Long time no hear.
Great to see you are still out and about. Mostly winter bypassed us this year. We only had one good snow and I think the lowest temperature we had was -13F(-25C). There was only a handful of days when it was zero F or less (-18C).
All in all a warmer and drier season than normal. We are now getting some badly needed rain and expect more this week.
It has been warm enough that i have started to look at getting the garden ready. I am optimistic this growing season will be better than last year.

Looking forward to hearing more from you.

Cheers

Hi Joe, and everyone, good to hear about your garden Joe and your local activities, and hey Ultima Thule I just google searched Spruce Sprouts and I am very excited I think these grow in the woods at my home near Seattle, WA. I've seen these sprouts but for all I know they could be Douglas Fir or "pine" so I will get to know my spruce trees and only eat the good stuff.

Speaking of good stuff, we've had a late blackberry season and I swear I have more huckleberry bushes than last year so I've enjoyed harvesting those as well.

All the best and good crunching.

Glad to hear from you. Motivation tends to wax and wane from time to time, but now there is the anticipation of a new project being on boarded so that tends to pique everybody's interest for a bit. What would really be nice would the news of some sort of breakthrough, but since this is pretty basic research those kind of announcements are going to be pretty scarce I imagine.

Spring is coming along slowly here, but my rhubarb broke ground last week so that is always a nice harbinger of warmer weather to come. I cleaned out the chicken shed about a week ago and have spread some of that manure around the rhubarb, which always likes it because it is a heavy feeder. Once May gets here, I will till in the rest in the garden and get ready to plant that.

I will finish getting the pen in the other shed ready for the new chicks which will come in the first week in May. I am cutting back this year and only getting 15 new chicks rather than the 25 I usually get. With fewer hens to take care of the future clean outs should be a bit less onerous. I won;t get as much manure, but I will be doing less work. As I age I am trying to more closely match the amount of work to be done with my abilities to get it done well.

I recently attended the retirement of a person with whom I had worked for a number of years. They had started some years after I had, but it is still a bit surprising to me to see how long they worked and how many years they had put in. It is always nice to see someone retire who still has their health and can look forward to a good number of years in their retirement.

I hope everyone is doing well.

Cheers