This week was spent waiting for things to start moving again. The momentum of a few weeks back is all but gone. Cool weather and something of an ill wind might be the best way to put things.
It's a month since I made the development permit application and, though we have heard back a few times, the basic okay from the flood plain people has held up our approval. The problem seems to be that the person making the decision has criteria for approval which he is not sharing. I have re-engaged our flood plain engineer, but his attempts a finding a way through this have seemed to hit a stone wall of uncommunicative bureaucrats. My attempts a finding the way forward have also gone unanswered. So we wait. Certain that we will eventually get where we are headed. Unable to say when. Frustrated.
The Farm is looking pretty good. We weeded out the strawberry and potato patches thoroughly. The potatoes are doing very well and there are hundreds of berries ripening. The growth and development is slowed by a the cooler weather and lack of consistent sunshine, but strawberries are early Spring growers and don't need much sun. Many of the plants are thriving, most are not, but all are producing, so we are grateful for it. We have a Blue Jay nest in the nearby trees and she has eaten a few of the berries, so we ordered thirty-six Mylar pinwheels to put out in the rows and scare her off (if that is possible).
We planted the rest of the corn crop. One row was planted about a month ago using seed sprouted in the greenhouse. One row was seeded directly about two weeks ago using our nifty new seeding machine and it has emerged already. The balance of the corn went into four tidy rows this week and we are hopeful. "Knee high by the fourth of July" is the rule, and it looks like we will make it.
The baby Runner Ducks moved out into the chicken nursery coop and they love it out there. We love it too, since it removes the messy little critters out of the Laundry room of our tiny home cabin. We added a pond outside of one of the coop doors for the ducklings to play in. At night they have a heat lamp to snuggle by, so they are quite happy.
Our young hens, and one young rooster moved out of the nursery and into the main coop last week. They fit right into the flock, but don't browse the entire Farm just yet. Last week we had separated the bird areas from the rest of the Farm, leaving openings for the birds to leave their area, but keeping the dogs out of the bird area. The flock is looking good, but egg production is down just a bit. We have ordered a "Caponizing" surgical kit from Amazon and will soon be "altering" our one young rooster.This was always our intention, to make Capons of the rooster chicks we grow. The surgery itself is pretty straight forward and simple. But things might still go wrong so . . . Wish us luck.
As this week ends we still need to direct seed more crops, finish the preparations for the opening of the produce stand, and hope like hell that our first strawberries ripen by next weekend so that we can open the stand properly. We have live plants to sell, some of which have berries on them. We also have hanging baskets of strawberry plants. But it would be nice to have fruit to sell on opening day. We have the stand and the signage all worked out, now all we need is a crop to sell and a box to put the money into.
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