Beans and broodies

Look at our newly sprouted pole bean seeds!

Look at our first homegrown salad of the season from greens thinnings!

Look at our broody Bob chicken. Yes, again. And she's worse than the first time she went broody for a few days. We were actually getting a little worried, because she's sort of at the bottom of the pecking order (as far as we can tell), and when she started in with the weird vocalizations and feather fluffing that seems to follow getting booted off the nest, the other hens started going after her and preventing her from getting near the feeder.

I finally told the worried Chicken Daddy (that would be Jeff) that we can't stand there all day and hold their hands (OK, wings)...they're chickens, and they would just have to sort it out. And they did, with no lingering harm done. Just occasional screams that I liken to a little girl having her pigtails pulled. Truly, they do act like little girls.

In other farm news, things are looking good. With the slightly warmer temps and enough lingering rain, we're starting to get some serious growth on our seedlings.

Look...kale that looks like kale!

Beautiful baby spinach!

Peas are flowering!

Since the rain won't last forever (Northwest summers are actually pretty dry, with little rain in July, August and early September), Jeff put in a drip irrigation system! I'm so excited! We'd talked about doing it for years, but it's actually happening.

We've been relying on a mix of soaker hoses, overhead sprinklers and overhead hand-watering, and it was just time-consuming, inefficient and not best for plant health (all that overhead water promotes fungal diseases).

We got the last of the tomato starts out last weekend, and our early greens plantings are far enough along that we are planting new crops without concern that they will catch up with the first crop (that's happened to me too many times to count...then you end up with a glut of something, instead of a nice progressive harvest).