March is well underway and spring is in the air! With daytime highs in the 40’s, the Upper Greenhouse (the new massive one) has gotten well into the 70’s in full sunshine. The snow is melting rapidly, and considering we’ve had unusually little snow this year, I’m sure it will be gone before we know it. I highly doubt there will be snow in the draws in June this year.
So with the advent of spring comes GARDENING! That magnificent wondrous thing so many of us look forward to each year. Whilst Andy preps the new Upper Greenhouse for planting, I tackle my usual turf; the Lower Greenhouse, the Bunny Barn, and the aviary. The Lower Greenhouse can be planted any time now. I usually start with potatoes in March. They can endure a hard frost if the cold returns later this month. If the warm weather persists through the end of the month I’ll plant beets and peas and carrots and all manner of leafy greens at that point.
Today was officially the day to “wake up” the Lower Greenhouse. It has served as a dry interior space for the poultry to enjoy through the winter. They’ve been kicking and scratching old hay around, pooping plentifully, and leveling and spreading the compost heaps. Unfortunately some of the piglets got in there, too, and made a mess of everything. Pigs are little boredom-tantrum monsters. Anything they can put in their mouth they will rip and tear and shake. They pulled my bamboo stakes out of the ground where they were marking the location of sunchokes and experimental pre-planted potatoes. The knocked over all the stacked bamboo bundles. They unpacked a feedbag full of trash, busted open several hay bales, chewed on the fruit trees, ripped off portions of greenhouse plastic from the back wall, and did everything I can reasonably expect them to do.
Here’s a fun little video about today’s greenhouse prep. The video is about 3.5 minutes long and about 100mb in size.
In other news, we’re about 4-7 days away from BABY GOATS! We’re stoked for the new arrivals. We haven’t had kids here since I phased out the mini’s (that’s the polite way of saying I will never again get a miniature goat). Ruma is absolutely gigantic. Tisl is stealth-preggers. I expect 2 kids from both of them, regardless. Despite the long list of folks waiting for purebred papered Alpine goats, we might just keep a few. But no decisions have been made yet. We can’t count our kids before they hit the ground.
Hopefully about a week from now I will make another post about the new goats and the greenhouse progress!
– Jen
