The sun came out today and we happily joined it. We spent the first part of the day completing (I think) transplating plants into the raised beds. The raised beds are now packes full of lush life. The transplants looked sad today but hopefully will recuperate in the coming days. Winds and thunder are back … so hopefully fresh rains will arrive to. Next year we plan to do much less trasplanting and go with much more direct seeding.

Also we were excited to discover phenomenal (I don’t use that word often or lightly) improvement of soil on the raised beds … more on that in a separate post 🙂

The day before yesterday we finally went and purchased the equipment for the electric netting which will enable us to let the chickens free range but in a limited area. The combination of netting and a mobile shelter will enable us to move the chickens to different locations. So today I built an improvised mobile box to shelter the netting energizer from winds and rain. It is all hooked up and ready to go. We moved the shelter to our first test location and if weather permits tomorrow we will put up the net for the first time and let the chickens get on with a new more purpose filled life 🙂

We let the brooding chickens out today and found that one of the eggs was cracked and a tiny chick is chirping from inside. We couldn’t tell yet if it hatched because … well … there’s a chicken sitting on it again 🙂 And … is seems that another chicken has gone broody. We’ve placed her on temporary eggs and if we find her still broody tomorrow we’ll place under her a fresh batch of eggs. That would make 4 chickens and 2 ducks. So much new life 🙂

Also … over recent days the information system for Cutia Taranului has gone into fully operational mode … though new features are added almost every day. We’ve recently added more vegetable boxes from Cluj and some really special boxes of bread and other baked goods for Cluj … with a similar box soon to be available in Bucharest too. It is slow-going, very demanding … but growing beautifully … kind of like new plants … slowly at first as they divert most of the energy into their roots … then some green appears to further support the roots … then they just take off … we are so looking forward to seeing both our plants and Cutia Taranului take off 🙂