Happy December, where did November go?
25 days till christmas! How!
I am heading to visit family in Alberta for the holidays this year, I can no longer really say I am heading home, the farm and my community here truly feels like home.
Having said that alberta, the land, the mountains and my family are calling me back and I am truly blessed to be able to answer the call. Like the picture my current and my past are side by side and touching and intertwined in such a delightful way.. while my farm and life here is front and center, the connection to who I was and how I became that person is just as important.
So first off, I am shocked at the cost of plane tickets right now, second I am not getting on a plane lol Nope, I am driving home. Hot Peppa, myself and introducing my right hand on the trip.. Miss R, she is not shy so expect photos of her to be shared on the way are packing up mid dec and hitting the road.
I did book the hotel spots on the way over and for our time in the mountains but I am so far playing it loose and fast for the return trip home. We are going to gone for close to just shy of a month all total, we are taking our time on the road one because I want to drive in mostly daylight and two Miss R has never been to any the country we are driving though or heading to and I want to have extra time for lots of fun pit stops and mini side trips.
I will be having Christmas with my mom, and then having a family Christmas gathering a little later in the week, plus lots of side visiting and then my niece will join us for the trip over to Banff, into BC and back down to Jasper run to end in the Edmonton area.
I will most certainly be missing this gentleman the most! I am packing my camera, my computer and of course will have my phone so we will be in touch in many ways but we are missing our 24th wedding anniversary.. I am so excited that we will mark out 25th year in 2024.
There to be some holiday baking of family favorites once we get home, so I am planning on sharing them recipe and photo wise as while they are not what I would call modern or healthy, they are very yummy and as I intend to make them into small tins of assorted as gifts and guest trays they will be shared out in small doses..
I hope you are welcoming in December with light and hope for what the month will bring. May you be blessed with warmth, good food, friendships and family and if you so choose the love a good dog or purrpot! or maybe a bit bigger lol
I turned 51 in October after crazy wild year of ups, downs and lots of just get it done days in-between.
Myself and two amazing women in my life, Cousin in laws all have our birthdays within two weeks of each other and we decided we needed some girls time. Now I know that most ladies would hit a spa or go out to a fancy hotel and eat out or take in a pool side time
We however pooled together to rent a night spent at the Omaga park in a cabin on the hillside backed on to the younger wolf pack with two bears in the mix. We packed in all our own food, made amazing meals and did the whole park two days with multiple rounds, we feed out around 150 pounds of carrots lol
You can rent a single story or a two story, we went with the second floor because it gave me a outdoor Balcony to sit with my camera and my best long distance lens on and freeze for a couple hours as the dawn broke and came up over the tree lines.
As the wolves and bears are free to roam the area, it took a lot of waiting to get them to come in a spot that was a) in my zoom area and boy did I push that b) was in a clear enough spot that it was not blocked by trees or they were moving on the second or third ridge which I could see them go into and pop up and down on but could not get photos of them.
Almost at the end of the morning after a couple hours, these two magic moments of backlight of this wolf appeared, snap and then they were gone.. only to appear on the lope coming out of water that I didn’t even know was there behind that ridge. I got one single photo in the time it took him to come up, out and gone..
So so worth the numb fingers..
There were many highlights on the trip to be sure but for today, enjoy the photos of the Grey Wolves
Thankful for the hot coffee my darling friend brought me, I was just watching the whole area and saw the Cinnamon bear come up and behind to the water fall area, sadly I was not able to use the waterfall area for photography as my angle was wrong but it would be worth if I was going to do it again to try and pick which condo for certain spots that they clearly use a touch more then others.
Anyway, I looked over to movement on my right and saw the wolves in clear ambush mode, I have watched my sheep dogs enough to understand that lowered body, that slink, that eye and that they were working together, then came out so slow and quiet as they crossed the backside of the open area using the second ridge..
Looking to the left I could see that the bear was on to them and was alert and watching, suddenly he started to move off though the trees and I thought, I have one chance at this.. there is only one tree that I can get a clear pushed to the edge of my lens range of, if he goes up, I will be ready, if he used a different trees I will miss it.
Not only did I get him going up the tree but I caught this snap of the wolf who came around the other side and looked up at him
I will need to head back at some point over winter in deeper snow with just the wolves and a big old snow suit lol and see what I can get once again.
This past week I have been reading and listening to so many reports and interviews in regards to the cost and or availability of food and its effects on the day to day life of our fellow Canadian’s and Globally.
A Couple of them really stick in my minds eye
Case 1 It was a in-depth talk about the fact that approx. 50% of all current open restaurants are not making a profit and that most are a going to close down as soon as they need to start doing paybacks on the federal loans. I want you to read that again Across the country 50% of all our places that serve food on all different levels, from coffee shops, bakery’s, small soup and sandwich, mom and pop dinners to fast food to fancy sit down to pubs and more are all running in the red right now.
How many peaple that are already living on the edge working in those food related business are going to find themselves without a paycheck and how many of those business owners are going to find themselves underwater not only at business but also at risk of losing their homes due to pulling out huge lines of credit based on the housing market of the past few years and with no business income combined with rising interest rates, how are they going to pay their bills.
Case 2 1 in 10 households in Toronto (our biggest most populated city in our country) are currently using food banks to get food on the table for themselves and their families.
Do you have a finger on the pulse of food banks in your town or neck of the woods? What are you seeing? Do you use a food bank yourself or do you have a loved one that does? Locally I have been told by folks that use the community supported food share program I am involved in that the food banks are limiting how many times you can use them monthly and that the boxes and what they have in them is shrinking.
“food bank usage has smashed another record this year, with more than 2.5 million visits between April 2022 and March 2023 — a 51 per cent increase from the year before — and there are no signs of slowing down, according to this year’s Who’s Hungry report from Daily Bread and North York Harvest food banks.
Daily Bread and North York Harvest indicate in the report they are anticipating Toronto food bank visits in 2023 will surpass three million visits.” Qoute CBC article linked above
Case 3 Last week, the local ottawa (our counties National CAPITAL) SPCA came on to announce that they had 90 new cats that have been surrendered to them in one week alone.
Number one reason given, cost of pet food, pet care and vet care. Now I give credit to those owners for at least trying to make sure their cats find new homes but we know that they tried to find them new homes with friends/family and reaching though there own networks first and that they only turned to the spca as a last choice.
Peaple who do not care will turn them out and say, go hunt or worse yet they take them for a drive and find a farm and drop them off.. How many times have I had that happen.. o look a lost scared non feral drop off most likely expecting has arrived on my door step..
No, these are well cared for pets, loved, most of them already vetted and altered, it came down to food costs, those owners took a hard look at their budgets and they gave up their pet into care to have that money available for extras, and I am guessing that those extras include rent, heat, power and food!
Have you notice the price increase in pet food costs, locally here there are programs growing to supply pet food to seniors in order for them to keep their pets. Locally so many of the cat rescues have closed doors due to massive vet bills due owning as the pets keep flowing in but the amount of gift giving by their followers is down.
An the list goes on, I could pick out more, so I ask you, how did your garden grow and do this year? Did you get things put up? Did you buy in bulk? Did you get in a half or whole beef? Did you raise meat birds (and feed costs are a whole different post topic)? Are you hunting? Now is the time we should be heading into winter with full freezers and dried and canning pantry’s..
So how is yours looking? In general, same on par? Cost you a bit more but overall no real notice of a difference? Mine is looking lean but good overall.
If you just went huh, let me touch on that just a bit, lean in the sense that we will be eating a lot of chicken, duck, beef and venison over the winter. We have a few turkeys in the freezer and we will have a little bit of lamb, but we are out of pork, and I am not sure I am buying a half or whole yet. We will have lots of eggs both chicken and duck and of course my sheep for fresh milk.
Its the same way for the canning pantry, its plentiful but its basic.
The main pantry is much the same at this time, I am not spending money on “we might like it” instead I am focused on we use this, used the last of this or that, if it took me more then a year to go though the working tub, its not getting replaced at this point.
Where this is different, is the spices, dressings and sauces.. that’s where I am expanding. Ways to take something that is basic like Chicken or Beef and create all different kinds of flavor profiles while still using the basics.
What about you? Are you dialing it back down to the hard core basics?
This past year I wrote 25 posts, and with just shy of 3500 hundred posts in total on the blog, on so many subjects the views hourly still keep coming in. There is a wealth of information on the blog that is pulled up both by google searches or Pins or by using the search bar here on the blog. Sometimes its a link back from a different site. I am grateful for all the ways folks find the blog!
Right now we are shifting from a very late fall with record breaking temps over into winter, we are getting our first true snow fall today. A good couple inches of snow nicely driving to the point of the tunnel effect and playing, where is the road edge game on the drive.
Dear Hubby took a kick to his leg a couple weeks back and is still greatly feeling the effects of it and looks like it he will for a while yet. Its bad timing always to get hurt but very bad timing indeed for that cusp of the change over when you shift to winter barns/feeding and so on.
We had our best year for the pastures this year in our past ten years, target grazing by the sheep, limiting grazing pressure from the horses and resting and re-seed as well as manure spreading along with the weather/rains and being able to use the big riding mower to cut some areas down lead to use getting a much extended grazing season.
I am very busy indeed with my photography this fall and now coming into the Christmas Season, Just in case you are local and looking for photography in general, Come on over and like my facebook page for regular updates Farmgal Photography
or if you are looking for a Christmas Family Portrait Session, I have two weekends coming up, Nov 18th and Nov 19th in the monkland area, which is nicely central to anyone coming from all the towns around Eastern Townships. Or St-Bernardin Christmas Bazaar on Nov 25th and Nov 26th
The next few weeks will be nothing
Otherwise, its steady as she goes, this years young hens are laying nice and steady, the older hens molted early so they are coming back on line, the ducklings (older are full size and easily sexed at this point and fat and ready for butcher) the late hatch is thriving and thankfully appear to be mostly hens from what I can see.
Well, I have finished my big cuppa of Milky Red Rose Tea, Red Rose Tea was the tea of my childhood as was the taste of a drop of canned milk to sweeten it and help take out the tannin after taste. What was the your childhood tea? Did you have one? Do you still drink it? I enjoy a good chia tea and I love Earl Grey but I can’t imagine my tea cupboard being without its box of Red Rose.
Wishing you all pleasant dreams
These a wild (Bird Gifted years ago) local native Black Elderberries. I am lucky enough to have them growing wild in ditches and field edges all over my local area. However those bushes will produce clusters about a 1/3rd of this size.
Even my own native bushes in “the walk on the wild side” food garden which could be considered my control group, will produce lovely flowers, and lots of beautiful small clusters, somewhere between 1/4th to 1/3rd the size of this single cluster shown above.
Now I know that the odds are folks will not like my tip much but I have shared it locally with folks and I get the same feedback from those that are willing to try it, which is that they get crazy boosts to the size of the fruit and fruit clusters.
Farmgal’s #1 Tip for getting loads of Elderberries, when doing yard clean up toss the dog poo, under the bushes, and or, ideally if you can, plant your elderberries on the outside edges of your dog yards. Your elderberries will thank you!
No, any old manure will not do, yes you will clearly get a boost if you feed your bushes be it with plant based composts, worm castings and or any kind of herbivore or fowl manure.. However it needs to be canine, I would love to tell you why but I can’t, I can track that it makes a difference, I can measure out the weight of the berries single and cluster wise vs those that have it and those that do not. That is stat data, and its clear as bell, there is something about Canine manure that Elderberry bushes love.
Strange but true and its so simple, no composting required, no tea making required, just pick up and toss it down and around the base of the bushes a few yard clean ups a season (spring for sure and fall for sure) and let it do its own breakdown and work.
If you love Elderberries, and you have dogs, you have got to try this!
Ps, Zone 5a, ottawa valley area, ontario, canada. Tested only with local native elderberry bushes, 19 years worth of stat data, plus some crazy friends willing to run tests on their own bushes to see if it worked for them as well and yes it did!
Eight years ago we found an apple tree whip in an odd spot in the yard, across the driveway on the side yard.
We were never sure if it was a bird gifted apple tree it could be given it had a nice sitting branch high above it or if it was apple core we tossed in that area not that either of us remembered doing that
Regardless we let it grow and grow and we have checked in the past few years with. Hmm 
are you going to produce apples lol
Well this spring it did at least a dozen plus.
Today I picked the first one as a tester the size of a med Granny Smith darkish green with red ripples cut open.
Great texture crisp clean flesh that did not brown fast nice sweet with that apple acid undertone that you find in some
Overall solid 3.8 on todays taste test. Look forward to picking another in two weeks and so on till I get to the ultimate ripe stage as i find the sweet spot for when to PICK THEM ALL 🙂
It’s a keeper and I have my first Farmgal Apple tree#1
Come spring, I am going to try to create a few more of these, some for my new permaculture garden “the park” and some to gift away to dear friends if they like that kind of apple, Sharing is caring 🙂
When I read the title, I thought it was about garden trenching compost rows in the garden, alas not.. read on, read on and get those seeds in the pots
My son called from the Central Valley in California last night and said over 10,000 acres of farm land in the Central Valley are under water. They have been underwater for too long.
And they have not had the worst of the flooding over there in California.
Cropping land, vegetable growers and orchards. A-wash for too long now. Flooded.
Even the local farmers markets are facing fresh food shortages.
Another major interruption to the food supply chain.
And still it rains in California. (The drought is broken though!).
But soon it will be too hot to replant.
And the Central Valley supplies the US with 25% of its fresh food. And still it rains.
This year would be a good year to start a garden if you don’t have one in already.
Another friend of mine said her neighbour told her she is starting to bury canned food in her…
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The Baggy Seed Starting Method is very easy to do and its very worth it!
All home harvested seeds and older seeds should be given a germination test using this method NOW! in seed ordering season.
I can not stress this enough, its worth taking a little time and figuring your seed germination rates. If you look on bought seed packages, it will give a germination rate on it, normally it will show over 80 or 90 percent. Smaller seed houses often do not list this and I find that can be because germination rates “can” be lower or just because they do not want the extra print costs for changing this per type of seed.
None the less, we are the gardeners and there is NOTHING worse than saving seed and planting out whole rows of seed that barely comes up. In years past, I have had this happen…
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This year I am growing West Coast Seeds King of the North Sweet Pepper.
68 days green, 90 days red. Large beautiful fruits that are bell shaped. Great producers in our short growing season. I ordered the seeds in 2020 garden season and much to my surprise they are not carrying them this year.. all the more reason to plant this crop together and seed save these for future use and local offerings.
I did see with a quick google search that other smaller suppliers still have them but ouch on the price.. 20 seeds for 4.95.. I will keep you posted on them.. and will be doing a end of year round up on the different plants and yields.
Do you grow the King of the North, sweet pepper? Tell me all about it! What I am really interested in is, height and spread of the plant?
If you…
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Just another Day on the Farm 