Holy Saturday Farm Report

While Jesus is announcing freedom to the captives in Sheol, we'll come back to earth and look around Pine Ridge...
Good news and bad news. Lettuces, broccolis, etc, are growing well. Almost too well. I found an organically fertilized potting soil, and they seem to LOVE it.
Also good news...Farmer John, who has been unemployed since October, found work this week, and will start this Monday. The pay is good and the commute is under 35 minutes. That's a tough, ironic issue, here in the county. We moved here to live better; cleaner food, cleaner air. But wages around here aren't enough to support the lifestyle. And the work that does is far enough away to burn up LOTS of fossil fuels; the last commute was about an hour and 15 minutes. (Both commute figures are one way.)
Bad news. I can't get the little plants into the ground because we had another winter storm yesterday (seems Mother Nature and channel 5 didn't get the memo that it's spring) and there's a good 6 inches of white rain on the ground. With temperatures expected to go up tomorrow, we'll be melting (and, God forbid, flooding) by Tuesday.
More bad news; Farmer John didn't finish the chore list we had planned for this last week. Rain, job-chores and a trip to the Field Museum for a new exhibit held us off a bit. We did not clean the barn. Or set up new coops for new chicks. Or get hay. Or get rid of Bill, the bull. We DID move LOTS of compost, get a new bed for the Farmer's bedroom and go to that exhibit. I KNEW it was silly to make a list. If I keep it in my head, more gets done. When we write it down, Farmer John thinks it's halfway done already; which means nothing gets more than halfway done!
News of mixed bad- and goodness; we'll get some new chicks today. When schools hatch chickens in the spring, they have to go somewhere. Betcha didn't think much about that. They go to various farmers who "have connections." One of our connections found 20+ such chicks for us this week, and we need to pick them up today. They'll be straight run (meaning mixed males and females) of "well, there's Leghorns and some black ones" (probably these.) We haven't had good luck with Leghorns. I call them "cocker spaniel chickens," because they remind me of our flighty, high-maintenance first dog, Bear, the cocker spaniel. They seemed to scare easily, and they died horribly; read this, if you dare. Except for the one the hawk got, (being all white makes it SO easy for hawks) the rest died of prolapses.
See, all of these good and bad news items are evidences of sin in the world. Sin that no longer has any power, because of the events of that long-ago Friday. I'd break into song, but this is getting long! (That's as close to poetry as you'll get from Boots on the Ground!)