Chicks!

Last Friday Alicia drove in to Ritzville to pick up some baby chicks.  She brought home 36.  There are Barred Rock, Rhode Island Red and Buff Orpington.

The plan is to brood the chicks at our chicken house.  When they are big enough to move in to the big house, we will move the old hens to Alicia's place.  Once the babies start laying the old hens will move once again, this time to a retirement farm for chickens that our neighbor Carol runs!

There is something about chicks that says "spring is here", even if the weather doesn't agree.  Still cold and rainy today.

We put the chicks in this round pen to start, with a heat lamp over the top to keep them extra warm.

They always find the food right away!

Alicia and her chicks.

After only one week, the chicks have grown out of their round pen and are ready to graduate to a bigger house!  The front part of our chicken house makes a perfect brooding area, for about a month, until everyone if fully feathered and ready to move to an even bigger space!

Most of the chicks are clustered under the heat lamp

I love how they just smash together to sleep. 

Hail, hail, the gang's all here

Spring weather in Eastern Washington is unpredictable!  There is a saying, that if you don't like the weather, wait 10 minutes and it will change!  Today was one of those changing days.

Started out with hard driving rain with wind, next a slight clearing, then sun, then storm clouds with hail and finishing with sun again!

I took a few photos with my phone of the hail storm.

Hail storm!

Charlie wasn't sure what to think of the hail.  He just got his hair cut this morning.

And then, almost as fast as it arrived, it was over.  The sun was shining through the beautiful droplets clinging to the tree branches.

Part sun, and part storm clouds.

A few spring flowers

A couple days ago I took a tour of the yard.  Typical spring weather here is cold and windy and that it has been.  The sun came out for a few minutes one day so I grabbed the camera and headed out to see what was blooming.  Not much yet, but the promise of more on the way.

Crocus are among the first flowers to bloom in my yard.

The dwarf forsythia is getting ready to bloom.  The bees love this little shrub.

I always have accompaniment when I am outside!

Charlie is a big fan of branches for chewing.  He makes regular trips to the brush pile behind the barn and drags his treasures back to the yard for chewing!

Crocus have such bright pollen anthers.  

The happy blooms don't last long on crocus so enjoy them while you can.  

Daffodils make me smile!

The Lenten rose gets prettier and prettier and the bees love it.

Daphne.....so bright and oh so fragrant.

Another honey bee favorite.

Another bee friendly bloom!

Mr. Bumble Bee loves it too!!

Clean Chicken House

When I was a newly married young woman, a wise neighbor man asked me if I made lists.  I replied, "yes" with a great deal of pride!  Then he asked me how that worked out for me.  I realized he was asking if I was the type of person who could make adjustments to "the plan", and I am not!

After all these years, I still make lists.  And after all these years, I am only slightly better at shifting gears and adjusting to a different plan than my original.  But, I am slightly better and that's at least a start!

Yesterday was a gear shifting day, which ended up with cleaning the chicken house!  Not a bad shift!!

Reynald designed the poop roost so that the front would flop down for easy cleaning.  

Next is to clean up the floor.  

And their nesting boxes....

Put everything back together....

Clean shavings in their nest boxes....

And on the floor.

This will confuse the girls and Sir Charles for a little while.  Unlike me, they liked the look and smell of their home before cleaning!

Spring cultivation

It's time to get started in the field!  We are planting about 750 acres of spring crop (wheat) this year.  If we were able to start and finish, this project would take about 10 days.  But, as spring goes in the Inland Northwest, field work is a stop and go process.  Alicia finished harrowing the field yesterday and between the three of us, we finished cultivating, which went well in to the night!

Next up is fertilizing, but a big rain is predicted, beginning this afternoon and persisting through the weekend, so we don't anticipate much field work happening the next few days.  We are NOT complaining about the rain!  Moisture is most always good in dry land wheat country!

I was able to sit on the tractor for a few hours yesterday.  It's so good to be back in the saddle.

You can see the neat and tidy lines that Alicia made with the harrow and the neat and tidy lines I am making with the cultivator.

Is it even possible to farm with out satellite guidance?  

Looking back on to the cultivator.  There was a little dust coming off as the surface has dried slightly.  Really good moisture below the surface though, which bodes well for the coming crop.

I love the look of a freshly cultivated field.  We have a lot of residue on this field.  It looks like you could just throw seed out there and it will grow!

And so we begin.  The best thing about what we do is that there is a degree of consistency in the variety.  The variables make life interesting and at times challenging.  We have a good life as wheat farmers in Eastern Washington.  Moving with the seasons is a real privilege.  Stay tuned as we progress through this farming season!!!

Quilting race

I really thought I would have to be back to work in the field by now, but Mother Nature is giving me some extra sewing time!

Last Friday I went outside to do some yard work but the weather changed and chased me inside.  Since I couldn't be outside, I opted for finishing up the piecing on the quilt that I worked on a few weeks ago at Stitchin' Chicks retreat.

This is the quilt top partially laid out on the floor.

This is half of the top sewn together.

Sewing the rows together.

One of the quilt blocks.....

and the other to make up the Double Irish Chain.

And, as soon as that was finished up, I pulled out another project that I cut and made samples of two winters ago.  It's time to get this one out of the box and on to a bed!  I'm quite sure I will not have time to finish this before my little Colt tractor calls me to work, but I should be able to get a few leaves, or at least parts of leaves put together.

This is the last fall quilt for the "season quilt series".  I would save the most time consuming and difficult for last!  Usually I do the hardest one first, then the rest seem like a breeze, but this time I reversed the process.  It's going to be so pretty when it is done.  Stay tuned......

Maple leaf blocks and chain blocks.  Beth says you always need to make up sample blocks before you cut everything, just to make sure the cutting instructions are correct.

Here are all my bags of parts and pieces!

I've started piecing the stem portion of the leaf together.  It's the most time consuming of that particular block.

I like to have several quilts cut and ready to sew.  That way once I finish a one project, I just pick up the next box and off I go on the next one!  I'm not even going to admit however, how many are cut and waiting!  It's more than two but less than ten!!!

Clean cars

This past Friday morning, Reynald and I had to be in Spokane.   Alicia took the opportunity to change the snow tires to summer tires on her Theo, the SHO car and our Gretta once we returned.  She also washed all three!  Youth is such a joy!!

The SHO car which Alicia drives to work most days, clean and shiny.

Theo gets a thorough wash as well.  Reynald showed up in time to help!

Gretta got a bit of a face lift this winter.  Someone backed in to her in a parking lot in Spokane and did some minor damage.  We had that repaired, and another boo boo or two fixed.  She looks like a new car!