Another Snow Day
February 26, 2012
Pretty easy to sit by the fire on days like this, and sneak out and do late afternoon chores.
Gather eggs.
Bed chickies.
Fill nests with fresh straw.
Close the perch a tad, so no one gets the idea to sleep in the nests at night.
Wander back to the house through the garden.
Good to see the garlic – Spring is on the way!
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Food Renegade
Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op
We have signs of spring here as well. I brought some Forsythia inside to force, the beautiful yellow flowers cheer me on our many gray days.
I have a chicken that insists on sleeping in the nesting box at night instead of the roost. I can tell because of the pile of poop! I have a small city coop and your post gave me the idea of blocking off the nesting boxes at night, Thank You!
Elizabeth, I was thinking of bringing in some flowering quince, that might brighten things up a bit! Thanks for reminding me
Oh yes, they can be stinkers, literally. They love those toasty beds and don’t care a whit about what gets on the egg
Wow, you got quite a bit of snow. It came down here but didn’t amount to anything. I was just looking at my garlic today, and most of it is up.
Do you have to go out early to put those roosts down fso the hens can get in the nest boxes in the morning?
Karen, you don’t have to go too far down the hill to get out of the snow, sometimes just around the corner, same with the rain, we think it’s raining everywhere and we go to town and it’s sunny and dry!
I just leave the perch partially closed and when the first hen flies up, she can catch it and open it. When we had lots of chickens, we kept the perches chained at night (you can see the chain in the third pic)and would open them at bed check. That way we didn’t have to be out there at first light (the chickens are active at about 4 am in the summer) and no one would be stressed out trying to lay an egg. These girls sleep on the floor so they don’t really have that habit of nest sleeping, but I don’t want them to start either. As for the chain, I’ve seen bungie cords used, and all I can say is…bungie cords and chicken manure aren’t a fun combination, chain is much more forgivable.
Another snowy day for us too! At least the moisture will be helpful….
Great pics, thanks for sharing.
Northernhomesteader, it can’t hurt that’s for sure, lots of Oregon depends on snowmelt for summer irrigation. I think the mountains might be close to having enough snow for summer. I know I’ve had plenty that I would be happy to send somewhere else!
Still no snow here in Western Mass. Except for the highly unusual 10″ we got in October, there’s effectively been no snow this year. The garlic have been up, through the 4″ mulch, since December. Snowdrops in flower everywhere, along with a single snow crocus. And it’s still February. Scary!
Pam, hopefully your summer won’t be as dry as the winter has been. Everything here is still dormant or at least right on schedule, I saw a daffodil leaf the other day…
I should have mentioned we’d had lots of rain, but no snow. It’s been a very warm winter. Usually we have at least a foot of snow on the ground and some winter’s 2-3′ of it, sometimes coming all at once.
Pam, sounds more like our winters here, mostly rain, snow once in awhile.
I thought it was crocus, haha.
Wow. Congratulations on all the eggs. That’s great!
Thanks for sharing your day with us, too. Hope you have a great one today!
LindaG, that’s two days worth of eggs, I leave them in my area overnight when it is this cold. I have egg baskets, but they seem like overkill for a dozen eggs
What do you do with all your eggs? That seems like a lot for three peeps.
Cara, we eat about 4 eggs a day, and the doggies get some too with their breakfast. And if I do any baking that takes up the extra. I also keep some back for the family that hosts the co-op food drop site that I use.
That is truly a spring picture the garlic sticking up out of the snow. We are getting all the rain, have planted my romaine lettuce and broccoli in one raised bed. Rain three times this week they will be well watered, come on spring where are you?? Ellen from Georgia
Ellen, yes, come on hurry up Spring! Congrats on the planting
That last picture is optimistic!
Jennifer, yes we can hope!
A can of eggs – the chicks have been busy – ha! Thanks for sharing:)
Yeah, it’s all that coffee they drink
All our snow melted last week and then this morning everything was covered again. I need spring now!
We have had virtually no snow here in the uk. I kind of miss it as those glimpses of spring through the snow (as per your picture) get me so excited, it suddenly fills my head with thoughts on the garden for the year ahead!