Just another Day on the Farm

The Gal in the Garden Series 2019 “Spring Ordering”

Posted on March 27, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

Let me tell you straight up that I have NEVER ordered as much off farm tree’s, bushes, plants and plant plug trays and garden veggies as I have this year.

Spring orders for 2019

Bare Root Fruit Tree’s
Bare Root Nut Bushes
Bare Root Fruit producing Bushes
Started Plant Plugs in lots of 12 or 24 plus Fruit Producing Bushes
Started Plant Plugs in lots of 12 to 24 in regards to “herbal use” bushes
Started Plant Plugs in lots of 12 to 24 in regards to “animal fodder uses or medical use for livestock”
Started Plant Plugs in lots of 12 to 24 for “Herbal Tea use” and different season bee feeder plants
Six kinds of Seed potato’s
2 kinds of Started Tomato’s
4 kinds of started Pepper plants
A full lot of 12 started Aunt Molly Ground Cherries
24 bare root Sweet Potato cuttings

That’s just the stuff that is coming off farm to the farm as each shipment date comes up. Then there is all the early starts that I am working with..

I will be starting my own seedlings this coming week (more on that next week) and I will be doing more pruning this week.. we got the plum tree’s pruned and we will be working on the rest this week.

Ideally this weekend will bring me to the Permaculture propagation pruning’s. I will be pruning and creating a large number of High Bush Cranberry, Elderberry and Black Chokeberry cuttings. I would like to be starting at 2 dozen of each..

Then when I get to the gooseberry and currant bushes, I hope to get at least a dozen, perhaps 2 dozen red, white and black currant cuttings to start after those bushes are pruned up.

I will be adding in some pin cherry babies this year from a friend’s farm. I will be also cutting digging and transplanting at least one more 50 plant raspberry row. I hope to gift at least another 40 to 50 this spring for someone else’s farm, along with at least 10 cuttings of red currant, high bush cranberry, elderberries and maybe a rhubarb cutting or two.

I would like to tell you that this week as been really productive garden wise but it’s just not true, we have been having more below 0 days and down to -14 to -16 nights on average.. they say that it might be warming up a bit

I have gotten some of the now “full sun” side garden along the house raked and some of the smaller rocks removed.. we placed a large piece of glass over one area to help raise the soil temp and I will plant it out and use a cold frame over the area as an early spring move the plants back and forth. I can’t plant there as we need to keep cleaning the area out, move out the rocks, and raise the height of the bed itself. I am up in the air if I need to add enough soil that I need to dig out the daylily’s or if I will just add a layer over them this year and the next couple years and build it up that way over the plants. I will share how it goes.

It’s so very strange to have a whole area of the yard suddenly be full sun, that has always been in shade since I got the farm. It means a good amount of changes in plants a ways to use those gardens.

The new garden bed to be in front of the deck will be a kitchen garden with a lot of vertical growing space being planned into it. The main plan for that garden is dead simple..

Fresh eating climbing cucumbers, cherry tomato’s, radish, green onions and some chives, and then a nice pretty front border row of flowers for a pop of color and to help bring in the bees/pollinators

It’s not so easy to figure out what I want in the small front yard garden area.. it’s not really that small either LOL but that’s its name.. the small front yard garden area because its needs to be split and understood that it’s not part of the Big front yard Permaculture style food forest/mini gardens etc

I will take some photo’s for you when it’s not under 2 plus feet of snow, nothing much to show you.. snow and more snow.. but it is slowly melting (they say we will have more snow in two days)

So I leave you with a cute little video of my Dez being a good helper farm dog, she is always willing to give a helping paw LOL

Hopefully I will have more updates by next week, at least I should have a good amount of pruning updates and start’s for propagation on cuttings

Posted in Gal in the Garden Series, Garden | Tagged Farm dogs, farmgal's garden, Gal in the Garden Series, homestead garden, Manure based composting garden bed, permaculture, pruning | 2 Comments

Lard Based Bird Seed Cakes

Posted on March 26, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

Most folks tell you that you need to use Tallow (Beef) lard in regards to making a homemade bird feed seed cakes. I wanted to share that it is very possible to use lard (pork). I will admit that I am using pasture based no corn/no soy locally processed self rendered by myself.

Having said that if you can find rendered Tallow or Lard at your local butcher, I see no reason why this would not work just as well. I think in a total pinch, you could use lard from the store as well.

I have Tallow and Lard cakes out in the yard at the same time, and I am needing to make and replace the lard one faster then the tallow. I will admit to being a touch surprised by this fact.

This recipe is a great blend of 2 cups of sunflower seeds and 2 cups of mixed small bird seed with two cups of my home rendered lard. Mix together and place it in a tub or pan to chill, then cut and place in the feeder.

This recipe makes 2 blocks. My suit feeder is a double feeder, one block on each side and my big sunflower feeder as seen above also needs two blocks, one on each end. If you only use one block at a time, you can still make this recipe. Just put the second block into a tub or bag and pop it into the freezer until you need it. Bring it back to room temp and then put it out into your feeder.

If you buy a store feeder block, just wash it up and keep it as your mold to make your homemade ones in.

Posted in Seeds | Tagged Backyard bird watching, Easy to make a bird suit feeder, Feeding the wild birds, Frugal habits, Using your own rendered lard to make bird suits | 12 Comments

Stump Garden 2019

Posted on March 25, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

Last fall a huge old Maple Tree came down in the “Yard Shake up 2018” and it left me with this huge rotted out stump. I meant to do more with this it last fall but all I really got done was prepping it some for spring.

Well, Spring is here! This past week, I took a shovel out and removed layers of snow on top and around the stump itself, as once its exposed to the sun it will warm up faster.

Here is my Stump Garden to be.. three days after I shoveled it out. Still very frozen in the middle, I scraped out the top layer of sugar snow till I hit more solid ice.

Then we added in two huge shovels worth of rabbit poo.. So our first layer in the stump is the well rotted wood that you saw being pulled down in the video above and now I have added in a four inch layer of rabbit poo.

This has been done for two reason’s..

The first is that the black rabbit poo will act as a heat sink for the sun and will help this area heat up and melt down faster.

The second is that I want that layer of a cool manure to rot down into the water holding rotted wood below it..

Once that has melted out, I will top it with a mix of well finished compost/dirt to fill up the rest of the stump and get it planted out.

Posted in Gal in the Garden Series, Garden | Tagged permaculture in a old tree stump, Planting into a old stump, Preparing a stump to use as a garden, Stump garden, using a old stump in your garden | 14 Comments

Dogwood 52-Fill the Frame

Posted on March 25, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

This photo is not cropped and It drives me a touch crazy that I didn’t get perfect levelness when I took it but it meets the fill the frame, one subject.. one color.. Ok, so it’s shades of the same color…. call it one camo color blended lol..

Patrick was giving the eye to the birds at the feeder and was facing the sun so he had crazy intense look at the time..

Posted in photography | Tagged Dogwood 52 photography | 2 Comments

Pruning of the Plum Tree’s 2019

Posted on March 24, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

Yesterday hubby and I put on snow shoes and headed out into the main part of the yard to try and get to our plum tree’s. They were in a way the fruit tree’s that need the least amount of pruning on the farm as they took a huge pruning/cut back job on them last year due to treating a disease on them.

It was a brutal pruning job done at the wrong time of the year but we cut out all the effected limbs and removed all the fruit and treated the tree’s. We will need to treat them again this spring and clean up all under them.

So really this spring we headed out with two goals in mind in regards to pruning the plums.

To remove suckers, cross over rubbing branches out of the trees, any branches that were growing downward instead of upwards and to open up the middle of the tree’s to encourage a nice open middle of the trees.
Trim down all but the single or double main shoots into whips as the younger 2 to 3 year old plums are going to be dug up and moved around the yard this year in the great replant.

Here is what we were mainly dealing with in general.

This is a plum in need of spring pruning, that snow is a good 18 to 22 inches high, so there is a good base down there yet.

Here is the same tree with its approx. 1/4th to 1/3rd taken off.. Because we took so much last year, we went pretty easy on the plums this year.

I was checking the plums pretty closely to see where they are at, as they are the very first hard fruit bloomers in the spring and where they are at helps me figure out when to start warming up and releasing my mason bee coons into the permaculture based food hedgerow plants.

I will take photos of them later in the season and link it back though for you!

Posted in Garden | Tagged Garden, Gardening in Canada, Growing your own food, homestead, Plum flower buds, Pruning Plum trees in the spring, Spring Pruning | 3 Comments

Increasing your pollination coverage timing using Native Bees

Posted on March 23, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

Excited to be adding in one more native bee to my breeding program this year. We have Mason Bee’s and Leaf cutter Bees and now will also be “hopefully” breeding for this wild and native species Osmia californica.

It is about the same size as our early mason bee (Osmia lignaria) and nests in the same size nesting tunnels. So there is no need to buy additional nests for this species.

Increasing diversity will spread your pollination over time from early spring to late spring. The Osmia Californica tends to naturally come out later than the Osmia Lignaria bees.

The Osmia Lignaria tend to be the Mason bee’s that a would be most active in regards to pollination for your plums, cherries, pears, apples and Crab apples.

As the Osmia Californica hatch out a few weeks later, they are wonderful in regards to extending the mason bee pollination of the later bloomers. Pollination with this species extends into blueberry, raspberry and Saskatoon blossom time.

I will scenting out their own house and am very hopeful they will enjoy what my garden has to offer, I currently have large patch of raspberries/black berries canes. A number of blueberry bushes and five saskatoon bushes at this time.

I will look forward to tracking to see who is liking my clove current and other current bushes? I have some extra camera equipment coming in this year to try and take a crazy amount of photos of the different native bees on the farm this year.

Posted in Mason Bees | Tagged creating native bee housing, farmgals mason bees, Garden pollination using native bees, Mason Bees, Osmia Calfornica | 3 Comments

No Spring Kittens for us!

Posted on March 23, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

Little Baby LeeLoo was growing up fast and turned six months old..

With the longer days and the warm sunlight it was only a matter of time before she was going to go into her first heat and we all know what a spring heat means.. Kittens..

No Spring kittens on the farm this year! Leeloo headed to the vets yesterday to get altered, this saves me money because I get a better rate for the surgery as she is not in heat, not expecting and not had kittens.

She was picked up this morning, poor little gal says.. where did my fluffy belly go 🙂

Otherwise, she is relaxing and happy to be home.. She enjoyed her breakfast and is now napping.. I am sure it must be so confusing to them to be taken to the vets, the smells, the drugs, the surgery.

I picked up the meds to keep the purr pride and the hounds safe from flea’s, ticks and more on the same trip.. I am not going to be starting them on it yet, I think if the weather holds, I expect I will not need to use them till May.

Weather is tricky and it could change suddenly. The local reports says that we are going to a bad tick year.. we will see if they are right. I am preparing for it, got my tick remover, got my chicken flock ready to get some extra freedom to help clean up the yard.

I was very pleased but surprised that they are having local lime and tick information session this spring in our county and those around me.. its very new to have this issue in our area.

Posted in Critters | Tagged altering your farm cats, farm cats, fixing your farm cats, Getting ready for spring, Getting ready for tick season | 7 Comments

Friday Rambles Around the Table – Overwhelm

Posted on March 22, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

What a treat to be able to stand on my deck with a cup of hot coffee and see soil.. even it is only the top of the big hill of soil that was dug out of the pond to be.. Even if I know its fleeting as a snow storm is moving in.. they say we will get a few inches or maybe another six inches if it really hits us.

It just makes the spring like moments seem even more special.. like playing in puddles LOL Lets put those new muck boots to good use right!

As I look around my own farm and see all the thing that need to be done, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed, spring is truly coming now and its in the middle stage of needing to get the winter clean up done, the garden’s prepared and planted out. Breeding programs, spring flood of eggs and chicks a more.

One foot in front of the other will get you there.. break it down, plan it out and work the steps! It will all come together.

Now I am going to turn this to a little bit of a darker side.. The world this week has been far more overwhelming in many ways.

It does not seem to matter where we looked this past week, every day seemed to bring something new, be it Mass Shooting attacks, Plane Crashes, Weather Based events that have taken SO many lives both human and animal. So much loss of homes and livelihoods.

I fully believe that there will be farmers that will lose their farms this year due to some of the things that have happened, I know there are thousands that have lost their homes and there are hundreds this week that are mourning the loss of their loved ones.

I wish I could make it all better..

I can’t

I can’t take away that pain

I can’t fix anything that has happened

I just have to face it, look it in eye and chew it over. I need to listen to the voices crying in the wind and close off the rest of the world and truly hear them. I need to slow my mind and do my best to put “my way of seeing the world” to the side and try to grasp even in the smallest way a different view-point, a different culture.

For me (and I respect if it’s not your way) I need to pray

Then I need to slowly get up, shake myself and start to move again. Start to do.. slower, sadder in some ways, reminded to find joy in little things, reminded to tell those I care about I love you more often, to slow down and play with my hounds, say yes to the purrpot that asks to come up for lap time, take more time to listen to the wind, to smell the awakening earth, to feel the sun on my skin.. to be reminded of the awe of watching a seed sprout and grow into this fragile shoot of green, reaching for the light.

Posted in At the kitchen table | Tagged Farmgal's Friday Rambles around the table | 5 Comments

Spring time with our Horses

Posted on March 21, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

The spring shedding has started, so much horse hair coming out of my big boys. The muckiness has started, they have dirty hips and knees. Daily grooming has started and extra cleaning of feet is required.

My boys have had the winter off. We have all enjoyed that down time, they like their cuddles and pats and rubs, I have enjoyed that leaning time, that just spending time with them, often huddled on the other side of the wind.

However I have plans for my draft boys this spring here on the farm, not just riding which will be lovely but I need to put them to work in harness. Caleb is a old hand at hauling things around but this will be the first spring in training for Bojangles.

Brandy’s gear fits him with a big of adjustments and Bo is smaller and easier to work in certain spaces then Caleb is with his bigger body. So that will be a fun learning curve to share with you as it goes.

Last night was one of the first really nice days we have had and so when hubby said, want to go for a walk, I said yes and lets grab the horse’s and take them for a walk too.

I had to laugh, when they saw us coming with halters, they lined up and helped put them on, they were as excited about getting out for a bit of time with us as we were to spend it with them.

Ears flickered, and heads looked this way and that.. a bit of rust showed on them as different vehicles drove by, some faster, some slower, some stopping and asking if everything was ok, to which they got yes.. yes.. just taking them out for a walk, all is good

They would have been very much game for a bit of stretch the legs on the road, the only safe place to really walk at the moment, I was glad to be on the ground as they got a bit fresh. Its exciting to get out and be able to freely move after all their winter of careful steps on the snow/ice.

Today we groomed and using horse cookies, we did some stretching.. time to start working with them daily for even just ten min or so weather allowing. I want to just run though the basic’s, do some stretching out, do some walking and then I will need to clean up the saddles and harness and start checking fits.

The horse’s change shape from winter out of shape just hanging out, to working summer shape and it would be totally unfair of me to just grab them and ask them to work hard. They have lot of work coming in terms of giving me a helping on re-working the pastures, hauling wood, skidding out a few things and helping me use the ditch digger to create swall’s and a new rain garden this spring.

Ferrier comes next week for their next foot trim.