Just another Day on the Farm

March- Invest in the farm

Posted on March 31, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

Well, Its the last day of march and with 31 days in a the month, I honestly thought I would have a series of photos, a funny story and some bats of fleece to show you.. and instead, I am stumped to point..

Between Snow, rain, more rain and more bitter cold along with a personal issue that shook the regular planned events a bit, I never got out the big New Electric Sheep shears.. 1_0x0

This is not a little set, this is not a cheap set, this is a heavy duty pro-set that cost more then I want to admit even gotten at the 65% off.. and I am looking forward to learning how to use them, I have a few half wool-half hair sheep that I intend to practise on, , as much as I would like to say that I can use Ice’s very full wool coat, the truth is, its in very poor shape and will be used in the garden

whiskey

However, I have high hopes for Whiskey’s and Apple Jacks fleece’s.. I have later plans for them, they will be put to good use and perhaps, just perhaps I will in fact learn how to spin my own wool but honestly unlikely..

fleece-cream

I will use it to make wool covered soaps, I will badly needle felt it, but I will like the end results, I will make felted dryer balls for ourselves and as gifts and I will find lots of ways to use it on the farm.. I will take ice’s wool and after a bit of prep work, I will use it to stuff cracks in the barn with it.. It will gift a certain girlfriend or two with some wool to play with, because they love it and that’s what friend do 🙂

So March’s invest in the farm is a full kit and set of pro sheep shears.. more on that to follow when I get to it..

Posted in Life moves on daily | 3 Comments

Morning Glories

Posted on March 30, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

It was time to clean the teepee tower to start prepping for spring.. but there was hundreds of morning glory seed pods, I certainly did not need that many but we did collect a bowlful and I processed them for storage

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All cleaned up, and 30 seeds in my hand, lots for our use and for gifting locally to some friends.. I threw away hundreds of pods into the compost..

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Looking forward to seeing these later in the year, mix of colors.. the bees love them so much..

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Do you grow morning glories? Are you planting a few extra things for the bees this year?

Posted in Life moves on daily | 2 Comments

As soon as the ground can be worked- spring peas

Posted on March 28, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

Micro-climates are amazing things, compost is such a heat producer.. you just have to love it..

You will remember that last year I caved and put in gardens in the front people yard because I could and needed the space, and that it was so much drier and ready to be worked..

Well, that was once again proven yesterday, the normal time I can dig and plant the very, very early in the main garden is April 15th in the High point of it, and weeks later on the lower wetter areas

I checked what I thought would be the first ready, the raised beds, cause, every single book will tell you, that well done raised beds will heat up faster then in ground..

well, micro climate can put the coulda, woulda and shouldas into eh?

Normally I move my rabbit hutches to a certain sheltered spot each year but last year, I decided to move them to a different spot as I wanted to clean out that area really well

I spent a good amount of the garden work time, walking around with a nice three prong tool testing the raised beds, froze solid, going in half inch or more, how fast down to ice still in soil

We had two clear winners.. The tower, I think the metal frame combined with the raised bed and the water below with created a composting effect is why it was thawed and ready to plant, the tower is metal shelving, its 5 plus feet tall and its having blue pods, the very young are eaten like snow peas, the old are a dried soup pea

Blue Pod Capucijners (pre 1800)

A beautiful heirloom pea that is pretty enough to grow as an ornamental. Tall vines grow 5-6’ and the flowers and pods are purple. The very young pods can be used as a snow pea and the large olive green to brown seed is excellent in soups.

The second kind of snow pea that was planted was

Dwarf Gray Sugar

Introduced in 1892 by D. M. Ferry & Co. but is surely a much older pre1800’s variety. The dwarf productive vines produce snow peas which are great for stir fries or steaming. The purple flowers are ornamental as well

but the one most planted is a old faithful, a awesome producer, good old bush type, homesteader from the 1970’s

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and the homesteader being a bush pea went into the second area, the old rabbit hutch area will be a garden this year, its enough space to do three 15 feet rows, this was not just a bit thawed, this was amazing, light and fluffy with lots of worms.. while I cleaned the area last fall of the top rabbit poo and bedding, I have left about a extra 8 inches or so of well rotted rabbit compost, and its going to be a growers delight.. the pea’s will be ready for picking by the end of may, and I will be pushing for the first major cropping and then I will be pulling and replanting the area for a second crop..

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In the end, we found enough just ready or in the case of the rabbit garden, really ready, ewe planted three kinds of pea’s and 75 feet in total on March 27th

Posted in Life moves on daily | 4 Comments

Happy Easter!

Posted on March 27, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

I hope that your long weekend is filled with whatever brings you peace, be it a quiet one at home, or a weekend filled with family and lots of little ones.

March came in like a lion and is going out the same way, we had yet another storm and snow and ice, but we only caught the tail edge of it, so it was melted and gone in two days..

But the farm has been either ice or mud so the babies and their mothers are in barn lock down.. they are all doing great! Juno is slowly but surely developing a bag on her which makes me very happy indeed. So looking forward to adding in a kid or two to the herd along with the lambs.

So I need to get back to our own weekend and so I leave you with lambs!

Love this photo of them all lined up to get some of the hay, we had tipped the core of the round bale in and so everyone was enjoying their nibbles, there are nine of them in this photo..

Ps, this healthy ewe lamb is shadeback, and she was my weak lamb but as you can see.. she is as healthy as can be now!

Posted in Life moves on daily | 1 Comment

Lets talk feathers – Feather Compost Tea

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

Now, we can select the best feathers for crafts and for our favorite fly fisherman and we can keep down for stuffing..

but what do we do with the rest of those feathers..

Well, the big huge tail feathers make pretties in many ways in the house, so do save them, now what..

So this can be done in a few ways.. you can take all your smaller feathers and dig them into your worm compost bins and let them do their thing.. they will do a good job on them..

You can throw them into your maggot buckets and let them eat all the bits on them and they will eat some of it, what is left which will be feather and hay bits can them be dumped into the longer term compost piles, something you are doing with any wood chips and so forth.. Its not going to be ready in a year, its a two or three year compost pile

You can mix them into the mix for a garden compost pit under ground, they will compost out, this is just a different way to use the worms and the smell that goes with them.

But lets get to one of my favorite ways to do this.. and can I be clear.. this is a stinky deal.. they smell while they decompose.. bla.. plug your nose when you are stirring it and expect to gag, or at least I do..

throw in some really active shovels of compost into a bucket or a big old drum, put your smaller, and medium feathers (no skin or bits ideally) and add water.. fill it 3/4th full, put a plastic or wooden lid cut to fit over it but floating on top.. with a handle even if its just a nail put in to grab and put a weight over it so that it will just slightly hold it down, I use a rock and let that sucker, rot.. stir it weekly for the first three to six weeks to make sure your feathers and the sink at the bottom gets well mixed, I use a big old tree stick to do this..

It needs six to eight weeks at a min, but longer is fine.. I use it end of july or early aug as a liquid fertilizer.. I mix it 20 to 1, so a single bucket makes a lot of tea.

I make a lot more Nettle and comfrey tea then I do any other kind but they all have their own uses and feather have their place, be it in the compost or be it in the fermented, rotted side..

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged Feather compost tea, feather use in the garden | 2 Comments

Raspberry Overview 2016

Posted on March 21, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

The Goal : A whole lot fruit, on farm produced fruit.. I want to get to the point of being able to only eat farm produced fruits, both soft and hard kinds.

This has been a long slow road to get to where we are at now coming into 2016

in regards to this I did the math on this, I have row 0 100 (late raspberry canes), Row 1, 150 plus canes (early season) and Row 2, 75 Mid-season canes plus I still need to put in row 3 later- Mid-season raspberry canes this year yet..

that puts me at 350 producing canes. or approx heading into the year with 65 liner feet (I will be expounding the rows with new babies, but they will not produce this year)

so that puts me at 130 pints average yield or 520 cups of raspberries for my typical yield for the year of 2016.

hmmm.. so that is 260 pints or 130 quarts.. that will do.. that will do..

yesterday I was on the first day of spring looking at the rows and they need cleaning, pruning and lifting but having come though winter, they are looking good..

maybe, this will be the year, we get the posts and wire up.. haha.. but it still should be a great soft fruit harvest year, I hope.. at local organic prices, if I can pick the average amount the canes should produce, they will give back 1400 to 1600 worth of fruit.. but so many things come into play. we will see

how are your raspberry canes looking, in need of a clean up and trim?

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged bare root rasberry canes, growing rasberries, harvesting rasberries, rasberry, rasberry fruit, raspberry | 7 Comments

Fried Cornbread Recipe

Posted on March 20, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

This is a nice and easy recipe to make a cornbread that you are going to slice and fry up golden to be served with butter and syrup..

1 1/2 cups buttermilk ( you can use powdered buttermilk, really buttermilk or whole milk with two tsp of lemon juice in it to turn it)
1/3 cup oil
1 large egg
1 cups yellow cornmeal flour or cornmeal
2 cup all-purpose flour
1-4th cup of sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 half teaspoon salt

Mix in order, wet to be added to dry, Do not over mix, grease pan or spray it, 350 time depends on what you cook in, cool in pan, cut into squares, lift out and slice in the middle fry in bacon fat or dry or in a touch of butter till golden brown and serve as fried cornbread instead of pancakes.

I had a craving for this delightful dish and made up a big old pan, it went fast and was so good in this season of maple syrup boiling time..

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged Cornbread recipe, Fried Cornbread, Fried cornbread with maple, Using leftover cornbread | 3 Comments

Butternut Squash Grow-out 2016

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

Here is the overview of the program..

I have sent you a mix of seeds for short season butternuts to be grown out and selected for best fruit. Within this are some of my own seeds that have already gone through one season of selection but there are other varieties including Greta’s Canadian Crookneck and so forth.

For those of you that have less experience growing butternut, they are a good storage squash, with medium hard skin and solid stems resistant to squash vine borer and fine sweet flavoured flesh. Some are used as a zucchini such as trombocino (I didn’t include these seeds as it’s a separate project but could be a side observation for those interested). They have a reputation as fruiting later than some of the other species but grow well for me in this climate.

Plant after last frost in warm soil or pre start no more than 4 weeks early I’d say if you have issues with soil or pests that would warrant that. I have not done any fertility amendment with mine but started with bermed beds so there was inherent fertility. I also rotate where I grow my vining crops. My squash are usually in the soil by late May (weather dependent) but I know some of you may not be able to get them in the ground until June so you might want to give them a few weeks headstart or do half and half to see if direct seeding is a priority for your purposes. As plants will vary in size, I can’t say exactly what spacing should be but at least 4 feet.

Please include your goals but I’d say the first goals are:

a) ripening

b) good shape for use

c) storage

d) disease resistance

e) sprouting in cool soil potentially for some of you.

Pictures throughout the season would be GREAT! That way if you have questions or issues, we can comment on them and also as a way of documenting your growing techniques.

At the end of the season, post a picture of your harvest or send in any info you may have collected including date of sowing, spacing, seeds sown, germination rates, growth rates, flower dates, fruit set and so forth. We’ll also keep a record of weather. Also record your soil type or any other about your growing conditions such as whether they were grown in part sun (urban consideration) or were irrigated.

Send back about the same amount (or a larger amount if possible) of seed you were given from a mix of your best fruit. So best to wait until you have used all your best fruit and collect the seeds from them, dry really well and then put in a jar to mix them around. Try to rouge out any seed that is damaged, diseased or empty.

Last year was trail and then some but I got my struggling but finally producing plants to give me squash, not that many reached the true ripening stage seed wise as I would have liked but given the year, I will take what I can get, the feedback was that mine were smaller then expected but again, I think that is due to the fact that they did not have a lot of time to grow-ripen as I had a much later start then I expected.

Having said that they have held very well, I am still eating some at this time in mid-March from storage, I am down to just a few left and I have seen some rot or seed starting happening in the seeds on the last two that I cut into but the outside and flesh still look very good indeed. I expect that I will be done with those in storage in the next two weeks but given that they were picked in oct and held to april I consider that very good at six months

I was able to give back several hundred seeds to be mixed in so I consider that a success as well.

this year I am expanding the program, not only will I be growing the mix again, but I have ordered in a few extra butternut squash seeds from very tiny small growers that will be interplanted to cross the genes and selected back for them, plus I picked up nutterbutter.. its a older and smaller butternut squash, that grows a perfect size for smaller families at 1 or 2 pound squash, I am going to grow some pure seed from them but I also plan on bringing a touch of the smaller plant and the genes into the mix of the land race.

I would like to plant at least 80 plants again this year, the extra will be for livestock feed as they will certainly produce above and beyond in terms of what is need for our own use.

This program got talked about on national radio last year and it was very well received and I am quite sure there will be some follow up on it this coming year.. Its great fun to be part of a community program like this.

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged Butternut Landrace 2016 | 4 Comments

Sunday’s course- Disaster Planning

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

The course I took on sunday was put together by Equi-Health Canada

http://www.equihealthcanada.com/

It was the Disaster planning and Emergency Preparedness Course

“A MUST for any livestock owner, this course will train you in fire prevention, planning for and executing save evacuation procedures, hidden dangers and responding to first aid emergencies. It also covers what to do in natural disasters such as flooding, ice storms, hurricanes, tornadoes and more. Don’t be unprepared – we can help you help your animals. This course is suitable for any livestock operation, not just horses.”

These are not cheap courses but they are solid and good.. they send you home with homework and work to do on your own place, they are a great mix of learning and hands on..

I really like this about the course, you get to do drills and hands on with the horses and work in the barn and more.. Sorry, I did not take any photos at the session this time..

Just like in the Horse first aid co urse, *which I took last year where you get to do it hands on.. it was a busy full course.

The biggest take a ways for me was..

a) you have 30 seconds to get your horse out of the barn and if not, move on.

b) move the horses that will allow it to move, no fighting, if it will not go.. leave it (an yes I know that is a hard things to wrap my head around)

c) once you see flames and or certain other warning signs, you have three min before it will go up and you and everyone is done.. Its not like the movies or shows.. get out of the barn.

D) save the give up horse that has its head down, they have much less likely smoke lung damage, and if they have a window, they will put their noses to the window for clean air, and remember the smoke is as deadly as the flames.

e) Peaple First, Call for help and then help what you can otherwise, get out!

Bottom line, once there is a fire, its done.. its all about prevention!

When it comes to the others things, pack and leave while its a asked for evac, because onces its a forced leave, they will care only about you and nothing about the critters..

Most excellend idea, keep a big fat black marker or fabic marker to write your name – number in dark or white colors (depending on the critters color) on the necks of your horses and remember that you must have proof of ownership to get them back..

PS, when it comes to the micro-chip, its the last recorded owner that gets the critter, regardless of how long the animal has been owned or lived with you.. change your data on the chips!

comment Rebecca, worth adding right here

Good tips! Re. getting them back: Scan or take LEGIBLE photos of sale/adoption pics, and email them to yourself, along with pics of the animal and CUs of any distinguishing marks (scars, too) and identification tag/tattoo/chip numbers. Hardcopies kept in vehicles can be lost to flood, fire and other issues, and are only a backup. With electronic versions, all you have to do is hit print or play for two minutes and have a “missing” poster to send out or paper the world with. If they have a medical need or prescriptions (humans, too), scan/pic those, too.

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged equi health canada courses, training courses | 4 Comments

Melting weekend-garden

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

Much to my pleasure, got to find time to put in a few hours on sunday in spring cleanup and combo it out in regards to the front yard garden. I was on a course from 9 till 3 on sunday.

Hubby and I enjoyed working together, but he noted that we are a full month ahead, I both agree and don’t.. in the main garden, we have two plus feet of snow, in other yard gardens, same thing.. the reason I caved last year and we built the front gardens last year a) I wanted more garden space but b) this was the area that let us work it weeks earlier an that is proving true again this year.

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So it was suiting to put in a couple hours of manual work, we have decided to build some new rabbit hutches this year, but none the less our current hutches have a winters worth of garden gold under them, well as many layers as possible till you hit frozen 🙂

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The front garden is the first to appear.. the raised beds are up higher, heating up faster and the water around and under them is melting, full sun, lots of layers from last year and spring water and you can see them composting in place..

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so it was a perfect day to start adding the spring compost top up, different gardens will get different things, but the rabbit poo, leftover hay and straw mix is a cool manure, no issues placing it directly into the bed as long as I choose what is planted there with care.

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Last fall, at least a dozen full wheel barrels of 1st year compost was added around the teepee and the garden area was expanded and the compost there is already peeking though the snow.. I think we might need to put the ladder up inside and clean up the material from the top..

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this week, I will be getting out and checking on the state of a number of bushes, I was very surprised to see buds on the lilac yesterday, I want to see how the clove currents made the winter.. today we expect freezing rain they say.. we will see..