Where have I been??

Right now since I'm feeling sick I figured I'd take advantage of my down time to post an update. I've been busy working on paintings for a show I have coming up and that has consumed most of my awake time and will continue to do so for the next couple weeks so posts may be sporadic for a little while longer. Hopefully you're all so busy planting that you don't even notice. :)

The duck eggs are still in the incubator, but this past week we had a serious temperature spike in the incubator that I am pretty sure killed all of the developing ducklings. I'm pretty upset about it, and I'm going to go ahead an leave them in there until their scheduled hatch date (Wednesday the 25th) but I haven't seen any movement in the eggs in several days and they don't appear to be developing. I can't really figure out what would have caused that to happen, but I'm going to be making some adjustments and doing some tests before I put the quail eggs in there next weekend.

Speaking of temperature spikes... the weather has been hovering around 90 for the past few days causing the remaining lettuces and herbs to bolt. I'm not really ready for warm weather yet, luckily it's supposed to dip back into the low 80's next week.

Out of the 50 or so tomatoes I planted, about half of them are doing well. About 5 have already been pulled, and several others seem to just be stunted after I transplanted them, but I'm giving them time to catch up. This is what I expected to happen which was why I planted so many in the first place. We have a few tiny green tomatoes developing, I'm hoping to get my first ripe one before May.

We also have some good news on the duck front, one of our muscovy ducks started laying this week! Not only that, they've begun eating flies. We were starting to think that the whole muscovy fly-eating thing was a trick to sell ducks, but now I've witnessed it several times and it's great entertainment. The ducks run around with their necks fully extended and their heads almost touching the ground snapping their bills like mad. Like chickens, the ducks seem to become more friendly once they begin laying. Now the one that's laying lets me pet her every once in awhile.

I'm off to rest!