Phew!

Planted 4000 Strawberry plants today, will try and post some pictures.....
How do you think people are going to like picking strawberries with our pigs in the next field? (Those strawberries pictured are NOT our commercial ones.........)

Food and Eating and hypocricy

We eat a fairly healthy diet - I can fruit, make salsa, can tomatoes, freeze homegrown fruit and veggies, can apple juice, can fruit and my husband goes hunting with my mother (another story) and we raise pigs so we eat organic meat....We rarely eat fast food, and usually subway at that....but we don't deny ourselves the occasional frozen pizza or perogies either. My juice I can for summer Popsicles, my fruit for smoothies......We're not preachy, I buy my kids candy if I'm in the convenience store.....Recently we've had our eyes opened by "Omnivore's Dilemma" , the movies "King Corn" and "The world according to Monsanto" and we're looking at our food choices a little more closely than we ever have. I have even tried to find out if our strawberries are GMO.....


My kids love veggies, they love fruit, they love ice cream, they love meat, they love food.....and they will as often choose an apple as a bowl of yoghurt as a popsicle......We have a Wwoofa family staying here and as much as we love them, and love having them here and love the work we are all getting done we also see some real strange ideas....like corn flakes for breakfast are better than eggs. The lady drinks 1.5 quarts of apple juice a day (granted home squeezed and canned) and has raced thru my frozen strawberries in smoothies ( I mix up the strawberries with plums, blueberries, cherries, pears and whatever else is available ) , daily.....on top of meals and but bowls of ice cream a day like bowls and bowls....it's been crazy. They eat ice cream in front of their son, and won't give him any. Then they give him a bowl before dinner because he pooped in the toilet (I'm guilty of giving M&Ms for prizes, but it didn't work), but won't let him have yoghurt (my probiotic with sugar....) for desert......It's been wild watching....They won't give him my canned fruit because of sugar (I use the LOWEST amount possible) ..... One night she made dinner for us, it was DELICIOUS, but it was cabbage soup. yep. We certainly needed more :) There seems to be this wish of vegetarianism (She keeps saying "Meat? Again?" Our meat is all organic - we raise pigs, buy a friends chickens or hunt...and they certainly gobble it down when I cook it....) but with no real plan to eat properly and so that you feel satiated.....

I pondered why I posted this with no real point, except that with real choices, kids choose a variety - mine will just as soon sit down with a bowl of frozen blueberries (that we picked) as a bowl of yoghurt (with sugar) from the store. I don't limit their choices and I guess in the spirit of free choice, they choose what their bodies need.....Beans and zuchinni that they harvest from the garden go down fast, they often don't eat their pasta or potatoes or rice at dinner, Sawyer is now choosing NOT to eat ketchup with his grilled cheese, August doesn't eat Ketchup with his eggs if they have cheese.....I see wise eating habits and kids who won't go wild on take out pizza and ice cream when they finally leave home (NEVER I HOPE....a whole nother story....)

Weird.

Grandfather Frog and The Strawberry Patch

Well, when I got back from the kids' piano lessons today Don said "do you want the good news or the good news?" Apparently the farm down the way has cancelled their entire strawberry plant order, yep all 16000 of them. So now we are able to get the 1000 plants extra we needed (from their order) Our supplier (and we feel bad because we gave his name out) is phoning all his customers and asking if they need extra, and if he can't offload them then the farm down the road will have to take them. I just read to August "Grandfather Frog" by Thornton Burgess (my crazy mother found 7 of his books at a garage sale this weekend, what treasures) and I see parallels here....This guy D thought he could make some money by venturing out into the Great World Of Strawberries without any support along the way, on his own, full on, no idea of what was involved except that fresh strawberries are in demand....We were so willing to help, give pointers and get him started but he was so sure he knew how and didn't ask for or take the help we offered....Maybe if he had he would have ordered 1500 or 3000 plants and not felt completely overwhelmed a week before they arrived.....I feel bad now for being so ticked last week....Unlike Grandfather Frog who foolishly kept going into the Great World after being captured and rescued, D pulled back from the Great World Of Strawberries before there was an even bigger mess (and "I told you so's" from his mother)......I gotta respect that.....It must have been hard to swallow his pride. The way TB weaves the follies of mankind into his stories of animals is priceless and I wonder if August catches any of it. The language in the stories is so fun to read - it sings....
Work is progressing well on the farm, with extra hands the amount we are getting done is amazing. Of course the amount of weeds to pulled out still astounds me. I hate weeds. I had the worst row today. I know this because I usally go at 3x the speed of the other weeders and today they were passing me :) The boss has to take the worst .... where the heck was Don?
Don picked up 80 bales of straw today (we need a bale a row for 130 rows) and the kids madly built forts with the bales until past their normal bedtime. They want to sleep out in their fort. Apparently it is warm! I told them some people build houses from straw bales. How Mummy? Now I have to go google it so I can tell them!
Check out this cool blog: Crafty Crow

Screamer....

I sing this to "Dreamer! Ain't nothing but a dreamer...." by......hmmmmmmm. My Holdy screams or screeches. A lot. If he wants something. If he needs something. If he's po'd. If he's hurt. If he wants more milk. We knew and were trying to deal with it, but with people in the house we are more conscious of how incredibly irritating it is. Responding to the screemch, even if you're trying to teach him not to screemch, means he has learned that it works. I've now had a serious talk with him and use the "Gentle Voice" reminder. We try not to deal with him until he uses a gentle voice (what we were doing ineffectively all along). Sometimes it's hard to know what to do as his brother's have been unkind and caused the screemch....Sometimes it's crazy what he's wanting, like glass of water. Having people in your house does change your perspective. Especially when they have 2 kids, 1 and 3 who are not at the loud stage we are, or maybe my kids are just loud! I can read it all over their faces "My son is learning bad things here..." I already know they will be telling about the yowling kid who taught their son to screemch! (and how to ride a trike....) It was priceless tonight when the two 3 year olds sat in the bath and in stereo yelled "Hungry! Hungry! Hungry!!" The mother when she heard tsk'd tsk'd......

Farming...

As we approach our busy season and it seems there is not enough time in the day to cook, clean, weed, organize, do laundry, kiss skinned knees, deal with 3 year old, supervise workers, read books with the kids, play lego, get ticked at hubby and actually take time to smell the coffee and I wonder if it is worth it. The wind up has started and we have soooooooo much to do, yesterday we planted 3 rows of garlic (very important!) and weeded strawberries. Don finished narrowing the strawberries with the tractor and our kids ran wild..... At least I'm home and can see my kids, but I feel like I have soooooo much to do I don't have time. I hate the feeling. The little guy at 3.5 still needs us and constant supervision.....I don't have time to see my friends, do playdates, make easter eggs and play....I'm taking 3 minutes to work on this while the kids snack on sliced ham. And I didn't finish my ideas, it's now 3 days later, now they are all in bed and Don has left to return the lime spreader...I haven't read my blogs for days and my back hurts from weeding. Oh, I understand herbicides, $100 worth would solve this problem, quickly.....

Now we hear a farm down the road has purchased enough strawberry plants to plant 3 acres. Long story but the short version is that we supply their farm market, but never can supply them enough (we sell out daily) so their son called this winter and said he wanted to plant "a few". We assumed enough to supply their market. So many local farmers helped us when we bought this farm we returned the favour (especially as I grew up next door to this family and with these kids) Back to the story....Don gave him our plant supplier's name, the best variety to purchase, offered our transplanter and offered to have him up here to run through our operation. I called to discuss labour needs (sometimes we share) and she tells me her son has 16000 plants coming. To put this in perspective we have 3000 coming and the most we have ever had is 6000 at a time. Lets not even get into whether he realizes how much work it all will be ... and the fact that a "smart" farmer would start with .5 acre (3000 plants), and then plant another .5 and then another .5 each year as commercial strawberries have a 3 year life span......but he never did come up for his primer on our farm.....EEEEEEAnyways we are a little ticked.....This is not a few berries, this is opening in direct competition with us.......

The WWOOFs are working out well. We have a family of 4 now, they are from Germany and have two children 1 and 3, and they are SOOOOOOOOOOO nice. Every night there is enthusiastic discussions around here and I have learned so much......The kids get along and after a couple of days figuring out a bedtime routine that worked for everyone, everyone is settling in well. But there are a lot of people here, and chaos, but fun chaos.......

Willing Workers On Organic Farms.....Good or ...

So we are transitioning to organic, though we will probably never be certified (never say never, we said we'd never go organic) and now we have joined a network that matches us with willing workers.....for room and board. Sounds great doesn't it. We get these people in our home and they work 25 hours a week on our farm. We're ecstatic. (Oh if you could see the weeds.....) If they're slow OH WELL, we're not paying by the hour. However, we have a new issue. We have these people on our farm (currrently one...soon to be 5 - a family of 4 is coming this week...) and we feel like we have to have a "talk" with our kids. Yep, how do we broach the subject of improprieties with our kids. We are psycho careful that our kids are not alone with anyone we don't know...but how do you speak to your kids about this kind of thing without totally psyching them out...I mean seriously, how do you explain someone may want to hurt you, or may want you to touch them, or yeesh, it freaks me TOTALLY out. We are pretty open in our house (like nakedness is nothing.....just pop in sometime you may find naked boys jumping on the tramp and mom running for the bedroom.....just kidding! Just naked boys) my point being that they don't have a problem with nakedness, but what about inappropriate nakedness????? How do you draw the line? How do you explain to a 7 and 5 year old that people shouldn't do things......I feel so at loss. I don't want to wreck their perfect innocent sheltered little minds that only find joy and happiness in life and daily living......
Mating, babies, sex, period, tampons NO PROBLEM.......CHILD PREDATORS.....BIG PROBLEM.
Some may say Well don't have these people on your farm. Good point.