Coming Back to Life

And the blog is too!  Yes, it's been a few months since our last post since through the winter not too much was going on. It was not a bad winter over all.  We had a pretty cold December, the average temp for the month was about 22 and our coldest night was -11.  The last few weeks of January and the first half of February were quite snowy for our part of Idaho.  We probably got about 20 inches of snow in total. The last weeks in February and the beginning parts of March have been abnormally warm, with temps around 60 more than a few times and the nights not even getting below freezing. The best part of this warm spell was the rain, with Pacific storms sweeping all the way to us. As we have written in the past, southern Idaho has been in a severe drought for a few years, which impacted our season last year. The storms we have gotten have helped tremendously, both in terms of rain here and snow in the mountains.  Even though we are still in a moderate to severe drought in the valley, our water prospects look good from snow melt. The reservoirs are likely going to be near capacity for most of the water year and our well has been well charged by run-off coming underground from the surrounding highlands.

But all this warm weather means that spring work must begin.  Pruning, raking, preparing beds, weeding (already) and eventually planting are on the docket soon.  Our experience last year certainly showed that this grunt work is very important and can really set the stage for the whole growing season.  So, let's get to work!

Some of our producing but out-of-control raspberries that will be pruned soon.

Turning the beds over.  After winter the soil is still wonderfully loose. The strawberries and even some garlic (plus weeds) came back on their own.

We processed more chickens over the winter:  these are the high-producing remainder

A very luxurious chicken area

The reservoir 2 miles down the road is already full