I can't decide whether our most recent cold spell (one semi-serious frost and a few days of chilly weather) counts as blackberry winter or not.  The dewberries (a groundcover version of blackberries) are blooming along the sunny driveway, but the real blackberries back in our homestead area just have buds.  Not that the semantics really matter, but superstition holds that if this is blackberry winter, then it's our last real cold spell of the spring.

Our chicks popped out of the shell right in the middle of the chilly weather Tuesday, but we now know what to do if we have to put damp chicks in a cold brooder, so there was no drama.  I moved the webcam inside so you can enjoy watching the youngsters take their first steps, learning to eat and drink.  Don't worry if you notice chicks keeling over, though --- narcolepsy is quite normal for day old chicks.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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