Oatmeal and dried nettle for our chickens. A special, healthy treat for them.

We pruned the lilacs. You can see our pile of cuttings is larger than the lilac bushes on both sides of the arbor gate. They say you shouldn’t cut more than a third away but these bushes hadn’t been pruned in years.

Throughout the past week, Dave spent a little time each day shredding branches that were piled up in the orchard from last year and over the weekend he tackled these lilac branches and those from the elderberry bushes which we also pruned last week.

Dave moving some compost to the garden beds. The horse manure we added in the fall turned our compost into gold.

Chickens enjoying the composted beds.

Chickens in the compost

And getting a late afternoon snack. The hen in front must be one of the older hens. They are much more likely to approach us.

These photos were taken over the past week. We’ve had really crazy weather. A couple days in the 40’s and then a couple days in the 60’s and repeat.