Today I trimmed up the Dark Purple Opal Basil in the aquaponics set up. It's in he dehydrator now. The whole kitchen smells like basil, and I love it!
Today it rained most of the day. Everything outside is a wet muddy mess. I suspect the underground colony litters may have been rained out, but I have no way to dig them up as the kids tried yesterday and found nothing but fur and more tunnels.
The weather forecasts are calling for "measurable snow accumulations" and "plow-able amounts of snow" on Wednesday into Thursday. I've seen a couple different projections of where it will hit, and it seems we're always either right in the middle of it or just off the edge of the heaviest area. At least it should melt quickly. I haven't taken the birdbath heater out of the pool yet, we haven't hooked up the hose yet, and the snowblower still has gas and is ready if we need it. I just looked it up and the Weather Channel app says 3-5 inches on Thursday and another 1-3 inches Thursday night. Fun. Fortunately we're also set to bounce back up to the 40's and 50's as high temperatures just a couple days after, so no big worries. This is Minnesota after all, and it's not unheard of to have snow in May or even June.
One of the two black chicks in the brooder in the living room keeps making an interesting noise. I remember back to gym class in middle school when sneakers would slip on the basketball court and make a high-pitched squeak noise. That's the noise coming from the brooder. We've identified which chick is making the noise - the one with a bit of white on its head. It's interesting and I kind of like it. None of the chicks last year made that noise.
Today would have been Mazikeen's first birthday. Tomorrow Tony will be setting up a time for us to go on Tuesday to pick up a new St. Bernard puppy. A little girl, more expensive than the last, but from a different breeder. She'll be seven weeks old tomorrow. She looks a lot like Mazikeen did, but hopefully will be healthier. No names picked out yet. We are waiting to see what her personality is like first. This puppy will again be Tony's dog, though I will be doing most of the training, since I'm home all day while he works.
I took out six bad eggs from the incubator. Ones that had clearly not developed. I replaced them with three duck eggs (set to hatch 5/5) and three tan chicken eggs (set to hatch 4/28). I saw the black cochin hen sit down in a certain nest box, so when kids collected the eggs from that box, I know one of them is a cochin cross. I'm putting all three in and hoping for a fluffy chick.
The bog batch of Easter babies is set to be moved to the hatching incubator on Thursday. We're one week away from our biggest hatch of 2019! From here on out I will be putting a few eggs in every Sunday. This will better time out our hatches and prevent overlaps of opening the hatching incubator when I have babies set to hatch. Starting in May we will also be hatching ducklings! Next Sunday I plan on putting in a dozen duck eggs if I don't sell them all before then.