Half way through April and its still cold!

Winter just doesn't want to go away.  We are teased with a few nice warm days of 60 degrees or more then Winter pops up again with 30 degree mornings and wind that just won't quit.
I am longing for a nice long growing season, but this year I have not even gotten my onions and potatoes in the ground yet.  My hoop house, which was not covered for winter yet, has 4 large grow boxes.  There I have tiny starts of mustard greens, spinach, a few turnips, a few cauliflower,  lettuce, beets and spigarella (rapa broccoli greens) and some garlic from the fall planting.  So far they have survived two frosts that recently occurred.
The pear trees and apple trees have beautiful blooms this year.  We are happy to see the abundance of blooms after last year receiving no fruit. Although, just a week ago we had bad thunder storms which produced hail the size of peas that blanketed much of our yard.  Luckily it didn't knock off the blooms.  We were lucky.  This is a tricky weather time which one micro burst can destroy an entire fruit crop.

The top photo is our peacock, who when HE was young, we thought we had a female.  I ordered a male to pick up on Friday April 19th, only to find out we had a male and now I need a female.  So I contacted my breeder, who does have a suitable female and will pick HER up on Friday.  I'll post her photo on the next entry.

I just finished reading one of my favorite blogs "The Chicken Chick" who discussed anomalies in egg production.  I thought I would post a recent occurrence of ours.  My Rhode Island Red, who is one of our original hens has these crazy eggs once in while as she is getting old.  The pale beige eggs is a normal grade A large egg and the brown eggs is the size of a tbsp. Cute huh?  I did not use the tiny egg but when I cracked it open, it did have a tiny yolk.

Its Easter this weekend, hopefully we will have some warmth coming our way!