Last day in the yard for a while...

I have to go to Saltspring Island for the next week for a school thing so I was so happy to have such a beautiful day to play farming yesterday. Finally got the back bed weeded and transformed into our new berry garden. Planted strawberries and transplanted some very unhappy raspberry plants that were living in a shady spot in the front yard. Ran some netting all around it to keep the chickens and hopefully the dogs out. Check out the before and after pics:

Before:

After:

Got the rest of the beans planted around the bean teepee. Ludo moved a lot of the seedlings into bigger pots and they were busting at the seams. He did some more work in the big veggie garden too.

Got the worm composter set up.... thanks for the worms Mary! Hope they get cracking quickly as we currently have a lot more compost than we can handle. We're going to try making a few spinnable compost bins. They had one at Costco the other day and it seems like a really good idea.

Much to our surprise, the hen we lost 4 days ago came home. We thought for sure she'd made a coyote very happy but all of a sudden there she was! She took off again before we could catch her and clip her wing and wasn't home by bedtime. So today we went looking for her and found her camped out under one of the neighbour's bushes. She's clipped grounded and will be spending a few days in the coop wearing a leg band that says "bad girl" so we can tell her apart from the other Hamburg.

Our little bantum hen started laying again :) She had been laying every day but stopped when we moved her out to the coop with the new hens a few weeks ago.

The chicks are growing like weeds and getting more friendly every day. The silver laced one is my favorite. She is the smallest of the 3 so I think she enjoyed snuggles more than the other two because she got cold easily when we first got them. So she got handled more and is now friendly to the point of being annoying sometimes. You can't open the cage without her making a run for you. She runs up your arm to your shoulder then pops up onto your head. Very cute. She's still very small but seems very healthy and can hold her own against Buzz, the noisy golden laced, and is about twice her size and looks like a dinosaur. In keeping with the insect theme, we've named the buff laced one Ladybug (Lady) because she's shy and much more lady-like than her rowdy sisters. They just posed for a picture which shows their personalities quite well:

As you can see... their poofy hair-do's are coming in nicely! Lady looks like a movie star... Buzz looks like a dinosaur and Cricket looks like a punk rocker.

Well I better go pack... I won't have internet until I get home so I'll cy'all when I get back. Happy farming folks!