Signs of Spring

Finally, it's time to tap the trees!

Spring felt like it came a bit early this year and there are no complaints here! We had a glorious stretch of warm weather in February and it got us all excited to be outside again. It's always encouraging after a long winter to start to see signs of spring approaching.

Chickens
It's a sure sign that spring is coming when our chickens finally start laying eggs again. We averaged 4 per day throughout the winter. This is pretty depressing when you consider that we have 23 laying hens. So, it's always exciting when the egg basket starts to fill up again. The girls get very excited every evening to give us the daily tally of eggs that have been collected. We are getting 12-15 every day now.

Our flock of chickens have started laying again!

Warm weather also means that the chicken coop has thawed out enough to finally clean it out. The girls are always happy when their home has fresh pine shavings!

A spring thaw allows for a coop clean-out.

Maple Syrup
Once the daily temperatures start to be above freezing, while the nighttime temperature stay below freezing, it's the perfect time to tap our Sugar Maple Trees. We have a modest number of Sugar Maple Trees on our property but it's enough to make it worth our while to tap them and make syrup. Tapping the trees is always a fun day for our family. The kids enjoy hanging the buckets and watching the spile for any drips of sap.

Caitlin and Addy hanging sap buckets.

Seeds
Mid-February means it's time to plant my pepper seeds. This year, I am using seeds that I saved from our vegetable garden last year. It's my first time using our own seeds and I'm hopeful that they will sprout.  We have one big, south-facing window in our home and I cram it full seed trays to get a head start on the garden.

Seed packets filled with seeds we saved from last year's pepper harvest.

Honey Bees
This spring we have decided to take on a new endeavor.  We are going to add bee hives to our ever-expanding list of hobbies.  I honestly don't know anything about what it takes to raise bees, so I've enrolled in "bee school" with our local bee club. Matt and I have been spending our spare time researching all we can in preparation for our two new hives. I'll be blogging more about this experience if you are interested in learning with me!