farmschool into spring

Rhiannon and the Splash, our cuddly rooster, taking a break from building his new digs.

Well I can hardly call it farmschool, since we're back to being absolutely 100% unschooling, but it seemed like a nice title, because we're learning SO much!! We're all being schooled by the seasons and all the organisms we live with. In some ways it feels like we're coming full circle, as we round the year into the spring, and there's much to report!

As you know if you're a regular reader, we all buckled into an indefinite isolation last spring, my partner has been working from home, and the kids quit high-school and college completely. As food became much more expensive and income diminished, we doubled the size of our vegetable garden and, at our daughter's urging, got chicks. All four of us got involved in various ways, and we raised these little fluff-balls until they were grown. Then we put all but two of the roosters into the freezer, and eventually began getting a few eggs, just as winter began. We really hoped to develop a hardy self-sustaining flock of birds that would feed us, feed our garden, and generally enrich our lives, but knew we'd have to wait until the next spring for any of our hens to hatch chicks.

As climate change would have it, "next spring" came in early January, when we had a tiny warm spell, and one of our hens went broody! We debated whether to try to break her of her broodiness, and decided she was just too sweet to break, so we let the others build upon her tiny clutch of eggs for three days (which they did by unceremoniously sitting on top of her, to lay). And she diligently sat on her total of seven eggs for three weeks until... hatching day! We documented the process of our family's first chick hatch, and all the decisions we had to make on our video channel, so I'm sharing, here. I hope you'll be as delighted as we are!

Next up: Weeding out the annual influx of invasive buttercups, readying the garden for planting, starting many seeds indoors, and starting the peas outside. With frequent breaks for visiting our adorable chicks.

Hatching Day #1

Hatching Day #2 

 

Hatching Day #3

 

Hatching Chicks Q & A