FIRST DAY OF SPRING
Man, the first day of Spring, for us, brings on slight panic. Not sure about anyone else... We have so much to do before we jump into full seasons! Around the farm, each element requires SOMETHING!
ALL THINGS COWS
With the cows being at two different spots, tasks are semi spread out, but these lovely ladies & babies are the biggest task. Makes sense… they’re pretty LARGE! Here’s what we/the boys have to do:
Finish the Confinement Building at the Big “W” Wineingers feed lot.
Repair fences around our summer pastures. We lease a couple extra pastures for the summer.
Wait for a few more calves to drop (be born). We don’t normally spring calf, but we gave it a whirl this year.
THE BEES
All the beehives died. BUMMER, right?! Nathan put our order in with the packages being distributed at the feed store mid-April. I believe we have 8 packs coming, so these tasks are A LITTLE more pressing:
Clean all the dead bees out of the hives.
Separate out & add two more baseboards to create 6 hives.
FINISH BOTTLING ALL OUR HONEY! Man…have we procrastinated! (Did you see our bottling video?!)
HAY FIELDS
Remember how we talked about you all experiencing something for the first time WITH us? Yeah…this is one of those things. We have baled in the past for ourselves, but this year, we are working with a few farmers to grow and bale alfalfa to sell at the feed store. I’m sure there’s things I’m missing here, but here’s where we are at so far:
Finalize farm leases.
Purchase the seed to plant.
They are currently looking around for equipment to make mass baling easier.
I'm not going to lie...this all sounds INCREDIBLY boring to me...I'll let Nathan take this on. You're welcome, babe.
CHICKENS
NOW we're talking about things I love! Did you see the picture I posted of Tessa helping?! O man it was soo cute. I’m one step ahead here since I got my chickens late February, but here’s what’s left to do:
Coop: Finish enclosing the coop & stapling up chicken wire.
Move the nesting boxes from The Big "W" Wineingers to our house.
Figure out how to get electricity to the shed (without extension cords).
GARDEN
Nathan gave me strict orders that I was not allowed to do a garden this year. I can see where he’s coming from…my most successful season I only got green beans & zucchini even though I planted about 12 things. I was given permission to use our cattle mineral tubs & plant a handful of things ON THE PORCH. So, here’s the plan:
Get the giant red tubs from the Josh’s house.
Pick 5 vegetables to plant.
Schedule planting & prepare for fertilizing & watering.
Any plant suggestions for a REALLY bad gardener?!!
FEED STORE
ANY change of season at the feed store makes for some adjusting. In the spring, here’s our biggest tasks:
CHICK DAY! Usually our first weekend in April. We order and had sell around 1,300 baby chicks. We prep special orders, then we sell the rest on Chick Day. We have customers that don’t have/want chickens, but they just come up to see the cute baby chickens, ducks & turkeys.
Still being slightly new, we aren’t quite pros at taxes yet, so I spend many a late nights behind the computer getting paperwork rounded up.
LOTS of seminars & events at the store. Starting next week, we have something big happening whether it be a seminar or event until the last week in April.
Well, awesome. After typing all of these things out, my TO-DO list has tripled! Great…thanks. *eye roll* At least we’ll be outside lots. Ok… here I go. HAPPY SPRING!