rutted so deeply that it would be a major job to repair. Bad enough we still have some remaining landscaping work because of the trench, resulting from the water line installation to each of the barns last fall. It is a job that will be done when it dries out a little more or if Ol’ Man Winter decides to whack us again before next fall with freezing temperatures making the yard hard enough to drive on.
Today we start the incubator. Stay tuned for pictures!!!!!