Springtime Temperatures: Kits and Seedlings

 Spring is popping up all over the farm yard! My lovely lupines surprised me with how large they already are.

Snowdrops have come and are past their peak now. Crocuses are looking vibrant. Daffodils and tulips are up, but. not blossoming yet. 

Brother S has started decorating the bird weights that I use on my fruit trees.  This one has a nest as well!

For one of our homeschool science labs this week we took the soil's temperature in various parts of the yard and garden. 

It's plenty warm enough for planting cool season crops like peas and onions outside. 

And VERY warm (70F!) in the high tunnel.  The center of the tunnel especially.  The corners of the high tunnel we found to be much colder. 

Baby bunny kits are coming thick and fast including 2 unplanned litters from the ladies in my experimental rabbit retirement community.  I put a buck and 2 does in the old chicken coop and run to see how they would do together.  The buck had had a stroke and kind of hobbles around... I was planning to build a rabbit retirement tractor coop if the retirement home test went well. Haha.  Good test. We will definitely need two rabbit retirement tractors.

I had 10 kits from the litters born late in December and all of them are spoken for or sold.  So it's probably a good thing that I have another 20 kits that will be ready for new homes in early May. 

A's litter of show kits has had some major health problems.  I have been in contact with the breeder we bought them from and I think they are fairly inbred (as with many show rabbits) and much less hardy than our Silver Fox kits.  It has been pretty heart breaking for big sister A.  

The shelves under my grow lights are full to capacity again.  We'll have to start doing them in shifts again soon. 

My helpers have been doing a great job planting and filling pots again as always. 

I moved all of the comfrey outside this week and will move the artichokes soon. We're still having an occasional frost day here and there, but the Farmer's Almanac predicts no frost for our are after March 27th. 

On the front steps, Angelica seedlings are popping up, onions are up, and so is Russian Rhodiola. 

We did some milk jug greenhouses for the onions this year. I usually do them under the grow lights, but I wanted to demonstrate this method for the little garden club I'm leading at church.