A Busy And Blessed Easter Weekend!

Friday started the weekend with a trip up north to Legg's Peafowl Farm.  What a glorious morning for a drive.  I picked up Steve's birthday present, a female Indigo Blue Peahen, just a year old, to be a bride for our Peekachoo!  Peekachoo was not too please to be put in a pen with anyone, female or not.  But their honeymoon suite that Steve built is 20 feet by 12 feet for their outside area, which is plenty for a few months.  They need to stay together during the spring and early summer, as this is the mating season and the female would take off looking for a male to mate with.  Peekachoo will be old enough to mate with her next year.  Right now we have to keep the female accustomed to us and our farm.  By the end of July she will be able to cruise the grounds with Peekachoo.  The two peafowl from next door come to visit everyday.  Their female is quite interested in looking at the birds in their pen and the male just struts around and calls out constantly. Its pretty noisy!

The weather is now fabulous, 50's at night and 70's during the day.  I have begun to plant and over the weekend, I picked my first pound of asparagus from the garden.  The strawberry plants took a beating with the drought but they are slowly coming back.  I see a few blooms starting already.
The cold frame box is yielding spinach as well.  I picked my first 1/2 pound yesterday.

While Steve was building the peafowls honeymoon pen, I was taking care of my least favorite chore, cleaning out the chicken coop.  After such a long and cold winter that coop was really full of poop!  4 hours of shoveling and another hour of placing new hay, it now is beautiful and the girls are very happy.  We are getting 7 to 10 eggs a day from our 11 hens.  That's great considering two of the hens are over 3 years old and don't lay very often anymore.

The pear trees are in full bloom and they look great!  Bees are buzzing and the tiny green shoots of plants are looking good.  Monday after Easter, we had about an inch of rain, which helped fill the pond a bit more.  We need another 6 inches or rain, and  hopefully we'll get enough this spring to really fill the pond to keep it from drying out in the summer.

Since Derek is a converted Jew, we made matzo ball soup, with Spinach & diced chicken in the matzo balls, swimming in a saffron onion broth.  We used the fresh spinach and it was fabulous.
It has become one of our Easter traditions along with Lamb Roast and carrot & sweet potatoes roasted with a molasses & bourbon glaze.  Yummy!