Building Unity Farm - Signs of Spring

Today is the vernal equinox and many people in New England are suffering from seasonal affective disorder after the coldest, snowiest, most relentless winter on record.The 100 animals of Unity Farm are relishing the first 24 hours since November with temperatures above freezing.Around the farm, signs of early spring are upon us.    When I walked the Marsh trail this morning I saw skunk cabbage poking through the icy ground.   Skunk cabbage is biologically warm and is generally the first plant to leaf out in the wetlands.   Our bees are likely to fly today and bring skunk cabbage pollen back to the hives.I borrowed a friend’s motion sensing camera and attached it to a tree on the Woodland trail.   It captured the spring mating dance of wild turkeys - in the picture above you can see the male shaking his snood and the disinterested female looking for breakfast.Our ducks laid the first eggs in the lives (they where born last year).  Like guinea fowl, ducks are not the best parents and they left the eggs in the frozen mud of their pen.   As we plan for the Farmer’s market sales of Summer, we’ll include duck eggs along with the chicken eggs, fresh mushrooms, garlic, and alpaca yarn we planned to sell.Since we’ll have three to four days of weather above freezing, my wife and I prepared to bottle our mead and cyser (half honey/half cider).   We fermented the mead from October to March from a specific gravity of 1.090 to 1.000, yielding...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs