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Not that I’d ever want Acorn Abbey to be a bed and breakfast, but even if I did, the health department would never give me a license. Cats are not allowed in B&B kitchens.

Lily is almost as nosy as Ruth, one of the chickens. I easily convinced her that she doesn’t like spinach, but she still wanted to watch and get in the way.

Photos by Ken Ilgunas

I’ve commented before on how much helicopter traffic there is in the sky above Acorn Abbey. Usually these helicopters are Huey-size military-looking helicopters, dark gray. Yesterday while Ken and I were working in the yard, there were three Chinook helicopters. We were not able to get a photograph.

This morning, though, I heard a helicopter approaching and ran out with my camera. I caught this Chinook helicopter seconds before it vanished behind the trees.

These helicopters always fly at very low altitude, usually east to west.

That military helicopters frequently fly over North Carolina is not surprising — there are three Air Force bases in eastern North Carolina. But what puzzles me is why we see them so frequently at low altitude over the abbey.

My best speculation is that the helicopters are on training flights, on visual flight rules. We usually see them in good weather. The sky is overcast this morning, but the ceiling is high. When pilots are casually cruising on visual flights rules with no particular place to go, they like to fly toward what is visually interesting. So my guess is that they’re attracted to the unusual mountains in Stokes County — Pilot Mountain, Hanging Rock, and Sauratown Mountain. Also, from looking at a map, it seems to me that if a helicopter from, say, Pope Air Force Base wanted to fly toward the nearest mountains, it would head northwest toward Stokes County.

I found a news report from 2009 about Chinook helicopters landing in a rural field near Raleigh. The military bases said they knew nothing about it.

The first daffodils finally opened yesterday. For some reason, my daffodils bloom later than other daffodils nearby. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s a slight difference in the genes of my daffodils. Sometimes I think the air is a bit cooler here, because Acorn Abbey sits down in a small valley surrounded by ridges. Maybe cool air collects in this little valley, though it sure doesn’t feel that way in summertime.

I planted 50 pounds of daffodil bulbs in the fall of 2008, so there is no shortage of daffodils.

Ken models my new pith helmet.

I have several sun hats. The main problem with sun hats is that, vents notwithstanding, there’s not enough air circulation around the top of the head. I’m hoping that my new pith helmet, ordered from VillageHatShop.com, will solve the problem. It’s a helmet rather than a hat, so the hat is suspended from a band that fits around the head. There’s an air gap between the band and the hat. When there’s a breeze, you can feel cool air on top of your head. And when there’s a bigger puff of wind, it whistles through the hat.

Pith helmets get their name from the material they’re made from — a natural material like cork. The hat is light but sits firmly on the head. I forget that I’m wearing it.

The vegetable plants that we started from seed are three weeks old today — cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and celery. When they were 16 days old, we transplanted the “sponges” from the starter dome into soil and peat moss cups. We ended up with 100 baby plants in peat moss cups, too many to fit under the grow light. We put our strongest plants under the grow light and moved the remainder to the south-facing bay window. All of them are doing fine. So far, I think the plants that have only window light are doing as well as the plants under the grow light.

When we move these plants outdoors will depend on the weather, but probably around March 15.

Next week we’ll start the seeds for the summer garden — tomatoes, squash, and so on.

These 30 plants were our culls. They’re now living in the bay window without a grow light.

There was an area of garden I would have liked to till last fall, but I didn’t, because there were a couple of small trees in the way that needed to be transplanted first. Ken transplanted those trees today and did the tilling. We’re only about a month away, I hope, from planting the early crops. In the photo above, Ken has dug up one of the trees and put it in the wheelbarrow. Patience has approached to admire Ken’s digging.

Next: Ken with the tiller

With the tilling done, the chickens now cluster around to explore the fresh-dug dirt.

That’s Patience at Ken’s left hand. She has a huge crush on Ken.

The hawk mesh over the entire garden is almost done. I have to pick up more fishing line, though, before Ken can finish the job. He calculates that he has used about 1.6 miles of fishing line so far. We’re confident that the fishing line will keep the hawks away from the chickens. But it remains to be seen how long the fishing line will last. A long time, I hope, because it was a huge amount of work for Ken putting it up.

Sunday was sunny, and the temperature was above 50F. Everyone, including the cat and the chickens, had spring fever. Even the cabbage and broccoli seeds, planted less than 48 hours ago, had sprouted in their little indoor hothouses (photos later this week when the plants are bigger). The chickens had a nice long day outside under Ken’s watchful eye. But they constantly scan the sky. At one point, when two hawks were circling, the chickens all went back into the chicken house.

The first thing Ken did was to put up a new bluebird house. We now have three bluebird houses.

After much thinking and discussion, we finally decided that the best way to protect the chickens from the hawks is to tie fishing line, spaced about 12 inches apart, along the top of the garden fence. This is a big job and will take some time, but when you become attached to your chickens, you’ll do whatever it takes to protect them. The fishing line isn’t visible in the photo above, but it does show up in the next photo below.

Some of the strands of fishing line can be seen to the left of the bluebird house.

Ken is about 25 percent done with the fishing line project.

We found quite a lot of animal poop in the garden, in the thick patch of winter rye grass. Neither Ken nor I can distinguish rabbit poop from deer poop, but this almost certainly has to be rabbit poop. It’s very doubtful that deer could get over the 8-foot fence. And if deer had been into the garden, there’d be tracks. The poor hungry rabbits need the winter grass, so we’ll wait until spring to try to find and block the places where the rabbits are getting under the fence. And part of the plan for next winter is to plant a stand of winter rye grass near the rabbit patch, particularly to provide winter food for the rabbits.

The winter rye does look delicious, doesn’t it? It has been a great winter salad for the chickens.

Ken drops seeds into the seed-starting trays. A week from today, I expect to see baby vegetable plants.

This year, I’m determined to start everything in the garden from seed, using heirloom seeds. If I’m calculating planting dates and starting times correctly, then now’s the time to start seeds indoors for the early garden — cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, etc. When those things are in the ground, then I’ll start the seeds for the summer garden — tomatoes, squash, etc. For the early garden, I also bought seeds for lettuce and snow peas, but those don’t need to be started early indoors.

To do this, I bought a seed-starting system from Park Seeds. This includes the growing media, the little greenhouses, fluorescent grow lights, a soil warming mat, etc.

The grow lights are hooked to a timer to turn the lights on and off as appropriate. The warming mat keeps the soil warm while the seeds are germinating.

I ordered my seeds online from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

As an experiment, I’m going to try to grow some celery. I doubt that celery will like my soil and climate, but I’m going to see how it goes. And, of course, the reason I’m using heirloom seeds is that I want to learn how to save my own seeds from year to year.

I’ll post more photos when I have some baby plants.

Park’s “Bio Dome” seed-starting system

A thermostat controls the soil-warming mat.

A timer controls the grow lights.

Have I mentioned that Ken is weird? It’s not enough that he’s immersed in the quiet and solitude of Acorn Abbey, where there hasn’t been a car on the road in a week and where the only sound on a winter afternoon is the quiet hum of the heating system and the occasional patter of cat feet on the stairs. When he writes, he has the habit of surrounding himself with a shroud to further close out the world. I’ll keep this short, so that the click of the keyboard upstairs doesn’t disturb him too much.

The ground is too soft from the melting snow to do much work outside right now. Ken knows how finicky I am about excess traffic that could wear paths or kill grass. Yards are very vulnerable this time of year. Very soon, though, we’ve got to order seeds for the early garden. Spring is not that far off. The daffodil shoots will start popping up in another six weeks or so.