One of THOSE Days

Yes, it was one of those days - or perhaps - it was a couple of those days?

The cold weather and high winds brought their own issues. In the last week, we've had two days with significantly high sustained winds. The first bout with the wind cost a fair number of tomato, broccoli and lettuce seedlings. The second bout cost us one of our cold frames as it decided to take a trip across and down the road last night.

What does this mean for us? We have to build some heavier cold frames and take the time and resources to build something more permanent to handle our seedlings. And, we need to do that quickly.

Then, there is last night's and this night's cold weather. That means all of the seedlings needed to get moved into the garage to stay warm enough for the night. We've handled this just fine. But, it does mean that you spend the time moving the plants around to get them in there and still be able to do work. Whatever, we were already moving plants out of cold frames in order to save what we could from the wind.

Oh, and today was a farmers' market day in Waverly. It was difficult to stay motivated on Friday to pick for a market where we were pretty certain the turnout would be poor. But, we still picked and cleaned the leeks, lettuce, carrots, asparagus and kale. We made a selection of tomato plants, etc. And - we made ourselves go to market. A few brave folks did come to market. For that, we are most grateful. But, as we expected, we came home with a fair amount of produce.

Unfortunately, the kicker to all of this occurred this evening when we went out to do evening chicken chores. We have, er, HAD several hen chicks. But, found all but one missing from the box. The meat chicks appeared to be fine. After some work, we discovered all of the chicks wedged behind the box. Evidently a rat has decided that they are tasty. And, in the tradition of critters like this on our farm - you can't kill just one. So, we have one hen chick left.

This meant we had to slap together more protection for the meat chickens for the night. It also means that we know what we are doing tomorrow, despite the original plans for the day. Hopefully a two pronged plan of rat removal and new lids for the boxes will solve the problem.