Thinking spring!

With all this snow and the blizzard, I am dreaming of spring. I am on the waiting list for my salmon favorelle chicks as well as replacements for the rouen ducks (thanks to the raccoon that wiped out all of them) and a few other chicks to round out our breeding trios. I have been combing through seed catalogs and starting to plan for the garden. I am planning on making a green house out of plastic 2 liter bottles and some glass panels I picked up last summer. If all works out I will be able to extend our supply of fresh veggies and cut our food bill even more! Here is a link that gave me the idea for this. http://www.tenbees.co.uk/article/recycling/20071126134017/Plastic-Bottle-Greenhouse-at-Mayfield-Primary.htm
Now to see if I can collect enough plastic bottles to get it done this spring! I posted on all the freecycle groups in my area, so hopefully will find a few families that are avid pop drinkers since we only go through a couple bottles a week :)
We also need to finish up the goat barn. For those of you who don't know, we built it primarily out of used materials- the lumber and windows were all recycled. I still need to buy the sheathing as I have not found any available on CL or other places, but lining the inside walls with palletes and building stalls out of them as well, got us by for the winter.  I will be adding the new nest boxes made out of pallettes as well in the chicken /turkey coops this spring. I am still looking for more used rabbit cages so the "Rabbit Hilton" as Tom calls it can be completed.  We may have to build a pallette run in shed to shelter the calves I am getting in a few weeks, but for now they will be comfy in the goat barn. The focus this year will be on finishing projects that we did not complete last year...the electric fence needs to go up, the goat barn sheathed, the garden ponds that I got for free installed...as well as maintence that sorely needs done. Painting the shed and coops decks and fences and putting shingles on the house. We need to have a really good garden this year as we are almost through our stockpile of canned goods from 2 yrs ago. The chickens have been doing thier job fertilizing the garden area and we will till in the compost from the compost pile and the spring clean out from coops and rabbits and goats. When we do that we don't have to buy any fertilizer. The chickens are good at controling garden pests as well- if we can remember to plant to the cucumbers and melons and squashes on the side of the fence that borders thier run.  We forgot that last year and lost most of those crops. Guess I better write out the garden plan soon so I don't forget!
Hoping the nubians will be bred soon- they have been visiting thier BF for a couple weeks now. I should call and check tommorrow.

Gizmo (the PB pig) goes to get his hoofs trimmed this morning. Tom is worried that he will think he has abandioned him since he has to be dropped off and then picked up afterwards (they put him under to trim hooves). I think if Tom just waves a french fry in front of his face when he picks him up- he will forget all about it LOL