Our chicks have made their move out to the new coop. Goats and older chickens have been evicted, and now the new batch of chickens have the coop and chicken yard to themselves...Well, except for their guardian dog, Lance. Right now, for their warmth and protection, they are confined to the coop itself where they have everything they need to keep them happy and growing. The chickens are about a month old now and don't look much like the fluffy little peeps we brought home. Now they look like small versions of the plump Rhode Island Red hens they will grow to be. Young female chickens are correctly called pullets before they begin laying eggs.

Meet our asparagus thief. This is a young, female deer that I call Doa (as in "doe, a deer, a female deer.)  Doa was orphaned as a fawn, hand-raised by our neighbors and then released, but she is still very, very tame, and she hangs out a lot at our farm. She seems to think she is either a goat or a dog. One thing she does know though is that she loves fresh asparagus. So do I, so I had to cover up my asparagus bed with wire row covers to protect the plants. Our garden has a low, electric netting fence around it to keep out the resident groundhogs and raccoons, but Doa bounces right over it. We will probably find it necessary to protect other crops from her, but she is so pretty and sweet that it is hard to be too upset with her.

The new chicken coop is ready and waiting for the new chicks. If the weather stays this warm, we should be moving them in in another couple of weeks. The coop is made mostly of recycled materials. It contains nesting boxes and roosts with a special hatch under the roosts so we can clean out underneath there when needed. Right now it also contains a goat now and then because the goats are currently sharing space with the few grown chickens we have. Eventually we will move the goats out, but that may be awhile yet.
We have just begun on the barn this weekend. We set the four corner poles. It doesn't sound like much, but getting the four corners right will have everything to do with how the whole structure turns out. We will continue to work on it throughout summer and possibly fall, hopefully finishing in time for winter.
In the garden, the lettuce is up and growing. Sometime soon after spring break, I will be bringing in some for the salad bar. The asparagus is also coming up, but some critter has been helping itself to each little sprout that pushed itself up out of the ground...we finally discovered a way to keep the culprit out so we could have some ourselves. More next time on who the thief turned out to be!

The Chicks Have Moved Out!
Our fine feathered friends have already grown up enough to move out of their brooder box in the laundry room and into a much larger cage outside near the back porch. They are still quite small and they must have their heat lamp on at night especially, but their fluffy down has been replaced by small feathers and they can actually fly about some. It's a bit chilly tonight, so I am going out to check on them as soon as I am finished here. We worked on their new coop today and it should be finished in plenty of time.