Baby pictures

 I say this every spring, but it bears repeating: nothing makes me feel like a farmer quite like driving to the post office at 6:10 a.m. to pick up a box of chicks. As I drive home, I remember how Hilda used to want to pry up a corner of the lid to peek at them, and I would caution her about letting a chick run loose in the car. All 22 chicks were alive and well.

Chicks-to-go: 15 meat chickens, 3 golden Wyandotts, 4 Americauna

It was a cool morning, which is good. It is way easier to keep chicks warm than to cool them off. I gave each one his/her first drink by dipping its little beak in the water. Then I put them in the coop under the heat lamp with the food and water. Here they are having more drinks.

Getting hydrated after their journey

I should have pre-heated the coop and the warming table. They were cold for more than an hour before I got the heat lamp low enough for them to be comfortable. Living and learning. This picture shows how the chicks should look, casually spread around, not plastered against the side to get away from the heat or clustered in a tight group to stay warm.

Warm at last

In addition to the usual Murray’s Big Red Broilers (straight run = random assortment of males and females). For layers, I am trying golden Wyandotts for the first time. Like the silver Wyandotts of last year, they have black-edged feathers, but the rest of the feathers are brown rather than white. I also got four Americaunas, which lay blue eggs. In this photo the Wyandott is black and the Americauna is not (hard to describe her). I ordered one extra of each of the alleged pullets because for the last two years, I have gotten a rooster by mistake. I have a friend who will take extra hens if I have them. Roosters will be eaten.

Golden Wyandott, left; Americauna, right

Yesterday was Day 3. I had almost no trouble with pasty butt this time (praise be), so it was time to put out the wood chips and give the chicks full run of the coop. After they ran around exploring, they settled by the heat table and took a little nap. Just like the babies they are.

Rest break

I got a nice picture of the orchard oriole this week. I had to get it in the morning so the light was shining on him. In the afternoon, he looks all black in silhouette.

Orchard oriole male

Busy as I have been, I managed to get back to the creek to check on my introductions. While the first jack-in-the-pulpit got frost damage, the second was find.

Jack in the pulpit

The maidenhair fern looks good, although I need to do some weeding. It’s on the list. I also need to get back there with the weed-whacker, or weed-whipper, which Kate tells me they call it in Wisconsin, or string-trimmer, which is its actual official name, although I have never heard anyone say, “I’m going to go do some string trimming.”

Maidenhair fern among the weeds

I came upon this area of crushed dandelion stems which I can only infer is a deer bed. I never saw one of these that wasn’t in snow.

Putative deer bed

Jacob’s ladder is blooming under the fifth oak, as is the wood phlox. The Jacob’s ladder is spreading nicely. It makes me so happy when I get a plant in the right spot.

Thriving Jacob's ladder

Not-so-thriving wood phlox

I finally caved to my weeks-long craving for cinnamon rolls yesterday. It was Sunday, after all. Doesn’t that deserve a better breakfast? The extra bonus, as well as a motivating factor, was that I used up a little bit of cream cheese frosting that had been languishing since I made a batch of pumpkin bars quite some time ago.

The cinnamon rolls of my dreams