A Few Chicken pictures

I took a few pictures of the birds this past Easter Sunday and since they came out okay I figured I'd share them here.

 

Out in the back yard in the still not cut grass having a snack.  I've been asked if I free range my chickens, which yes I do.  They are much happier being out in the yard instead of locked up in pens.  Plus they help keep the ticks under control so I don't need to worry about getting attacked by creepy crawlers when I go outside to do farm work.

 

And (below) my silver laced rooster, standing pretty in the wind.  He's in the area right in front of the coop where the chickens have already eaten all of the grass this spring.  One other advantage to free ranging, they keep some of the grass cut for me.

Bees and some trees

I suppose one minor advantage of taking an interest in bee keeping a few years ago and starting the learning process has been that I've been slowly taking note of what the bees love and what the bees tend to avoid.  Right now we've got a number of trees flowering (I'm in fact watching bees hit the peach tree outside of my kitchen window now.)  We actually have a wild hive of honey bees somewhere on the farm, so we've been able to interact with bees ever since we've moved in.  I don't actually know where the hive is but that hasn't stopped me from referring to them as 'my bees' when I talk to people (I explain they're wild and not the hives we're getting that we will be harvesting from.)

I've been keeping an eye on what the bees love, and what surprised me the most is boxwood.  We have a large bush of it by the front porch, and a smaller one near the other end of the porch and every year as soon as it starts to flower it seems to come alive with the sound of bees buzzing.  This year I'd actually started to worry cause I hadn't seen the bees since we got a cold snap but as soon as it started to flower I woke up to the sound of happy bees.

I haven't really seen the bees working anything other then the flowering crab apples and peach trees yet this year, though I suspect they already hit the ceder trees before the box woods started.

In June, from past years observations, the bees also go nuts over chestnut flowers.  The chestnuts seem to come alive every year with bees, and other pollinators grabbing as much pollen as they can in the few weeks the trees are covered in blossoms.