First week of February

February and winter still has a grip on southwest Colorado. It’s snowing this morning as it has almost every week these last few weeks. As I look out the window I can see the heavy wet flakes coming down almost like rain. It’s creating a nice white blanket that I am sure I won’t uncover until spring when the sun starts to heat up our winter white farm.
The goats are non to happy as they do not like to venture out into any inclimate weather. If a slight drop of rain hits the roof they are in the barn running for cover. We laugh and say how they are fair weather goats. This all changes of course when the food bowl is filled if this happens when there is a blizzard going they will be out in a second knocking each other out of the way to get to it.
The chickens I am struggling with this winter it seems I am lucky if a get a couple of eggs from them lately. It seems between the cold and the less light they have quit laying and now to boost them back up is a struggle. They are costing me a pretty penny especially after I feed them all year not to be laying.
Its way past time to sit down and get our planting organized and I need to do that this week. I have been occupied with facebook lately my new little winter game but I need to break this as spring is coming quick. We have some of our planting mapped out already and this week Brianna and I need to work in the greenhouse. We should get on turning those beds in there and hopefully we have eliminated the problems we had last year with white flies by freezing it out.
I am going to start seedlings this week for lettuce and such that can pretty much almost go into the greenhouse. Lettuce is a hardy crop that can grow during winter here in Colorado. One of our neighbor farmers usually can grow it all winter with maybe only a 2-4 week slow period. She has really got the 4 season winter greenhouse down to a science.

Now that it is February I have to start getting a routine going, so it off the facebook for me and we have started our hard cheeses, soaps, and teas so that we will be ready when market arrives. This year we should have quite alot going on and we need to make it as sustainable and as cost controlled as possible. We need a new milking barn but that will have to wait until mid summer so we have the funds for it. First thing we are going to start this spring is the new raised beds all along the greenhouse and that should eat up money relatively quickly. Lots of planning goes into a small working farm. You can very easily go broke without it.