At last, spring has arrived! We have been so thankful that the sun has been out shining down on us, melting away the cold of winter. Things are certainly starting to pick up in the homestead department. A few weeks ago we started our garden work by organizing all our seed packets. Avery has been working on alphabetizing in school so this was a fun way for her to put her skills in to use.  We separated the packets into cool season vegetables, warm season vegetables, and flowers/herbs.  Then we started prepping our raised bed for the first seeds to be sown. We added a nice amount of homemade compost (with lots of good chicken poo); there were a TON of worms in this which is great for the garden.

The only thing still green out there is our kale.  If you are considering growing a garden for the first time I highly recommend kale. It is like a weed – it is so easy to grow and can be grown year round. Not to mention you can chop it up and put it in these delicious burritos. We added seeds for more kale, plus spinach, lettuce, radishes, and some Chinese cabbage. We also transplanted some broccoli starts we picked up from the South Sound Sustainability Expo at the beginning of this month. Then we covered our pvc hoops with some clear plastic to keep things nice and warm inside and help those little bitty seeds germinate! We also started a few seeds inside with the aid of a grow light: tomatoes, ground cherries, and tomatillos.  I never have had much luck seed starting indoors but I have a good feeling about this year – I will be keeping you all updated on our progress 🙂

On to a less pleasant topic…March was not a great month for our backyard chickens unfortunately. We lost 2 girls this month, bringing our little flock down to 6 total now.  Baby, one of our older girls, was acting strangely last week and after a little TLC and a vacation inside our house in the rabbit cage she seems to be doing better.  Then Friday she took a major turn for the worse and despite some awesome chicken massaging by my hubby Chad, she did not make it through the night.  We can’t say for sure, but it appears she died from complication due to impacted crop.  I have to give a shout out to Lisa at Gardensphere for her help when I made the frantic call wondering what we could do. We buy all our feed and baby chicks at this fabulous nursery – it is great to support a small local business that is truly knowledgeable and helpful.  Great news on the chicken front however, is that all the girls are back laying again now that the days are longer.  It is such a great feeling collecting the beautiful blue, brown, and chocolate speckled eggs.  Our newest girls are a Polish cross breed and they have the cutest 3/4 size white eggs.  I need to take a picture of these for you all next month; you can’t help but smile seeing colorful farm fresh eggs.

So, typically going back to school would be more of a fall topic – however I have some exciting news to share! My husband was just accepted into Evergreen State College for spring quarter! Our whole family is looking forward to this big adventure and what is sure to be the start of a new chapter in our lives.  This will bring us one step closer to making our Brundage Homestead dreams a reality. Over the last month we have visited the Evergreen campus twice. My favorite part of course is the organic farm. We got to take a peek at this brand new little one, I believe the first little lamb born on site. Ahhh, spring is in the air!

Thanks for joining me again this month for an update on our life and adventures around the Brundage Homestead. Catch up on what has been happening the past few months here.

Have you planted anything out in your garden yet this year? Leave a comment below.