Chicks, seeds, and Cold Frames

 I potted up my little mini soil blocks into the bigger ones. This picture is from a
 few weeks ago- this is cabbage. Napa and the left and Red Express on the right.

 We got some more chicks! 5 Rhode Island Red, 2 Buff Orpington, and 1 Red Production. Last year we had 8 chicks. One ended up being a rooster so we gave it away, then 3 got eaten by predators. Now we are down to 4 hens. Hopefully this year we can keep more of our chickens alive. We have plans to build a legit chicken run on the back portion of our garden. I will share progress on that when it happens (which I hope is soon). The boys kept asking me if we are keeping our hens from last year, and the answer was yes. They are laying lots of eggs now yay!

 I put Cam to work building me cold frames so I could set out my cabbages early.

Here's the finished frame. I'm still waiting for the row covers to come in the mail :)

 After many failed attempts, I made my first successful artisan bread. The tricky part was I only wanted to use a sourdough culture as my leavening. I also wanted to create a bread that was not just white flour. This is 50/50 white and wheat.

The garden now. We had a dusting of snow!

My overwintered kale and spinach are picking up speed growing and we are harvesting some of that.
I planted my peas last Wednesday. I could have planted earlier but somehow I always get a ton of little projects going on and I get behind.

Seeds indoors right now:
Kale, Cabbage (Acclimating these to the outdoors this week)
Broccoli
Spinach
Mache
Onions
Flowers
A few herbs

Seed Starting

Once it comes time to start my seeds, time starts moving really fast because there is a lot to do!

In mid February I started my onion seeds. I just put them in these flats and as you can see the varieties are separated by cardboard.

 I also harvested the last of my parsnips this month. It was getting to hot and they were sprouting green again on their tops.

 Dax was a good helper digging out the parsnips.

 Trees and forsythia bushes are blooming already. This one is in front of our house. I think it's a bradford pear.

The start of some of my other seeds. I got a mini soil blocker to start my seeds, then you put the mini blocks into the larger ones. The soil blocker works really well for things that don't like to be transplanted. I love my 2inch soil blocker. I'm still trying to decide if I like the mini.