How many days til spring?

The baby chicks arrived the other day.  Along with the baby ducklings.  Cardboard boxes full of cheeping peeping little yellow fluff.  Now we have heat lamps and sawdust and waterers and cheeping peeping little balls of yellow fluff in our breakfast room.  These are our meat chickens and ducks.  First batch of 2008.  We have a broody hen setting some other eggs hopefully for future layer hens.  So far, no sign of life in that bunch of eggs.  It is fun getting the chicks from the hatchery, they are so cute.  It is hard for us to breed such a quick-growing chicken for meat purposes.  I know, I know, part of self-sustainability means sacrificing the huge, tender poultry that we Americans have come to expect...  So we are compromising a bit, to make a marketable bird.  We make the trip to the post office to pick up a box of springtime.  The little duckies are especially cute.  In a few more days they will be bigger, not so cute in our breakfast room, and they will move to their temporary home in the barn, til they are around four weeks old and big enough to handle outdoor temps.  Then out to the pastures.  Now they have to have 90 degrees and protected environment.  A lot of work for us.  

Speaking of springtime, today,  Maggie's goat, Nita, gave birth to the first goat babies of 2008. She went into labor early this afternoon.  What a good mama.  Her grunts and groans of goatbirth made me remember homebirth!  So much work to push babies out!  Maggie and I assisted, that is, we stood back, in wonder and awe, and encouraged Nita as she pushed those healthy little black and white goat babies out.  How can those long-legged creatures live for so long in that little mama?  Amazing.  We hope to have many more babies born before the end of spring.  I hope we do not cease to be amazed at the miracle of babies.  

I am way behind in my garden plans...  A cold set me back last week.  Most of the broccoli plants I was to have planted have died due to my illness.  They aren't exactly dead, just pretty weak and spindly.  I don't think they will produce.  Haven't even put them in the ground.  Oh well.  Who plans to get sick?  The peas I planted last month have JUST now started to come up.  I had given up.  They are alive!  It is now time to get lettuce and spinach and onions planted.  Let's hope for the best.

  I think that everything anyone ever needs to know about theology is spelled out very clearly in gardening and farming.  Life, death, resurrection.  Full Circle Farm Seminary.  I wonder if I can find any students who would like to register for classes.  As we enter Holy Week, I anticipate the many lessons God has for us here on the farm.  Keep you posted.