Pine Ridge Prattle

My mom once said that she didn't like winter coming on, because "everything is dying." I look at it more as sleeping. The earth goes to sleep, to gain strength for the coming year. Sorta like spring is the morning, summer the afternoon, fall the evening, and winter the long night of an earthly day. (Gotta go hug a tree now!)
So, as morning dawns...
Broccoli and parsley are doing well. Only one lonely rosemary germinated. Lettuces REALLY need to get in the ground, but the ground is still a foot under the snow. Not sure what I'll do about that... We'll have a good bunch of cilantro, too. Pretty soon I'll be starting tomatoes and peppers. And dill. That's probably tomorrow.
Today is cleaning out a space for MSP. As much as she likes having Grandma here, she and Grandma do have their differences. She likes to be "creative," which means messy, and Grandma does not. So, today, we'll take our office/storage/furnace room and turn it into a den for Mary. She's very excited; she's even calling it the Wolf's Den. (As long as it isn't the Eagle's Lair...)
Pine Ridge is getting a brand-new reverse osmosis system today. Our original one, which was here when we moved in 10 years ago, gave up the ghost about 3 years ago. We continued limping along with it until about a year ago. We drank bottled water for a long time, but finally bit the bullet. John is installing that as I type. Fresh, non-polluted water is on the way.
Yes, out in the country, air might be purer, but water is not. We have no filtering, no chlorinating, no fluoridating, which has it's good points. But we have runoff from fields getting into our well, which is not a good thing. Although we grow organic crops here, our farm neighbors do not, and there are some nasty chemicals involved in getting corn and soybeans grown. We'd rather not drink them, thank you very much.
This week we also need to order chicks. The first batch of chicks will start growing on Pine Ridge at the end of March. They will probably be meat birds, which will have a happy life here for about 10 weeks. We have pens for our birds, allowing them to get out, scratch for seeds and bugs, and lie in the sun, all of which they really enjoy. We feed them a grain ration with no animal products or antibiotics, ground for us by a local feed supplier. He can't believe our birds do well without the antibiotics, but they thrive.
Later in the spring, maybe April, we'll have egg-laying chicks. Then, in May, turkeys will make their homes here. All will be gone (not the egg-layers!) in November; I'll let you imagine where they go. The circle of farm life begins...