March Fun

• Chicks
• Chaga
• Firewood/Boards
• Maple Syrup

Little Buggers Growing Up

5 Days

It has been a challenging 5 days since the 80 “surprise” chicks arrived. The biggest challenge was the weather. Who knew that Maine March weather was so unpredictable? Actually, March has always been one of my least favorite months just because of the foul weather. Not cold enough and not warm enough to do much outside and there is always the wind.
 Any who, the crazy March weather brought in a blizzard that dumped more than a foot of snow followed by several more inches of rain. Needless to say, water and old barns and farmhouses don’t mix. Half of the barn flooded and leeched over to the other side under the concrete and through the gutters and wet the birds bedding. Anyone who has raised birds knows at times it seems as if they want to die – keeping them warm and dry enough is hard without making them too warm. S0, I went out in the barn to check on the chicks and was quite alarmed to see almost half of them wet, not fluffy balls of yellow but angry matted down distraught little peepers. Replaced their bedding and added more lights and to my amazement all 80 appear to be alive and doing well. 
 PM if you think you’ll want any chicken. They should be ready the first week of June. $3.50 lbs

Easter Chaga Hunt

We drink a fair amount of chaga tea or tea with chaga in it. Not sure which ingredient takes precedence and makes the title of the tea. Ended up having a bit of a midday lull so we took a little walk downback to have a little chaga hunt and found this beauty. We did not end up cutting it because we have plenty already, just marked it in the GPS for later.
 The funny part of the hunt is that we have been through that area before and to be honest I was only half looking assuming there was no chaga to find in the immediate area- WRONG!

Lumber

Again, a Maine weather story. The same storm that rolled through in December that blew away my pole barn also took out a number of fairly large trees. What made the storm so sever wasn’t just the fact the wind was blowing in excess of 50 mph but blowing with that velocity from the South. A winter with a steady North or Northwest wind is fairly common if not a daily thing but from the South is a bit different.
 Good news is that I was able to cut 20 decent diameter logs 20 ft long which will be used to make boards for farm projects.

Maple Syrup

Wrapped up another maple season. Little earlier than usual mostly because my trees started to bud early. The weather turned cold again before warming back up. I’m thinking I probably could have gotten another week out of it had I tried. No complaints had a good season and made some great syrup.