Spring? What Spring?

It's been a month since the last round of farm updates because Spring didn't really start a month ago as prescribed... It's been 45 and rainy since, oh, October. Which means there's not a whole lot going on in the garden yet and we're closing in on the end of April. Fingers crossed this means summer lasts a month longer than usual to make up for this ridiculousness. Here are the meager farm happenings:

• We're getting 3 eggs a day, almost every day, probably averaging out at around 19 eggs a week! Woohoo! This has been going on for almost a month now- so next winter when I am lamenting the lack of eggs, I need to keep the first day of Spring in mind as the beginning of "3 egg days"
• My tulips, which optimistically came up around March 1 have been shuddering in the cold ever since, and one opened this week... only about 6 weeks behind schedule. 
• Cherry blossoms finally appeared this week!
• Lettuces are in progress, albeit at a snails pace, the starts are big enough to pull leaves off of occasionally as garnish... hopefully full salad harvests are in our near future. The lettuce seedlings, rounds one and two, have both come up but haven't made any serious progress. 
• Peas went into the ground, but most likely were all consumed by the chickens during one of their great escapes (more on that in a moment). 
• Tomatoes are hanging out on the windowsill as of last weekend, having graduated from their position under the lights. A few more are still under lights, along with the slow poke eggplant seedlings. 

And then there is my latest pet guilt trip... the chickens.  The chickens have been consuming anything green and even slightly edible whenever they've been out to free range. Which has led to a few futile fencing attempts, much frustration, living the "flew the coop" metaphor, chasing escapees (Rose and Darby, Goldie's too fat to fly apparently), and more frustration. Which ended in them all on lock down this week, until we figure out a permanent solution to keeping them away from baby plants.

The cat finds no greater pleasure than pulling down the bird netting that was originally keeping them from eating every pea and lettuce start, so we're moving on to bigger and better things. Like permanent fences and a run down the unused side of our house (which borders the neighbors driveway, hopefully they don't mind...). Hopefully by the end of the weekend they'll have a secure place to roam and destroy things.

Miss Kitty has been a full fledged indoor/outdoor cat for going on two months now, and has only scared the bejesus out of me a few times by running in the road at lightening speed. Here's hoping she continues to steer clear of the road!

Next up, rain barrels and chicken run fencing. Oh and those thousand other projects we've started and not yet finished...