Attendees should come with seeds, root cuttings, or live plants packaged to share. Vegetables, flowers, herbs, shrubs, and trees are all welcome. There is no cost to attend.

The event will be held at the Estes Valley Library, on Saturday March 3rd from 12pm-4pm. If you interested in attending, please sign up at http://www.evlcalendar.org/events/index.php?com=detail&eID=7600. If you are interested in sponsoring or helping out with the event, please send me an email (philip dot magistro at gmail dot com) and we can talk about details!

Scott is looking for volunteers for the banding project – check out this article if you are interested!

The chickens are doing well, though it can be tough to coax a pose for the camera. Getting between 6 and 12 eggs per day from our fifteen hens. The “Red Broiler” hens are, evidently, fine layers as well. We’ve abandoned composting in favor of tossing every scrap of green waste (from weeding, kitchen, et cetera) to the birds, and they appreciate it. I spread the now six year old and not quite ready compost as mulch on some of the shrub beds around the house. The birds do a much much better job of turning scraps and weeds into protein and fertilizer….and they love it, as well. No onion peels, raw potatoes, citrus, or banana peels for those ladies, though!

The big new addition to the garden is a hive of bees, relocated earlier this week from Denver. It is a top-bar hive, made by the folks at www.backyardhive.com, and is full of thriving honeybees and their winter stash of honey. We’ll harvest their surplus in the spring. They wasted no time in locating all the flowering plants in the neighborhood, and bring back nectar and pollen to the hive. If the six foot wire and wood fence doesn’t keep the bears away this fall, we’re hoping that .6 joules of electric fence will. I touched it, and it doesn’t seem that bad…