Spring.....?

Just an update on the farm happenings. My last hatch was yet another failure more or less. Apparently the humidity either was too high or spiked after a fill and drowned my little turkeys because everyone that went into the hatcher was nicely developed and alive but only one hatched. I could just cry. I spent good money on those little Midget turkeys babies and hated to lose them. On the other hand, I did get three duck babies to hatch. They LIKE the high humidity hatch. So I have one lonely little white midget turkey baby and two blue Swedes and one black Swede. They are awfully cute. Then Greg came home with three baby buff geese. I really, really need geese....I do! They're adorable, who could not need geese? One good thing about the whole thing is that the ducks and the geese keep reminding the turkey about where the food and water are so he's doing very well at eating.
On to the next hatch. Seems like I'm always pinning all my hopes on a new incubator full of eggs. The next hatch is lavender turks, Beltsville turks, runner ducks, call ducks, some chickens from my chicken house and some Pilgrim geese. The plan is that I will use the hatcher for a high humidity hatch for the waterfowl and keep the turks and chickens in the incubator with the turner turned off and lower humidity. THIS time it's gonna work. I've ordered some more Midget eggs too because I'm just that confident that I can do this. Damn it.
We've moved the baby chickens out to the new coops and my baby turkeys are now in the grow room so the new ducks and newest turkey could have the little bathroom brooder. Where will I put the new hatch? In Greg's sock drawer of course! I hate cornish chickens. Just want to get that out there. If I EVER grow meat birds again it will not be these aggressive, ugly, smelly things I can assure everyone of that. I'll butcher my Reds before I do cornish again.
My plants are thriving of course. Ever see a plant that I couldn't make grow? People have purchased quite a few but everytime I get some extra space I plant some more stuff. Last week I planted my pumpkins and some more herbs and the last watermelons and broccoli. In theory, I'm done but all bets are off if I sell some more of my babies.
So we have snow now. I mean really, a LOT of snow. We're so snowed in that if I didn't know we were going to have 70 degree weather on Monday I'd think this would be something we were going to have to deal with for awhile. Ah, but my pasture and trees are so happy. By mid-week next week we're going to have so much green out there that it will burn your retinas. You just gotta love spring in the Rockies.
Kids had a review at the school last week. All went as expected. They all had vision and hearing tests. DJ flunked his hearing test but it's allergy season for him so my guess is that his ears are swollen or fluid filled. The three little ones had reading tests. DJ went into sensory overload and failed miserably even though he's been steadily improving since he got the Hooked on Phonics program. He' s actually relaxed quite a bit about reading since he's started to gain some proficiency. Oh well. Mikey did as well as expected considering he still lacks some of the fundamentals regarding phonics. He knew a few sight words and then wanted to do something else, anything else. Annie showed off and did a good job so at least someone was able to confirm that I am teaching the kids something. We did DJ's IEP which was the usual stuff, nothing new. Rissa has been playing lately so we discussed some ways to motivate her. We'll see. And that was a day at the school. It was nice to have Greg be a part of the process too.
And that's about it for me. I'm canning chili today and have a couple of whole chickens in the oven for supper. I've discovered that I really like black beans so I put them in the chili. I had a bowl of black beans with some butter and a little salt. They were very good. Need to do that more often.