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Wow. That was one hell of a week, eh?

For the record, Senior Trump official: “We were wrong. He’s a Fascist.”

Here’s hoping we can hang on and hold our democracy together until Jan 20.

Here locally, I am distracting myself with wool, per usual. More squishy feel-good yarn

And, we’ve made a start on the twinwall installation on the hoophouse

Which is awesome, because our garden seed just came in the mail.

Just trying to stay productive and focusing on what (little) I can control.

Take care, and stay safe folks-

The new year opened with a fair bit of rain and wind, but also with some windows of opportunity to work outside between stormy stretches. Not good enough weather to be working with panels of polycarbonate, but perfectly suited for doing some groundwork.

I’d previously covered the turf within the hoophouse footprint with cardboard to help break it down, and that has mostly worked. But as it had never been planted in, and is fairly rocky, and is going to take a little work to get it ready for all the things I hope to grow there!

So first I had to dig out and haul off some of the gravely-ness.

Then I harvested a bunch of our compost to add to the mix

I felt a little bad disturbing the worms from deep within the compost pile, but really need their help getting the hoophouse soil in shape, so once I spread the compost out in its new location, I tucked them in with a layer of cardboard.

Looking at he structure from the south

The soil just to the right of the long slab is feeling pretty good, as I dug in a thick layer of aged chicken poop back in August, but I’ve still got about a third of the area to dig and amend. And I want to do that before we get the plastic on, so it can get thoroughly rained in.

Just ordered our garden seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, so the thought of all that good stuff growing in our garden this year is keeping me motivated.

I also kicked off the year with a bit of feelgood spinning- soft and squishy Esther heavy worsted two-ply

This time of year Esther is always a little grungey-looking, as she seems to pick up more mud and crud in her fleece than the rest of the gang, but she cleans up marvelously well, don’t you think?

I should go and give her some butt scritches (her very favorite thing) and tell her what a pretty girl she is. 🙂

As is our holiday tradition, the sheep enjoyed the Christmas tree as a snack this afternoon

The chickens received cabbages as gifts, but Esther decided she wanted to sample those as well 🙂

That was about the extent of the excitement here. We’re just keepin’ it real low key and holding out for 2021.

In knitting news, I’ve hit upon a new colorwork motif that I really enjoy working and so have been making up some hats in different color combos just for fun. Hats seem to be my comfort zone right now, so I’m just giving in to it.

Stay safe out there- and I’ll see y’all in in the new year!

And Go Hawks! 🙂

In reverse order-

Last week we lost one of our older chicken ladies, a Partridge Rock.

While she never had a proper name, she was a solid citizen, who had earned her retirement here through her early years of steady egg production.

Sadly, she developed some sort of ailment that I wasn’t able to nurse her through, and passed away last weekend. She was the last of the Partridge/Barred Rock cohort that we raised up in the spring of 2015. Here was their chick nursery class photo-

With this loss of one of the older crowd, it seemed an opportune time to inject a little more youth into the chicken flock. So yesterday I arranged to take delivery of three sweet little Amberlink pullets (3 months old).

I didn’t get them home until after dark last night, and the weather was awful, so they spent their first night here in a comfy dog crate.

This morning they got to meet the gang out in the shed-

It’s always a bit stressful for newcomers, but the girls seem to be learning pretty quickly and sticking together- and I’ll be keeping a pretty close eye on them for the next few days. Welcome chicken babies!