Let it rain, Let it pour

WEATHER CHATTER
Well our amazing "winter" days have come to an end. Now we are looking at 3+ days of solid rain, heavy at times. Areal flood watch has been issued by NWS.

I meant to move my chickens to a recovered area today but didn't get to it. That means I get to go home and scrounge up some plywood and tarps to cover the currently wet chickens until tomorrow when I can convince them with food that their new home is better than their current one :)

The bright side to it all is that the temperature is staying 40+ at night and near 60 during the day.... wow, hard to believe that this technically is still winter!!

BROILER UPDATE
Baby chicks are doing well, trying a few new methods of tracking this year. Thanks to my wife and friends at Open Gate Farm I have an excellent scale to play with. This year (well at least for now) I am weighing feed that I give the chicks and how much is left at the end of the day and weekly weight checks for the chicks themselves. This gives me an idea of consumption and conversion to see if it matches up with the charts that are out there and will help me understand if there is anything that I can do better!

If nothing else it helps me keep a good amount of care an attention on these little cuties (soon to be eating monsters).

Unbelievable!

 

 

Shocking after this winter to see something actually growing... not only are these a beautiful splash of color but they were my first hint that my bees were alive! Seeing a bee checking out the flowers and then slowing seeing them ALL over the farm on their scouting missions was really cool!

1st baby chicks arrived for the season!

 

 

Our first meat birds for the season arrived this past Friday (March 5th). Here they are settled into their brooder tent!

They're alive!

From 201003 Farm Pictures

So it appears that after a windy night where the top blew off my hive (it was 18 degrees that night) I had assumed my bees would not survive! They recommend not going in the hive even under 50 degrees... As you can see from the movie (click the picture to go to the movie... hopefully it will work, the buffering wasn't working when I tried it) they seem to be doing well.

I went into the hive and gave them some sugar water to be sure that they had an easy start to the season. Let's hope for a good haul of honey this fall!

Bulk of our accumulation is done...

Looks like we finally wrapped up the more snow part... Based on rough measurements it averages somewhere around 17" -- average of about 3 or 4 test places on the farm.

Wind has picked up a bit which will probably make some neat drifts.

I fired up the little 4x4 Jeep Comanche that I'm borrowing, threw it in 4L and easily got out of our spot and drove down some of the snow on our driveway.

Here are some more snow pics: