THEY’RE OUT!!  We have a clearspan full of baby birds, but the tractors are filling up.  The rainy, windy weather was a challenge, but Mark shifted wind blocks around as the wind changed and the birds did OK.   We’ve actually been able to harvest some from the pasture already, so we officially have pastured poultry again.  The flavor of a pastured bird is so much better than a barn bird, even though we feed alfalfa meal with the grain, the green grass is 100% better.  I also noticed as I cut them up that the tractor birds have a firmer meat.  Our barn birds have lots of room to roam, and they use it, but the sunshine and grass make a difference. 

The result is that we’re back in the tractor building mode.  The boys are learning a lot of carpentry (education translation: measuring, adding/subtracting/dividing, wood working, logic & planning/forcasting, social cooperation) along the way and are getting very good at building the kits.  In fact, we’ll be building some for another grower.  The kits the guys put together are easy to assemble and make pasturing however many chickens one wants to grow an easier arrangement.  Plus, the boys aren’t doodling in their school books and getting in trouble for daydreaming–but they still learn!

The other thing going on is catching up with the lawn.  The fields are getting wonderfully green, but the lawn is sprouting well, too!  Keith is the main lawnmower.  That bugs some of the older ones, but Keith loves it and works hard to keep his position. 

He has competition, though, besides the other boys.  The milking goats have been helping to mow the edges of the lawn and around the equipment out back.  They do a pretty fair job, and it sure saves running them back and forth to the pasture where the others are. 

Hope you, too, are enjoying this great spring weather!