Thursday, March 15, 2012

3 Seasons in 2 weeks

It has been a weird mild winter here.  2 weeks ago we had only our second snowstorm of the season. (The last one was way back in the early part of December.)  We had about 7 inches dumped on us.  It stuck to EVERYTHING and  I loved the magical winter wonderland.  



 So did the kids...


It was a brief moment and with the help of a good rainy day, 4 days after the snow, it quickly turned to standing water and sloppy mud.  I don't like that and neither did the chickens.


all this water was moving right into the run and making it very sloppy...


 which made going outside no fun.  They all stayed inside for most of the day.


So I put down a fresh layer of sand


and they enjoyed being outside again.


 I cleaned out the coop and gave them fresh bedding which always sparks their curiosity and they spend a long time picking and scratching in the new wood shavings....


 and getting back to the business of laying eggs.  Georgia, Buffy and Penny don't seem to realize that there are enough boxes for everyone.


It really warmed up this week and yesterday the temperature climbed into the mid 70's.  Hello summer!!  So it was time to take the plastic off of the run. I left the west end of the run still covered...just in case we get some more cold NW winds whipping thru. They all got a little nervous when I started ripping off the plastic and stayed as far away as possible from the ruckus I was creating.


It seems strange to actually see them in the run again and I'm sure they are very happy to see out into the world again.


Meanwhile the yard is springing to life very early this year.