Sleep Day on a Farm

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Well, I have to admit that I needed and had a sleep day on the farm, it is interesting to me the difference between a town sleep day and farm sleep day..

When we lived in town if I felt unwell and really needed to go to sleep, you just go to bed, there is not much that can’t wait, If there is a sink full of dishes, they will still be there when you get up, if you need to water your plants, they really can wait till tomorrow, even if you garden in town, were as things might be ready to be picked that day, they will hold till the next.. and the same can be said to a point for house pets, o sure your kitty may think she is “so hard” done by because the water is still the same as it was in the morning when it was done, or that the food didn’t get its fresh topping up but in truth, she can either drink the stale water or wait for you to get up in six hours and then sit by the bowl and howl her protest..

But sleep days on the farm are different, they require you to get up, get dressed, slog your way out and do the chores before you can come back in the house, get undressed and crawl back into bed! Farm hounds and house purrpots all seem to be able to read the warning signs better then they did in town, they will all curl up and sleep with you, trying their best to be quiet and hoping that by pressing their warm bodies next to you, that you will get better faster!

Sleep day’s in the kitchens don’t change much from town to farm, not really.. its still fast food, open a can vs open a jar, or hubby you are making supper tonight, I guess it’s a little different in the fact that there are bowls of eggs to be used on the farm, where as they would not be seen in the same way in town.

Now for all your folks that have little ones, I imagine that it all changes again, depending on age and if they can help you at all or not.. All I know is that I really needed a sleep day yesterday and I took it, I slept the whole afternoon away, and it was lovely to say the least..

Hopefully I will be able to make up a few things that didn’t get done yesterday today, but even if I don’t, even if it takes me a couple days to get caught back up on the same level that I was at before my sleep day, I am not going to feel bad about it.

The farm will still be there when you wake up, and as long as everyones basic needs are meet before you went to sleep, then sleep a honest sleep and know all those extra’s can hold for a day!

Posted in Life moves on daily | 3 Comments

The Double Dug W Potato Bed

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

While I have played around with growing Potato’s in towers, in strawbales and even in last years “sacrifice outside winter feeding area” the way we grow most of our potato’s is in our double dug 3 foot wide W planted beds.

With alot more work, you can start this with raw land or you can do the same process much faster with already worked garden soil.. now the downside of this is that its a tilled method,so for those that want a no-till garden only this is not going to work for you..

We follow the old (honestly I don’t know how old this method is but I have found it recommended for potato’s as far back as the 1800’s in books), lay down a sheet or tarp and dig out your first row of dirt, placing it on the tarp, have a a good amount of well rotted compost, sprinckle an inch or two of your compost on the trench line, then cut and flip the second row top side down into the line, repeat till the bed is done or until multiple beds are done. I don’t have a picture of this part so I snagged a drawing on it from a UK garden Site.

Personally we almost always double dig all our beds for the any kind of root veggies, I do it very different for above ground plants. It works in a number of way, by flipping the top to the bottom that has been lined with active well rotten compost, the top green dies to help feed the soil itself, and the roots are on the top and you can pull them out and gives you a helping hand on keeping on top of them.

Now is where we leave this method and move to another one, once I get my soil ready, I don’t want to ever! step on that bed and compact that soil down, and I consider walkways that are all done into garden soil that is used as a walk way to be a total waste of my hard work!

So its at this point that we grab our big long handled rakes and make free form 3 foot wide raised beds in the garden. So you start at the top of a bed and you use your rake to pull the walkway dirt up onto your raised bed area, only once that is done, do you step onto the pathway and then pull from the other side. Three feet is ideal as you can stand on your paths and reach the middle from both sides, it also means that you can then choose a number of different seed/planting styles depending on what you are growing.

We did get in a very early row of seed potato’s in one bed done for a total of 28 plants, We filled in the walkways with straw to help keep weeds down, and over the next two or three weeks, we will pull all the starting weeds and once the potato’s pop up, then we will do our first cover on the top of the bed and will build the hills as they grow from there.  I will add in a one more extra to the bed just before I do my first strawbedding hilling, which is to cut down fresh stinging nettles, and lay them on the soil before I cover it, I am not 100% certain why this makes such a difference but let me tell you, if you grow nettles, give this one a try and see if it makes as big of a difference in your garden as it does mine!

So, tell me what is your favorite way to grow your spuds?!

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Pink Slime -No! Meaty Bones-Yes!

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

So two days ago on the CBC, while I was washing floors for the billionth time, I was very interested in the story of what was happening in regards to fallout from Jamie Olivers showing of just how meat scrapes are processed off in large factories, and I was quite amused that the person defending it, was sure to just call it “Recovered Beef” and that it was very important that consumers understand that .

Now before I get to some thoughts on this, I would very much like to point out that according the Wikepedia Pink Slime page..

Pink slime is not permitted in Canada. In a statement, Health Canada stated that: “Ammonia is not permitted in Canada to be used in ground beef or meats during their production.” Such products also may not be imported, as Canadian law requires that imported meat products meet the same standards and requirements as domestic meat.

Canada does allow Finely Textured Meat to be “used in the preparation of ground meat” and “identified as ground meat” under certain conditions.

This really got me thinking about meaty bones, which has lead to this post.. when I have my lambs done, I don’t have him clean my bones, they are just cut clean and left that way, this means that the lamb/hoggot bones that I get back are very much like any meaty bone I would have from my own home self-butchering..

Lets look at some typical meaty bones, now I could have gotten a bit more off with time and a good knife but this is typical for the shoulder bones, they don’t come of near as clean for me as does other bones.

So would you want to “throw this much meat away” I know I would not, when I boil off a cooked chicken, I typically get at least a cup or two of chicken bits, same with duck and even more with turkey, when I do a leg of lamb, typically what is left on the bone is enough for a big! pot of soup to be made..

While I don’t want Pink Slime, and I do totally understand that meat scrapes in a big butcher shop should not be compared to the meat scraps that I get from my own small butcher but! this would be a amazing amount of wasted meat if it was just taken out of the system as a whole..

So what do I think should be done!, I think we should have a “use the bone” socal media blizt, and by this I mean if the bloggers and twitter folk can have this huge effect on getting the news out that “We don’t want Pink Slime” I say Awesome!

However, I don’t want to see those meaty bones going to waste, and I don’t believe that the meat left on a bone after the process is dog food (sorry Jamie, but If that is true, then I have been eating “dog” scrapes for my whole life), so I say.. lets start our own grassroots movement.

 Lets all post about meaty bones and just how awesome they are! and give recipes to back our claims!

There are a couple choices on how to use those bones, you can make soups and stews in which case you do a slow simmer on the meaty bones, drawing out all the marrow goodness and cooking till the meat falls off the bone, and its excellent eating that way but its not the only choice you have.

You can also roast your meaty bones with a bit of broth or water till the meat is fork tender pull of, and it can be used for sandwhich’s, potted meats, or anywhere else you would typically use cooked meat for, after you have taken the meat off, don’t forget that those roasted bones will still make you excellent bone broth for later use!

Lamb Soup with Greens

  1. Half a cup to a cup of cooked diced roasted lamb bits off the bone with one Onion diced and two cloves of Garlic
  2. Diced and add two cups worth of mushrooms and one green pepper(or a handful of dried green pepper diced from the summer)
  3. eight med potato’s peeled and diced
  4. six cups of lamb stock Cook the above till done
  5. Then add in 3 cups whole milk, heat
  6. Add 2 tbp of corn starch with a bit of water to mix and then add to the soup to thick’n
  7. Once hot and thick, add two cups mixed greens just to wilt and serve with a sprinckle of cracked pepper and salt to taste.

So what say you?  Do you use your meaty bones in your kitchen? What is your favorite recipe? If you do blog about this, please come back and link it up to the post, I look forward to hearing what you come up with?

 

 

Posted in food, frugal | Tagged , , , , | 12 Comments

Do you Facebook?

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Hi Folks,

I love blogging and trust me that is not going to stop! but I often have just little things I want to share, fun, silly or interesting tidbits at least to me but not nearly big enough for a proper post, and I also often have many “one off” or “odd” or “funny” photos in regards to the critters, the farm or our little trips off the farm,  that just don’t match up with the different blog posts I am working on, and so I have whole files filled with great photos that just beg for sharing!

There will be cross linking with what is written on the blog, and most likely a few reposting of some of my favorite bloggers or interesting news stories with comments..

So if any of the above interests you, feel free to use the link ! If not, no worries, the blog will move along as normal 🙂

 

Posted in Life moves on daily | 6 Comments

Hugelculture-Making “hill” beds for garden use!

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

This was by far the best seminar at the event, it was hosted by one of Greenshire’s members  for those of my readers that can watch video, here is a link to one that they have done that you might like, warning its long. They also have some small sqaure bale planting and also a short video on their own in work in progress food forest garden, one of the best things about them is that they are in ontario and gardening in the same zone as me!

This gentleman is a huge Sepp’s fan and is using him as his base for everything, the process is the same as what we used for our own beds

  • Part 1 -Step by Step with photo of how to make and build a Hugelculture Garden Bed
  • Part 2 -Learning as we go, I can see why the big boys all do this with a backhoe, ours by hand.
  • Part 3– How did they produce, the answer is they did Excellent!!.

So given the above between the Video and my own pages on step by step building, I am not going to repeat that but I will get into his Advice and Failure notes.

On the things that can lead is issues are

  • Side can erode rapidly- they do better with the proper 45% effect and you can load the sides with rocks and or plant them out to help create stabilty.
  • Not enough soil on the top
  • Your subsoil ends up on top of the organic layer-very hard on the plants, try and keep them apart when you are digging and on the placement of them back.
  • Sinkholes in beds, this is mostly looks, but just rebuild the spot, following the same method but on a very small scale.
  • Moles and voles- Not very common in our area, -get farm cats, allow them to do their thing, live trap if required.

Advice

  • Always GET more wood then you think you will need, stack it as close as possable to the site, it will sink as much as 1/3 to 1/5th in height within the first year
  • Build it as tall as you can, they made their seven feet tall, with a walkway on the top, so that by standing on the mound, they will be able to top pick their fruit trees.
  • Build it steep!, and if you do it to wide without the correct buildup, it can collapse in the middle and will have to rebuilt.
  • When planning, the outside edges at the bottom will endup 1 to 3 feet wider then the top.

I will be keeping an eye on this eco-farm and also on their different seminars, I am certainly not willing to spend a huge amount of money taking a course on their farm as I can build and learn on my own 🙂 but I have to admit that I would consider a longer course with him for a reasonable price indeed!

 

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Food Forests or Producing Hedgerows-Farmgal Style.

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

so while I will share the offical seven layers of the basic idea of a “Food Forest“. I am also going to take this back to Farmgal first hand experance because it turns out that what I have been making for the past eight years as a “Food Producing Mixed Hedgerow” that surrounds the whole front yard is in fact with very little tweeking a working food forest.

So I have mixed it up just a touch from the things listed above and I will explain why, so my own personal being created and added and growing personal food forest (don’t you just love to find out that there are “names” given to things you are already doing) is based on creating mixed producing hedgerows.. I am going to make the worst hand drawing possable but it will still show you what I have been working on, and later this year, I will do a follow up to show different parts of the yard itself.

So the front yard is around 3/4 of a acre, and it came with two big spruce, one huge overgrown crab, two massive willow tree’s and one popular tree..and the rest was in natural grass and cut short, it has a natural slope down to a area that drains and can and does stay fairly wet more of the year (which we are slowly turning into a cranberry producing bog)

So this is the basic’s of what we have now.. I know, I know, I can’t draw worth a darn but it gets the general idea, which is that we have a two row system around 2 full sides, the front and the field side, we have filled in both top’s of the area with fruit and a few nut tree’s, we have planted another spruce in between the two big ones and then added in a number of small tree’s and bushes, we have dug out in the wet area and put whole peatmoss bales in and allowed them to soak and then worked to create and grow a natural cranberry bog in that area.

Now we are limited on the heights on the edges, on the front we are limited because it has the power line, so all the bigger fruit or flowering tree’s have been carefully picked that they fit under the line even full grown, and on the field side, we have stayed mostly to bushes (the biggest will get 15 or so feet high) as we are in farm country and there are rules and regs about placing bigger tree’s that close to the farm fields with the roots moving into Farmer R’s fields, so the semi and dwarf fruit tree’s are placed in the yard raither then in the food producing hedgerows.

The hedgerows high fruit tree’s are mainly Elderberries, High Bush Cranberries, Pincherries, Saskatoon, the blooming higher bushes are hedge Lilac, the smaller bushes are a mix of currents, black chokeberry, Gooseberries, honey berries, Currents, Josta Berries, Blue Berries Black Berries, Black Rasberry, Red Rasberry, and Yellow Rasberry,  Wild Rose Bushes, they are under planted with a mix of garlic, herbs, healing or eating flowers, mints, strawberries, Lily’s, we are working to grow a sunchoke patch.

The only thing we are really lacking is the climbing vines and the root veggies, I am not certain that its really effecting the overall ability of the system but I can certainly add them in this season and see if it improves or has an effect.

Now I would love to tell you that I was working to create a 3/4 acre of food forests but that would be a fib, I can honestly tell you that I was determined from the start to make that area a “wild” food producing area, that everything that has been bought, or found and transplanted or split and put out into that area has always had a eye on can it be eaten, can it be used herbally, can it be used, if it can’t or does not produces something I consider as a “working” plant, it didn’t get put there by me.

I’m not saying that there is not some pretty flowers in there but they are all natural and they showed up on their own 🙂  So do you have a area that folks think is “wild” but in truth is loaded! with food producing tree’s, bushes, plants and groundcover?

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Basic Idea’s of Hugelculture Gardening Style

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

So I am going to get my “low of this part of the seminar out first” and then get on to the good stuff, I didn’t like how one presenter made this type of system a “lifestyle” and I do mean it just that way, he gives examples in the same way someone would if they were taking about the church, and I didn’t go to a garden seminar to have folks talk to me about using a garden idea in my business and or personal life as a moral compass.  

Now for the good stuff! I love this quote.. ” The health of your soil is tied directly to the health of your own family or farm”   At that point he talked about if you had children, and recommended ” Allow them to have some small business on the farm/land as soon as possible to allow them to connect directly to the land, otherwise, they will pull away as its their parents thing” examples for even very young children, grow flowers, sunflowers, worms, etc.

Gave ten basic things to keep in mind.. I will just work down the list with you..

1) Always Observe and learn from Nature examples, before you go to plant, look at what is there and see how it has figured out the sun, the winds patterns and how the water lays or where frost will dip down etc.

2) Start Small and Slow- Work a four by four space at a time, it’s about the amount of space that the average person can get done in a single working time and go from there, ideally you are working to create layers and spacing that with time require less work with time, rather then creating garden spaces that require the same amount of work year after year.

3) Multiple Fuctions-Always look at Stacking your functions Each time you look to add an element to the system it should ideally serve multiple purposes and give ideally multiple yields in different parts of the process.  An excellent example that was given is chickens, they provide eggs, meat, feathers and compost, but they also can be used as living tillers and also as a bug control method, they are a good first choice as a living example of something that works well as a stacking example

4) Redundancy-Everything you need to have happen in the system should have a redundancy built-in, Every vital function is take care of by multiple parts. The example given was planting the same plants in different parts of the garden and or having a couple different gardens around your property so that if one fails in one area, you have redundancy in other area’s.

5) beneficial Relationships, Stability and resilience come from having many different but useful connections between the different parts

6) Biological and renewable resources, and the interesting one about this one was that if focused not on the garden so much as on being aware and using people for their knowledge and skills as a renewable resource.

7)Cycling Resources and energy Basic Closed loop systems, kitchen waste goes to the chickens, makes eggs and compost, the compost is in turn goes into the garden and round and round it goes!

8)diversity and edges Edges are those marginal places where two systems meet and mix, they are the most productive, walk you land and learn your edges.

9) Evolution and succession-Work with time and the evolution of creating mature self-reliant systems.

10) Be Creative -The problem is the solution, The yield of the system is limited to only the creativity of the designer, and remember “Your attitude affects the overall Design” The example given was- You don’t have a snail issue, you have a duck deficiency.

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We all said it..it was bound to happen! Thankfully my tree’s are not in bloom!

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

 

Woke up to a winter wonderland at the end of april!The photo on the right was taken this morning..that is my rhubarb under that blanket of snow! How hard did you get hit if you got snow this morning?

Posted in gardens | Tagged | 12 Comments

Cheese and Onion Pie Recipe

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Miss L and I made 15 of these lovely’s for the coming SCA lunch menu in May and we had some leftover pie dough which we shared, so I got home and made one for our supper, so this was a butter pie dough crust, two large onions peeled and sliced and then pop out the rings, 1 cup of grated cheese, some salt and pepper, 2 beated eggs, and because I had it and wanted a heavier supper meal, I added maybe 1/2 of cubed baked ham to it, but its not required.. Bake until golden, its good hot and its good cold, served it with a side bed of spring greens and it was just perfect!!

Posted in Food Production and Recipes | Tagged | 14 Comments

Food Storage Friday- Garden Monday- This and That Post!

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Wow, its been a crazy busy week, filled to the brim with great things but by the time I get done, I am crashing into bed and sleeping the dead LOL

While this is offically a Food Storage Friday, its also a Garden Monday and this and this post! Expect anything and everything on this one!

So first up, how is your spring calander looking, mine is full, there is something on it I swear every single day and on the weekends, I have few days coming that are double or even triple booked, I am not sure how it happened.. O ya.. about six weeks ago (before gardening really started) I said to my hubby, i need more things to do off the farm this year! and started looking!

Well, let just say I jumped both feet in! I broke down and joined the local (well its a bit of a drive but its only a few blocks from my regular feed store) Gym, mainly so that I could start swimming again and taking aqua fit classes, once I get to the point I am happy twice a week water workouts, I hope to add in a once a week weight lifting class for an hour. So let me tell you, I hurt! I’m not kidding, the day after at times, I feel like I have been beat up to a point, once I stretch and get going, I’m good but if I sit, I stiffen up and o-yva! LOL

It will get better, and I feel so good doing it, but the old body says.. whoa the next day, which means it’s doing its job!

So this past weekend, I have a little meeting set up for some fellow ladies that have the same interests as me in regards to gardenings and looking after your own, I was sad not to get to meet one of the ladies, and hope that at some point in the future to do so, I think from that I have read about her, that is would be a great person to get to know, however we did have one lady (waving hello ) show up for lunch and little plant giving, it was a great visit and I know that I was a bit amazed at just how much we had in common in a number of ways.. I know that we both would like to get together again at some point later in the year when the gardens etc are done, I think I will see if we can’t have a mid summer meet as well as a fall one. If you love gardening, camping, farming and believe that we should stand on our own two feet and your in the ottawa area, write me a message and I will put you on the list to be let know about the get togethers 🙂

Then comes one of my old hounds, she had a hard week and so we have been providing extra care in that regards, but I can see a slow steady recovery at this time, it won’t happen overnight but each day, she is a bit more herself and I have to admit that I have cried more times this week then I want to admit, so I can’t honestly express properly just how happy I was that she felt well enough to join in the barking of the pack yesterday, both DH and I laughed that it would be something to be happy about, but for a couple days there, no barking and just barely tail wagging was just heart breaking.. so to see the tail up and going, and the woofs was uplifting!

Got out to a fellow SCA house and we made and froze 15 cheese and onion pies for a coming event in May, and had a good visit at the same time, I can see that I will very much enjoy getting to know her better and that we work well together in the kitchen, always a good thing when you are planning a meal for a hundred together 🙂

This weekend I have been able to find out about a Hugelculture event, (Thanks again Wilderness for the info) and while I will only be able to attend the morning events as I already had plans for that evening, I am very much looking forward to the list of seminars being offered, and will for sure do a overview of them on the blog. I think? that Dh might be willing to come with me, which would be a good thing indeed as there are two seminars in each morning time slot for a total of six, and If I go alone, I will only be able to take three of them but if DH comes, we can split up and take in all six and then take notes and share.. Ya Teamwork..

So many things are being planted in the garden at this time, its a daily thing, but everythign planted in the manure hot bed in the horse trough are up and going strong, I will take a photo next week for you 🙂 The rhubarb is up and the biggest are at least six inches long, the mints are going like crazy and the wild voilets are up a good three inches or so, the daylily’s are eight or nine inches high and the baby elderberries are popping up like wildfire 🙂

We got a good soaking rain last night and boy did we need it, it will go along way to help the pastures, the garden and to filling up my waiting rain barrels, we did get a single hard frost this week, it was not a bad timing to be honest, it didn’t do any damage and it hopefully told everything to “slow down”

In regard to food storage itself, I butchered out five roosters this past week, and lost one duck to a being egg bound, sad that one, but it does happen now and again.. My big thing in regards to the food storage is doing inventory! I really, really need to go though everything and figure out what we have left, while it was hinted at that we could just count empty jars and get a overview that way :).. I want and need to go the other way and count and put down what I have left in each thing, it will really help me figure out just how much to put up this year in the big pantry.

Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend and see you all on monday!

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