The Birds and the Trees

Lots going on at the Stinson Farm this spring. We got our orchard trees planted including apples, pears, peaches and plums. We had to bring in quite a bit of dirt to level out the orchard area, and thought it would be a good place to put some of our compost. Turns out that was a bad idea, since Remington decided to eat it, get fungal poisoning, have seizures and go to the emergency room (thanks for that vet bill, Remington...). We ended up fencing the affected area off to keep our genius dogs out of it. Anyway... it is going well now, and all of the trees are leafing out.

Now all we have to do is wait a few years...

We also planted a patch of blueberries. It may need to be fenced off as well, since Ruger is a known berry thief, and Remington seems to think it makes a great bathroom.

Blueberry patch/Dog bathroom

It's also the time of year for new chicks. We picked up a few chicks last month, including some silkies. Hopefully they will be good foster mothers this fall, since our current flock doesn't seem to have much in the way of maternal instincts (hence the incubator, see below). We also bought a couple goslings, which we haven't done before.

Their names are Christmas and Christmas 2, and they will be delicious.

Also, on the chick front, we were able to incubate some eggs from the hens we bought last spring, and have 5 more new chicks joining the flock. We had a few false starts with the incubator, since our first rooster wasn't interested in doing his job, and we had to call in a pinch hitter. Then we had a power outage and lost a batch of eggs mid-incubation. Third time was a charm and after three weeks, the chicks starting pipping through their shells. It took three days for all of them to hatch, and one needed some help, but all are now one week old and doing great.

In this case, the egg came first... or maybe it was the rooster