Robin Red Breast has arrived
I saw the first robin yesterday.
Is spring here yet? Um no. Because it was literally slating for a short while. Covering the windows in ice that almost immediately melted back off. But the robins did not care. They know change is on the way.
I tried to take a photo of the red breasted birds busy in the field looking for worms. But the birds would not sit still for a picture. What are they like? So you have a cardinal instead. You can hear the robins in the trees though AND the red-winged blackbirds – they have arrived too.
And YES! There are worms in the field now. When I first took these fields from chemical to organic farming there were no worms.
No self respecting robin would be out there looking for worms in the old days – the ground smelt funny.
But now the robins are out there amongst the emerging organic wheat eagerly pulling reluctant worms out of the healing earth. The soil is regenerating.
This image was through the roof of the glasshouse yesterday. Icy rain melting. I would like to print this onto metal – I think it would be a great image on aluminium (out of my budget though)!
I am still on a mission to find our old friends the lost bloggers. Many of whom heard our call and checked into the comments on Sunday! Pop over and say Hi if you have a moment – you know how I love it when you all chat with each other in the Lounge Of Comments. Blogging is about community for the Fellowship.
As I wander through the blogs of our old friends we must not forget Kate who does the most amazing things with fabric. She has never been lost. And has been visiting the Lounge of Comments all this time. She sews, quilts and everything else. I can’t sew. I can’t think inside out. So I sew vicariously through Kate.
Yesterday I moved the feed barrels into the empty duck house. It is now a feed shed. The ducks have not lived in there since I left last summer. They just hang out by their pond and if the weather gets really horrible they go into the barn. John never locked them up while I was away so they kind of lost their way.
SO, now all my drums of feed are in there plus a makeshift table that allows me to mix the feed easily.
We have not seen hide nor hair of The Bastard Mink in years now so hopefully they do not come back.
The big teacher pigs are over to the right of this scene, so if there was sound you would hear their monster grunts as they anticipate their diet food. (I call them the teacher pigs because they were on a Teaching Farm for so long!). That Jude is HUGE. And FreeBee spends most of her time lying down – just too big I think. So, most of their food is vegetables and sprouts.
Have a lovely day.
Many of my online students have snow days today – that weather on the West Coast is pretty wild so I have a late start! YAY!
Oh and I found a pig man who is going to sell me a couple of piglets. (plonkers – no names). John has all three of his children living in the area now and times are hard for young families in this economy so I intend to grow as much food as possible. And feed those kids the best food possible.
Love Celi
49 Comments on “Robin Red Breast has arrived”
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I am doing a happy dance! Welcome spring!
I love that you are going to grow food for your whole family, no greater a gift!
Are you getting signs of spring at your place?
It’s been snowing for days, but I think it won’t be long. Good sugaring weather coming up, so that will mean things loosening up. No returning birds yet.
The Maples are already at work here – John only taps a few but we get enough syrup for the year!
No Spring here Dorothy, I’m in Northland New Zealand and with all this odd weather it’s hard to tell what we’re heading towards. Autumn we hope!
I am so sorry – I did not see this comment until now – you were sent to comment purgatory! I hope your weather has sorted itself out by now?
I love that you think of feeding “those kids the best food possible”. How lucky are they. You inspire me to not put my garden into fallow this year. I was considering it because I am driving across Canada this May and thought how can I plant a garden. Plus thinking of going to France for two weeks to paint watercolours in August. Leaving Tim to deal with the excess. But what would I do with no tomatoes! I’m glad to be back reading your posts so although I’m not a blogger I have returned to the fold. Sustainability got me here again.
Oh – painting watercolors in France. That could be a book title!!
And so glad to see you again. Maybe you could cover crop most of the garden and just throw in a few tomatoes and zuchinni. Doing without late summer tomatoes sounds pretty grim!
There’s snow in Barcelona! It won’t last long though.
Let’s hope it doesn’t last. It’s messing with our food chain here in the UK.
I think the problem is with the weather in Andalucia and Morocco, but there is a huge greenhouse project in Kent – Thanet Earth which produces decent tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers etc. throoughout the winter. The government could encourage farmers to grow a lot more and make the UK self sufficient, or at least more so.
That would be very helpful, as well as eating seasonal produce more often rather than believing we should eat raspberries all year round.
It is what UK farmers want – they’ve been encouraged to set aside land in favour of cheap imports for decades.
SNOW, Mad! In Barcelona! That is unusual yes? At sea level? Has it been unusually cold too?
Ha ha – it happens about once every 7 years, but Catalunya is a mountanous region, going up to the Pyrenees in the north, where there’s a lot of skiing in the winter. Even Andalucia in the south has several mountain ranges and winter snow.
Ah yup – not often you get snow by the sea though?
Indeed – I lived in Penzance, Cornwall from age 10 to 18 and it only snowed properly once during that time! The salty air inhibits snow, but the horizontal rain and gales can be relentless.
Penzance, Cornwall sounds like somewhere very old.
It is an old market town stuck in the 60s when I arrived in 1973. Sadly they closed the small catle market around 1980 in favour of much larger affairs which required longer transportation of animals.
With the rise in the cost of transportation now I wonder if any of those moves will be rethought. Or too expensive to decentralize now.
I hope so – it’s much kinder to the animals!
As long as that ice is on the outside of the window, you’re okay.
Good morning Misky darlin’! yes the ice was on the outside!! We never did get any ice on the insides this winter.
How was your winter?
Winter’s been mild, which is fortunate as people are struggling to pay for heating. And food. And petrol. I have my laundry drying out in the greenhouse today, but that won’t last as Peder wants it back for his plants next month. I keep telling him that we can’t eat begonias. He says, True but we can’t eat laundry either.
It’s in the 40s here in Colorado….spring is in the air ! We have been having snow storms on Wednesdays and one is breezing through tomorrow. Robins are flocking …..
Just Wednesdays? That is weird but it sounds like you have had a lot of snow – hopefully that means the reservoirs will fill up!
No Robins here yet…I can hardly wait
Won’t be long I bet – though you had a lot fo snow on the ground for a while -we have had barely anything, it is already MUD season.
Mud season is the worst, but after Mud Season is PERFECT!
No robins in my uk garden yet, but lots of singing blackbirds looking for mates. Lovely post today thank you. Organic tales, duck tales and pig tails! So good to be able to feed youngsters straight from the land.😊
Their parents are pretty pleased to be back close to the farm. They were in Portland which is a bit far to send eggs!
How wonderful you have worms… in your field! I had no idea when I started gardening how much worms would excite me… I do a welfare check on my little worm farm every day and add a few treats, and finding big proper earthworms when digging in the soil remains remarkable years on.
I loved my worm farm – but alas it bit the dust (literally) years ago – Sops had one in Melbourne for a while and it was great to feed them over there!
Robins don’t seem to leave here any more. And today, the cardinal is chirping nonstop–after he had a nice bath in y birdbath.
My cardinal never left
Either! He is by the window (in the picture almost every morning) – I can only see one Robin now. Still far off in the field.
Hate to burst your bubble but that is a Cardinal in your photo. Maybe there were Robins too?
I know that is a Cardinal !! (you are funny) You know my pictures almost never match the text. The Cardinal has been with me all winter! The Robins would not stay still for a photo.
😁😁😁
Spring!!
Soon!
The return of the worms! This is a great sign and a cause for celebration. I suggest a Worm Festival, with robins as invited guests.
Congratulations on achieving your goal of regenerating that damaged soil. I admire everyone who can do this – well of course Nature does it, but human intervention is needed to stop the damage and give Nature a helping hand. I love watching Country Calendar, a NZ farming programme on TV (I don’t have TV but pick this one up on my computer). Increasingly, the programmes highlight farmers who regenerate and bring restorative practices to the land. I like to think that this is a movement that will grow.
Oh yes! I think we are on a growing movement. Healthy soil is a magnificent achievement. All i did was turn off the chemical tap and begin to rotate crops and use cover crops. Nature did the rest.
Thank you so much for an insightful comment!
I love that you’ve brought back the worms! It’s one of the best signs that dirt and has been turned into soil: living soil, capable of nourishing other living beings, both plant and animal (and bird). We’re so overwhelmed with spring here at this point I don’t know which was to turn. I’ve been trying to decide what photos to post next, and I’m paralyzed by choice. But I’ll figure out something!
That is so cool to have such a choice. We are still in sepia world.
Celi, love seeing the farm kids here!! I’m so worried about your family and friends in New Zealand. Worried if they have any homes left. Are they able to recover a bit? Sending my hugs to them.
Oh gosh, thank you for the kind words! One of my sewing missions relates back to your post about recycling. I can’t bear to see fabric thrown away because of the huge resource consumption that goes into producing it, so I try to use every last scraps. And then composting it after that.
I’m so happy to hear about the worms. My chooks are worm fiends, and the deep wood chip litter in their yard has begun producing phenomenal quantities of worms. It’s getting to the time when I need to start turning over the top layers and dig up some of the black gold underneath to turn into vegetables for the coming cool season. If it gets cold enough this winter I might even get some beans, thanks to the Wellington Wonder seeds Dale has sent me! I’m looking forward to winter. It has been a deadly hot and humid Wet and I lost all my vegies to heat or rot.
I’ve enjoyed reading your posts although this is the first time I have commented. This has been a very cold winter up here on the Northern California coast. We had 1/2 inch of snow a week ago and frosty mornings have been common. Strange you should mention robins. I have rarely noticed them here, and the ones I do are usually gone by this time. But this year there are flocks of them and they are sticking around. I see them everywhere. Fingers crossed that they stay and start a family.
Hullo Liz! Welcome to the Lounge of Comments! How interesting that you are suddenly seeing Robins. I wonder why that is.
You have had an unusually cold winter but hopefully all that snow melt fills your reservoirs!
It’s been crazy hot here in KY. Way too early. Of course it will probably freeze up just after we shear the sheep on the 18th. Sigh…