With each new season comes many different changes and Spring, by far, is my favorite season of all. The birds are having babies, the flowers are blooming, the grass is green and growing like wildfire, the wind is blowing, the horses are losing their winter coats and the days are long enough to fit in all the farm memories you could ever dream of.

If you remember, earlier this year we created raised garden beds for our first farm vegetable garden which you can read about here. Since planting commenced, we have enjoyed lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, cucumber, tomatoes and zucchini.

Lots and lots of zucchini.

With just the 2 of us, I didn’t realize we only needed one zucchini starter plant. This enthusiastic beginner gardener planted 4. We are overflowing with zucchini, giving it away to family, freezing it like crazy and baking loaf after loaf of zucchini bread.

It’s been extremely rewarding to enjoy the fruits of our labor and watch in amazement as our garden grows with each passing day.

Andrew planted sunflower seeds in the back of one bed and they are just now showing their bright smiles.

The flowers are soaking up the sunshine and gracing us with their stunning beauty time and time again. Our Walking Irises even recovered from the flood and hard freeze this year, brightening my day each time I step out the side door. These blooms only last for 24 hours but they sure do pull out all the stops while they are alive. God wasn’t messing around when He created this one. The detail is absolutely incredible.

If you follow me on Instagram, you are well aware of our gypsy chick roller coaster the past few weeks. Between the bizarre low nightly temperatures and a leaking coop roof, we have scurried around moving chicks in and out of the house, in and out of the coop and wondering when we will hop off this merry go round.

As of right now, the majority of the chicks are living the life in the Bayou Bunkhouse and we have a heat lamp set up in case the temperatures drop unexpectedly.

I’ve already decided to paint the interior of each nesting box a different color and create small curtains for added privacy. I also am wondering if I should add something to the top of the nesting boxes because they frequent that area quite often.

Because the floor of the coop is hardware cloth, I added cardboard and pine shavings for temporary insulation.

The rest of the crew is split up and located in brooders in our carport shed. We have the chick hospital brooder which houses 2 chicks that were struggling with pooping issues and bare bums. They have been recovering and will hopefully return to the flock soon.

The other 2 bantams are together in a brooder and awaiting full feathering before returning to the main flock. There’s a good possibility both of these are roosters. We shall see with time but I’m almost positive these are males.

The turkeys finally upgraded to the large cattle trough brooder and have plenty of room to expand. My cowboy and I swear they double in size each day. The most interesting part of the turkey’s progress has been their changing turkey calls. Sometimes it’s high pitched and other times it is lower and chirpier, if that make sense. Each has started to lose hair on their head too. At this point, we still don’t know what sex they are but that hasn’t stopped me from calling them Leroy and Luanne.

Even though our days have been filled with chicken keeping headaches, it has been such a joy to enjoy their progress and include them in our farm journey. They are a part of us now at Cypress Bayou Farm.

Each one is making an impression on us in their own subtle way.

Virginia remains my favorite little girl and our bond grows with each interaction. If she is with the main flock, she freaks out with the other chicks and runs from me. If we have time one on one, she wants to genuinely be near me.

As for the White Leghorns, they are still crazy as ever and we have since named them the Spice Girls. They are the ones that escaped the coop during the field trip to the run and they are the ones that spaz out each time you open the coop. It never fails, they are the drama queens out of the bunch.

One of the Spice Girls is currently in time out because she was getting too big for her britches and pecking the daylights out of her innocent bunk mates. I never thought I could be angry at a chicken but that Spice Girl had me on fire.

So much drama with these girls! I can’t say I’m surprised. If you put a bunch of women in a coop together, you know we would be pecking the crap out of one another in no time. I’m hoping our Spice Girl will evaluate her actions while spending time in jail this week.

Along with the chicken antics, we are also experiencing our typical horse antics around the farm too. Freedom discovered the chicken feed cup I left on a fence post and proceeded to crush it in his mouth.

If that wasn’t enough mischief, he also wiped out the hummingbird feed I refilled the day before.

Instead of fussing, we just grab the camera and video so that we don’t miss a minute of his hilarity.

With all the new additions and fresh experiences, family and friends are flocking to the farm to catch a glimpse.

Even our nephew Cooper tagged along for a little farm R&R this past weekend. Remember when we welcomed him to this world in January? You can read about it here. He’s grown so much and his happy personality is showing more and more. Just another one of the many blessings in this thing we call life.

Time and time again, I have experienced moments at the farm that calm my soul and bring such peace to my aching heart. The chicks and turkeys bring new life to the farm along with new experiences which help in the journey of healing for us.

I look back on our past year and am grateful for the struggle and the pain because it allows us to appreciate the small things –  the sweet breeze, the way the light hits the sun catcher hung in the garden, the chirping birds, the grunt of the hogs in the morning, the rumble of the horses galloping and the beauty of our powerful Creator.

He is the same Creator that holds my heart in his hands when I struggle with our infertility. He is the same Creator that loves me regardless of my past. He is the same Creator that saved my marriage. He is the same Creator that comforted me during our farm woes last year. He is the same Creator that gave me the strength to persevere when I didn’t think I had it in me. He is all around and it is up to me to recognize it.

May you embrace whatever struggle you are experiencing right now, realize you aren’t alone and the Lord is right there with you providing you strength. There is an end to the pain and it is found in our Savior. He is the one that will set you free.

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