Dreaming of Spring

After below freezing temperatures last week, the warmer temperatures this week have  me dreaming of spring and all the wonderful things that come with it. This weekend, I spent time fine tuning my garden plan and making my shopping list of seeds and plants I need to purchase. I made more seed pots from paper towel rolls and newspaper. I cannot wait to get out there and see lovely veggies growing in my raised beds.

In addition to dreaming and planning my spring garden, I am excitedly anticipating lambing season and the arrival of my fuzzy faced smiling little lambs.  I need to inventory all my supplies and update my lambing kit to ensure I have everything ready when those little lambs start arriving.

We bred nine ewes and according to when they were marked, I expect to have lambing season spread out over the entire month of April. That means very little sleep in for me in April. Even with the barn camera, I lose a lot of sleep going out to check on my girls of times a night when it gets close to their time to lamb.

Spring in the Ozarks also brings about the abundant beauty of nature. We are blessed with hundreds of beautiful dogwood trees and other flowering trees. Hiking through our woods in spring is a spectacular display of Missouri wild flowers. It also brings an abundance of colorful mushrooms.

Spring means shearing time and processing lots of wonderful wool. The first few year we sheared the sheep ourselves. Not knowing what we were doing made that task brutal on the back and stressful to the sheep, not to mention they looked awful afterwards. The wool wasn’t very usable. Last year we had a professional shear them which went much quicker and smoother.

Spring is a very busy time of the year and takes a lot of planning to prepare and make the task easier. Dreaming of Spring and the abundance it brings makes the dreary gray days of winter a little brighter.

 

Winterizing the Chicken Coop

It appears that winter decided to finally arrive in the Missouri Ozarks this week  and with it a couple of inches of snow.  Although it can get down into the teens at night here in south central Missouri, it rarely remains below freezing during the day.  The average daytime temps are usually in the upper 30’s.  Prior to locking our ladies in their coop for the winter, we put about 8 inches of straw and leaves in the coop and in their yard to add insulation and to prevent a muddy mess in their yard.   We made sure that the cord for the water heater base is secure and plugged into the Thermo Cube which turns on the heater when temperature fall below 35 degrees.   We use to keep a light bulb on in the coop for heat, but haven’t found the heat to be necessary and removed it after a having a couple of bulbs getting broken.  However, the light is needed for egg production.  Due to the decrease in hours of daylight, the hens have quit laying eggs.  I am researching solar lighting for the coop to induce the ladies to start laying again.   Stay tuned for updates on our progress with solar chicken coop lighting.