Cute Overload, and Don’t Forget to Eat Your Weeds

Meet the newest additions to the homestead:

(Click for big).

Two Black Sex Links and three Buff Orpingtons. We’ve never kept Buff Orpingtons before, but I think they’re really pretty, so we’ve decided to give them a try. Later this week the hubster is going to pick up 7 Aracauna chicks (I am so tired, I have no idea if I spelled that right or not). We want to get to the point where we have enough eggs for ourselves and bartering or selling too. Our six chickens have been laying all winter, although they slowed down a lot, but if we want to have extra we need more ladies. Besides, I love the pretty green eggs that we get from Aracaunas.

The Drama Princess is in fits of ecstasy over the little peepers, and I’m pretty geeked about it myself. Okay, so I checked on them about 20 times today … and they didn’t arrive until the afternoon … but it’s very exciting. We’ve never had wee chicks before because we didn’t have a proper place for them, but last year hubster create a wonderful chickie palace and tonight they all seem warm and cozy, sleeping next to each other with their heads on each others backs, but not piled on top of each other, and we did a temperature check, so I think they’ll be fine.  Fingers crossed.

Even though we have lots of cold wet weather left here, Spring is definitely moving in. Daffodils are blooming in some places (but not in our yard–we have an odd microclimate and are a few weeks behind most areas around us). But I found a primrose blooming, and some sweet purple violets. The Rosemary is just bursting in to flower–mostly tight little buds, but a few of them opened today–and the Camellia is blooming. And the chives are up. I love chives.

This weekend I enjoyed salads with weeds, and eggs with weeds, and grilled cheese with tomato and weeds, and home made pizza with artichoke hearts, pesto, pine nuts, mozarella cheese, and weeds … oh I do love spring. Of course, I can eat dandelion leaves all winter, but they are smaller and tougher and more bitter in the cold dark months, and not very appetizing. Plus winter is time for warm, cooked or preserved things. Now the season is turning, and the juices are flowing again, and the weeds are much nicer to eat. We have pepper grass everywhere, and violet leaves, and edible daisy leaves, and I can’t get enough fresh wild greens. Delicious. This is the first year I have been so keenly aware of how good those little leaves are, and how different they all taste from one another. They taste so alive! And eating them makes me feel more alive. Of course, it’s hard NOT to feel vibrantly alive when the first taste of warm weather hits, and everything is all green and shining.

What a rush.