It can be hard to convince yourself spring’s around the corner when the temps are cold and the days are short. However, short, bitterly cold days are perfect for planning for the spring/summer season ahead. Our calving season starts around May 15th, so once that date hits everything non-calf related gets pushed to the backburner for about a month – so, it’s imperative we get as much done prior to calving which will allow us to focus solely on caring for the calves and their mommas.

Garden Planning

I keep a gardening notebook and I like to do a rough sketch of the garden before I order seeds for the year. This gives me an opportunity to make sure I order seeds for everything we want to grow while also reviewing what we got right (and wrong) with the garden over the years.

I order most of the vegetable seeds for our garden from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. Pumpkins, beans, carrots, potatoes, etc, and sweet corn. To say I’m obsessed with the Johnny’s American Dream sweet corn is an understatement! I can’t wait to share a fantastic corn salad recipe with you once we pick our first batch of corn. I’m already planning to plant a ridiculous amount this year so I can freeze a ton to enjoy year round. Okay, enough about corn.

For our plants, we are fortunate to have Amish neighbors that have a beautiful retail greenhouse. I’ve bought countless vegetable and flower plants from them over the years, their plants are superior to anything around! Their tomatoes are amazing, you can’t beat their Amish paste variety. The tomatoes from the Amish plants are so flavorful and are perfect for cooking, canning, freezing or just eating straight out of the garden. The Amish gals grow a great variety of other vegetables too, including the hottest peppers I’ve ever touched in my life (a story for another day). Fortunately, I don’t really need to preplan for the vegetable plants (tomatoes, peppers, etc) since our Amish friends let me stop by the greenhouse early in the growing season and reserve my plants.

I try to plan out the garden as much as I can because garden planting happens during calving season, there’s just no way around that with the Minnesota growing season. I usually take time off work and, with the kids’ help, try to knock out planting in two days.

Chick Order

The favorite thing on my spring prep to-do list – ordering chicks! I know spring isn’t too far away when we place our chicken order. We order our laying hens from Meyer Hatchery and typically order a variety of breeds so we have a diverse coop and egg basket. The kids love to order the Assorted Rare Breed day old chicks and enjoy trying to identify which chickens we received with our order as the babies start to feather out.

We have the chicks delivered the first week of March so hopefully the weather’s a bit warmer for their flight to Minnesota. Believe it or not, the chicks are sent through the U.S. Mail so our local post office will call around 5:00 am on delivery day to let us know the chicks arrived and need to be picked up. It’s pretty crazy to go to the post office and walk out with a box of live chickens! We get the girls home and immediately feed / water them, and make sure they warm up under the heat lamp. I’m always amazed at how hearty and rambunctious the baby chicks are upon arrival!

We set up the brooder in the shop a couple days in advance of the anticipated delivery date of the chicks so we’re all set to go when the girls arrive.

Other Projects

Garden planning and ordering chicks are the fun spring prep items. There’s so much more to do that doesn’t exactly fall into the fun category.

Late winter (and fall) we run the herd through the chute to administer shots, wormer and do a herd check. Our favorite cow, 316, has a hoof that grows irregularly so she gets an annual pedicure to trim her up. The fact that our cow and horses get pedicures but I do not is not lost on me. But I digress…

Andy will soon start the prep work on all the equipment so everything’s field ready. The prep work is a massive undertaking, but we’re fortunate after year’s of learning from his Grandpa Pete, uncles and Dad, Andy is quite mechanically inclined so he does the majority of the work himself which save us a ton of money.

Once the spring thaw starts, there will be fence repairs…plowing….seeding…endless cleaning of barns and cow yards…you get the idea.