Farm Zoo - Growing! Learners! Creatures!

Truest Intentions

2011-09-28T21:56:00.001-07:00

I first heard the song Truest Intentions as the opening webpage for a local music festival, The Big Time Out.....I was hooked, where did this song come from and who's singing it - I watched it over and over leading up to the festival....(not the opening page anymore....)
Truest Intentions is a phrase that I've been throwing around in my mind lately as I watch my children grow and thrive. I watch the kids of my friends and I watch one friend struggle with the negative intentions of her family. Some of her extended family think she is doing the wrong thing keeping her kids at home. Both have refused to go to school.
As mothers and homeschooling parents we have the Truest Intentions for our children. We only want the best for them, we want them to follow their passions, interests, curiosity and intellect. We want them to do it on their schedule when they want to. By avoiding school I think our kids stay innocent and young longer, have more time for play, read more and have the chance to develop their own direction. As mothers, the LAST thing we want to do is hurt our childrens' futures and to be directly or indirectly accused of bad parenting choices (and I've been at the butt end too) hits us where it hurts the most - How good a mother are we?
Last weekend I saw Kim Churchill play at a smaller venue and in between songs he spoke about each song and the inspiration behind his writing. Truest Intentions was written as he finished highschool, and to loosely quote him he said that when you finished school in Australia at 18 you were supposed to know what you wanted to do and go to uni and do it. Instead of further study he decided to buy a camper van, take his guitar, travel and play music - follow his passion.
Maybe that's why the song was so compelling.
Another song, The Battle of Mr. Shibuya, is as meaningful for different reasons.
I'm pretty set in my musical tastes but this 21 year old ozzie has really resonated with me.....
I sure hope my kids find such a passion.
Now there is obviously a lot more to catch up on....I'll try....

Garden Update...

2011-06-30T22:38:00.000-07:00

Remember the onions? They're to the right. We had a bit of a battle with weeds but I think we've won and should get a good crop. Straight ahead is my covered carrots/parsnips....

The holes that had potatoes planted in them???? Those are them! I can already harvest babies! We filled in the holes and have mounded them up. I'm hoping for LOTS of potatoes.....

Garlic Garlic Garlic!!!!

Carpets keep the grass from growing in and the headers of the drip tape irrigation from being mowed!

My new raspberry row with primocanes starting to show their stuff!!

I have fresh fir bark on one side and landscape fabric on the other....lets see what works best....

My greenhouse with tomatoes growing like crazy. Some tomatoes on the plants and lots of flowers! I'm hoping to have MORE than last year!! We've had crazy cool weather this spring/summer and my salad greens, peppers and squash are not doing well outside. We need hot warm sun! I finally planted some greens along the drip lines between the tomatoes....We have LOTS of greens now!!! You can see them at the far left almost bigger than the tomatoes! My tomatoes look really healthy....Chicken farming all winter may have paid off!

My beans....the wire fencing has been attached and soon they'll be climbing for the sky! I have brocolli and cauliflower in the background and lettuce, mescalum and spinach growing!

And yes, my peas are growing.....I used the row covers until they were out of the ground and established.....I just forgot to take a picture! The garden looks so organized this year and I think with the raised beds, defined paths and careful weed control it's going to get easier every year!!!

Moving Day!

2011-06-27T22:45:00.000-07:00

So it's been such a busy year, I can't even begin to go into everything going on around here, but I will try and start catching up.

We have already had and slaughtered 100 meat chickens. Well, we didn't slaughter 100, we did 96, the raccoons got 4. It became obvious after 2 turkeys were lost we had to move them too. Apparently my coon killing dogs sleep through the mayhem on the back fence. Dang.

So we put up an electronet fence, built a lean-too sun shelter and prepared to move the turkeys. They are pretty friendly and don't get the whole let's herd thing. Quite frankly, they'd rather gather round and gobble.

It turns out I had to head down the driveway and call out "turkey lurkey, turkey lurkey" I didn't mention the falling sky, but I did feel a little silly.....

Now see the passenger on the mower? Well one hen escaped from the pre slaughter fasting day and gorged. So I had to leave her at home with the turkeys. Now 10 days later, as we head down the driveway to the new pasture it became clear that she was headed for an obesity related heart attack.....

So I picked her up and plunked her on the mower.

She looked pretty silly.

Turkeys in their new pasture......ok, it is a whole lotta weeds, but tasty weeds!

And Henny Penny? Well she wasn't sure if she should get off or not when Don got off to change the battery.....

So she waited until she was hand delivered to her new lodgings.....and there she lives happily with her buddies. Until we decide to eat her.

ScareRobins!

2011-05-09T22:17:00.000-07:00

I'd love to post a picture of my peas madly climing up their fence, but alas, the robins not only ate all the seedlings but they DUG UP all the seeds too....I've had to start again.....but!!!

My onions look great....all 4 rows of them - each at least 100 feet long....I refuse to buy onions that are moldy or close to it when I get them home this year......

My potatoes are in these holes....to be filled in as they grow!

My garlic, carefully selected from our own plants....growing like mad! I have about 1200 coming!

My new raspberry plants in a super duper raised bed prepped last fall with chicken manure, kelp and leaves......

And preparing to plant tomatoes...the most I've ever had in the ground AND the most varieties I've ever had - Amish Paste, Nepal, Romanescu, Early Girl, Roma, Better Boy, Big Beef, Tomande, Cherry, Cobra, and IKnowI'mforgettingsome! My mouth waters thinking about fresh salad, gazpacho........yummmmm. This photo is outdated, they are all in the ground and growing like mad...especially with the first hot(ter) day of the year today....Man, where is spring!

I also have kale, brocolli and cauliflower growing like crazy...I wish I had started some salad greens earlier....Spring means salad to me and I'm (ducking) buying it right now.....

PS My mom says to collect dead birds from the side of the road all early spring, put them in ziplocs, freeze them and come spring hang them upside above your pea row - kind of like some sick joke of a scarecrow....ScareRobin??? Anyways, that's my mom for yah!

My plan is to cover them with carrot row covers for their initial growth.....

Piggies arrived!!

2011-05-09T21:55:00.000-07:00

Going fishing?! Nope, the piggies arrived...

The tiniest we've ever had...so cute...see this one? He had a running tour of our farm.

We brought him out of the trailer and placed him in his pen, surrounded by a nice electronet fence, charged to it's fullest (it hurts!) The darn thing ran right thru. See two accidental farmers chasing said pig up and down the strawberry patch.
The fishing net came in handy!

A fence change was required. We put another more finely woven electronet fence around the white fence and then put the piggies in. They took longer than we expected to learn NOT to run between the fences....YOUCH!!!

They are pretty happy now - vetch, chickweed and RYE can do that for you. Here Tractor Don is out trying to catch one with a sore foot that needs some tending......The chickens have seen a change though.....

The orange electronet was around them and afforded them a much larger pasture....so now we have to move them every two days.....working well so far!

Sterling, my Splash Ameraucana Rooster! I'm very excited...as we also have a few eggs in the new incubator......only 42 of them.....

Stay tuned.....

Parsnip Pleasure

2011-04-26T18:53:00.000-07:00

Sometimes without planning flavours come together and form a bowl of pleasure.....I roasted a chicken and made stock. My secret is 2 or 3 tablespoons of vinegar to pull out the minerals from the carcass. I pulled off all the meat left on the carcass, added an onion, a head of garlic and added the 6 or so parsnips left in my garden (some quite large) We dug them up all winter to cook around our roasts. The perfect veggie, staying fresh in the garden until spring. I simmered the parsnips in the stock, adding water now and then, a bit of salt and pepper. Letting it cool I stuck the parsnips in the blender with water and yoghurt making them smooth. I put them back in t he pot with the chicken stock and meat, added about a tablespoon of curry, a teaspoon of ground thyme and a splash of my mum's warrior white (wine made from her own grapes.....) The result? Delicious, perhaps the best soup I have ever made.....I baked up a loaf of bread and we had fresh bread with melted butter and hot parsnip soup for lunch. Did I mention they are the perfect veggie? No storage, no fuss, just fresh veggies when you need them....I dig them up Christmas day for dinner that night. I dig them up from under the snow, the frost and finally the spring sun.

Ok Ok I know it looks a little like baby food but it DID taste awsome!

Spring has sprung! Tractor Don busy at work spreading manure, lime, stinky fish mixture.....

Can't Restart Baby

2011-03-18T01:58:00.000-07:00

Last year we went to see Joel Salatin, again. He had so much to say in so little time. I've had buzz words and phrases zooming around my skull all winter like Mason Bees stuck inside in the spring with plum trees just outside in full bloom. So many ideas....no way to get out....
One thing Joel talked about was the thought paradigm of the video game generation. If the game doesn't go as planned, or if you die, or if you lose a battle just Restart and try again at the beginning. Take farmville on facebook - my kids played for awhile - plant crops and minutes later harvest time If harvest is forgotten and the vegetables all wither and die, you can "unwither" them. Now put these kids out in the garden plant some seeds and then, well, wait. Hope a frost doesn't hit, hope it stays warm, hope the chickens don't scratch out the seeds, hope the cutworms don't nibble the seedlings.....There is no restart except from scratch, sometimes not until the next spring. Now plant something that takes 3 or 4 months to mature....in our instant society with instant dinners, instant pizza, instant Kraft Dinner for goodness sakes.....Do people get it that it takes 2 months for a pickling cuke to grow and another 6 weeks to pickle??? A tomato plant has to be started in early March for fruit in July?? A strawberry plant has to be nutured through spring, summer, winter and spring before harvest.....and then all might be lost with a frost at full blossom? There is no restart. One thing goes wrong and it's done. No redo, no do-overs, no try again.
Earthquake, Tsunami, Nuclear Disaster, Radiation.
Earthquakes and Tsunamis are nothing new in the Pacific Rim of fire. In fact in 2004 (?) the huge tsunami in Asia should have been a wake up call. The level of readiness in the nuclear facilities in Japan was shocking. The damage to the environment, to people, to food, to our ocean, to the heroes battling the fires and overheating is frankly unthinkable.
Life is not a video game, we can't just punch RESTART when we mess up. This is it. This is our chance on this planet. We are an eyeblink of the gods. The dinosaurs, who always seemed such a big failure to me, were dominant for millions of years. We as a species are not going to last that long because as a society we have lost sight of what is important. We have become too big for our britches. We have huge cities filled with people who don't know carrots grow in the ground. What would happen if another asteriod hit? Can you imagine the armegeddon? Agribusiness no more, food - planting, growing, preserving, storing becomes our way of life again. If we haven't poisoned our planet so much that it is too late.
I just feel sad.

When a picture says it all!

2010-12-25T23:18:00.000-08:00

He has always been so positive that Santa was bringing the kitten that it was NO SURPRISE for him that there was a kitten in the house this morning.
Apparently it was in bed with him, but then we put it in our bathroom with food, water and litter....or Santa did that....the story changed....
The kitten is a dream...so cuddly, playful and purry.....
I know I know not a word.
We had a fab day.....
Ending with a wonderful turkey dinner...
Now that he has his kitten he agreed to the photo....
38 lbs of turkey there dwarfing my 5 year old!!!
We know how to grow em!
Sweet dreams everyone!

Christmas Kitty....

2010-12-24T16:11:00.000-08:00

I am so darn excited.
I think this might be the best Christmas ever...WHY??
Holden is getting a kitten from Santa.
An alive one.
That Santa will put in his arms while he's sleeping.
He has been adamant for about 3 months that Santa is bringing him a Kitten.
At thanksgiving (ours is early october) I said, "Will you get on the counter so I can take a picture of you next to our Christmas Turkey?" **Why you ask? Because the turkey at 38 lbs is bigger than him!!!!!**** He said, "No, but you can take a picture of me next to my kitten" and so most of our conversations go.....
Hubby was not gung ho to start and we talked to Holden about Santa not bringing live animals.
And then a friend wrote asking us to take her cat.....(long story - vegetarians that found it disturbing that their kitten brought home birds and mice....DOH!)
I convinced hubby taking their 6 month old already fixed cat was a good idea....and then we didn't get that cat....
So when another friend was fostering kittens....well, it was an easy step for hubby to take.....that slippery slope thing!
So today I picked her up!
She's at a neighbors house!
Holdy is still adamant he's getting a kitten.
He "does not want any made in china crap plastic toys from santa daddy, I only want a kitten!"
***after the lecture about crappy commercialized christmas plastic toys***
His letter to santa said he wants a kitten, alive. (After his brothers pointed out santa will bring a kitten doll)
I read him "Santa's snow cat" - WHAT was I thinking?? Now he thinks he's getting a white cat!!!
I can't bear it.
I told neighbor guy (crusty old prairie farmer) that I'd be by when the kids go to sleep, around 8:30. He looked at me like I was nuts and said, "It's christmas eve, you won't be here until 1:30 am!!"
He wasn't supposed to be looking after the kitty - his partner was...and she was at work still. He looked like he wanted to boot it out to the barn.....but well, I think the kitten melted his heart.
I forgot food.
When I got back to him with food, he had carved some meat off a roast for the kitty!
Oh, I can hardly wait!
Stay tuned.....

Happy Holidays!

2010-12-23T18:57:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the ASH Berry Boys!

Greenhouse Gardening

2010-12-09T21:03:00.000-08:00

I had great plans to plant a winter garden in my greenhouse this winter....In fact, I did plant some lettuce and brocolli.....but, well, my gardening has taken off in a different direction....

Remember my tomatoes post? Well this is the same greenhouse....

My girls (and boy) were FREEZING their little butts off outside, miserable in the cold, hanging under their trailer....their water frozen....So we made it happen...

The live in the greenhouse now.

I'd already cut and cleared out old tomato plants and they took down the greenery that was left in a hurry (weeds). We put fence wire up around the work bench and chicken wire around the base of the greenhouse to prevent escape.

Now my ladies dust bath in the pouring rain. Because unbelievable rain is the weather we are having right now and the patch of ground they were frozen to is now under 3 inches of water. In the greenhouse they are dry, warmer and pretty happy.....there is electricity so a heat lamp is available if it gets cold again and we can take fresh water out to them easily.

They have compost, squash (SIGH - we winterized everything before the big freeze but forgot to bring the squash stored in the greenhouse inside.....so we have a pile of mushy once frozen squash to feed the chickens....) and I pick a bucket of grass/chickweed for them every day. They love their greens....Today we got 14 eggs from 14 chickens!

I AM winter gardening. Soil prep. Yep, NEXT year I'm going to have the BEST GD tomatoes ever!!!

Chicken Supreme

2010-11-28T22:58:00.000-08:00

We raised our own meat birds this summer.
They had a pretty happy life with a grassy area to roam and a wheelbarrow of greens thrown in the munch on every day.
We took them in at 10.5 weeks and had an over 8 lb average on those babies. (Should have been processed the week before thanksgiving, not great plannning on our behalf!!!)
Wowza.
What to do with an 8 lb chicken let alone the 11.65 lb ones.......????

Value for money that's what.

I cooked one 8 lb chicken for the 5 of us. A $36 bird.

One gorge on roast chicken, stuffing, carrots, patooties, gravy etc.
Next night I made butter chicken curry (don't tell anyone but the sauce was from a jar and "tarted" up) and lucky me had leftovers for lunch the next day.....
Next night we had chicken quesadillas....
Then I made two deep dish pot pies with more than 2 cups of meat in each one. (Maybe even more than 3!)
Also 2 cups of homemade chicken stock in each one.

One we ate (and had leftovers for lunch the next day) and one I froze.

FIVE MEALS!!! (and 3 lunches!)

Now why would anyone pay $25/3 birds at the local grocery? 3 carcasses, not as much meat and who knows what kind of life they led??

Louisa's Deep Dish Chicken Pie (ideas from a bunch of different recipes on the net.....)

2 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup white wine
2+ cups chopped chicken
1 med onion chopped
garlic cloves (I put about 4 or 5 in)
salt and pepper to taste
one pie I put cumin the other nutmeg/thyme
1+ cups chopped carrots
1+ cups chopped grean beans (I have an excess......so I chopped them the size of peas....)
chopped leftover potatoes
1 cup chopped chanterelle mushrooms

I cooked it all up on the stove while I made the crust and thickened with flour (about 1/3 cup)

Crust:
2.5 cups white flour
1 cup butter
3/4 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup icy water + 1-4 Tablespoons

I made it in my kitchenaid with the flat beater.
until pea sized lumps....

Makes top and bottom crust.

I put them in deeper dishes that the crust fit......

Put in the oven at 425 for 30+ minutes. Crust looks ready and contents are bubbling
The one I froze I half cooked.

Shoulda taken a photo!

Education Paradigm

2010-11-24T21:51:00.000-08:00

After taking last year off of homeschool swimming lessons (30 minute lesson and 1.5 hours in the pool....) we started again this fall. My youngest at just 5 was in his first lesson ever by himself and was put in quite a low group....a combination of baby looks, shyness and first timer I guess....
I had to accompany him to each lesson and sit with or near the lesson in the water each time. No biggie. But after the first two lessons I asked for him to be moved up....the kids were definitely not at his level of water happiness and even age. So he was moved up a group to a teacher we know is pretty great with the kids. (My middle son's favourite teacher) But Holdy was not happy. He told me "I don't want to do the seahorse back and forth mummy" (jumping with a foam snake between his legs across the pool, running forwards across then backwards, and other such pointless tasks) and "It's boring" - the activities were way below his water skills.....Tasks that helped kids to put their faces in water, float and be comfortable in the water. My guy swims under water and gets things from the bottom. I'm not saying he's anything special, just he wasn't put in the right group. The next group up that I can see is having tonnes of fun and are his age....But now he hates lessons, is bored, refuses to let me leave, refuses to do any of the activities, and is basically hating it. When he does do something (usually above and beyond the required task) the instructor can't really pay attention because he has other kids to deal with who *can't* do the different tasks. So now my kid, who won't do it and refuses to do it will get a report that says he can't and then won't be put up a group for the next cycle of lessons and the cycle will continue.
Today he was the only kid to show up. His instructor was off and there was a sub. OMG. First of all he got in the pool without me (I still had to change) I came along quickly and she had him diving to the bottom, swimming across the pool, all activities that he was challenged at and he was working SO HARD. And had such a BIG SMILE on his face. And I didn't really need to be there, although he did interact with me a bit and probably still needed me there. After the lesson he said "She was a better teacher than J** Mummy"
I hope J** gets to see that joy.
Sound familiar anyone?
Sound like school anyone?
Sound like bored belligerent boys anyone?
I know why I'm homeschooling even though I am constantly second guessing myself.

Code of Silence

2010-10-07T21:23:00.000-07:00

The Mushroom code of silence that is. It is THAT time of year, the time when the chantrelles and other edibles are poking their way thru the debris on the forest floor, pushing up through moss and leaves, sticks and rotting logs....and trying to avoid the humans who want them to eat.....Here in the valley and on the island (Vancouver Island) we are gifted with a large bounty in the woods. Everyone's getting them, talking about them but noone asks and noone tells WHERE. We all have our secret spots...and we're all trying to figure out where everyone else is getting them. It's a funny code...a friend was here and she was talking about drying her chanterelles.....and we were talking about canning ours....and neither of us asked each other WHERE. And when she was gone I was like "so, she lives on powerhouse, where would she be getting them around there....." (MAYBE I'm the only one with the CODE........)

So my mother calls yesterday, the wonderful funny wonky hunter-gatherer mother of mine who knows where A LOT of shrooms are, and announces IT'S TIME. The kids love mushroom hunting. First thing this morning out we go....for a short walk in a 'small patch'.

Yes that's my 70 year old mother with two false hips heading off thru the underbrush.....

And soon we spot some "Lobster" mushrooms. They are quite spectacularly reddy orange, dense and large. She knows where a couple of patches are....

Of course the boys found a Salamander which was running for it's life at this point....

We found so many types of mushrooms.....

The day was so beautiful, it felt like we were walking in fairyland....

And my mum was scaring me a bit....."I think these are edible, I'll check when we get home...."

The colors, the shapes, the sizes! We sure went on the right day!

I have to admit - I didn't read the chapter on "gathering" in Michael Polan's book....been there, done that...my whole life....

Camping =Mushroom hunting for my mum and the boys.....

A tiny fairy ring....they were sooo small and soooo delicate....

August carefully cutting a lobster out of the ground....

The small ecosystem on top of the stump of a log...Notice the leafy plant in the bottom left corner, it was sooo beautiful!

Bingo! A Chantrelle! We have to carefully cut the mushrooms and leave the base - they regrow and the life cycle goes on. If the whole mushroom is pulled up the patch is dead. Which is the main reason everyone keeps their lips sealed - they don't want an mushroom hunter who doesn't know destroying the patch......

These big babies are "hosts" to the parasite "lobster" mushroom, so my mum had the boys carrying a rotten lobster around to "infect" them for next year. How does she know these things?

A big guy, lots of these out in the woods....

Woo hoo everyone found a few!

But I messed up. Our "short" walk was a little long and too close to lunchtime. The youngest two had had enough.....
The boys chanted all the way home "we're hungry we're hungry!" Silly me, how could I head out with no food and no water???? I have to admit I got a little grumpy with them as I saw so many more spots I wanted to check out.....Ah well, next week....
We had fried mushrooms for dinner! Yum!
Tomorrow, NO FAIL STEW loaded with shrooms.....and my boys fight over them....

Duck Duck Goose

2010-09-28T11:12:00.000-07:00

Through Handbook of Nature Study blog we were given a project idea to look at the differences between ducks and geese. Since we have both, we brainstormed and went out and looked....photos are by August. Text by the boys!

The beaks of ducks are brownish grey. The beaks of geese are orange. The chinese geese have a humungo bump on top of their heads.

The feet the ducks are brown. The geese feet are orange.

Our female ducks are brown. Our male ducks have a green head. The chinese geese males have big bumps on their heads and they are white. Our other geese have brown spots all over them.

Geese only lay in the spring and early summer. And the ducks lay all year round. Ducks eggs are smaller than geese. Geese eggs are humungous.

Our biggest geese are scared, our ducks are scared too and our chinese geese bite a lot. None of them are friendly.

Ducks eat slugs and geese don't. Geese eat grass. Ducks do too.

Geese are bigger than ducks.

Strawberry Mama writing now:
One chinese female goose and the ducks have started laying. I didn't expect goose eggs until the spring.....Yesterday the boys found two shellless eggs....so we boiled them up and they ate the easiest to peel hard boiled eggs ever!

Our chinese geese are pretty aggressive. We have all the geese fenced in right now as we have cover crops planted. The last cover crop we planted was munched. As soon as they are established we will let them all go....hopefully to take down weeds and grass all over the farm. The one strawberry patch(1/2 acre) they all have access too looks pretty good!

We have one female wild mallard that hangs with our gang. She stays her distance but doesn't seem to be going anywhere.....could be interesting in the spring. August id'd her in his bird book.

Great challenge for the kids! Thanx!

Dance with your Dinner....Joel Salatin....again!

2010-09-27T20:28:00.000-07:00

"I have to go pick up dinner. I just love Qua111y Foods! I can pop in and I don't have to cook!"
Says a friend to Hubby and I as we were grabbing a Java at the local supermarket in between sessions of, you got it, Joel Salatin, LIVE in Courtenay!
The man himself spoke to a bunch of us here yesterday. What a personality, aura, intelligence, mind and speaker.
Our first session with Joel was pretty cool - about 45 people sitting around some tables for an open discussion with Joel. We all introduced ourselves talked a bit about our interests. Many said food security. When he asked about food security Blackwater came up. Scary stuff. What about the new bill (510) going thru in the states where the FDA can go on any farm and shut it down if they are not farming using science based methods. Many say this is an anti organic farming law. Joel said any law that Monsanto is for he is automatically against. He saves a lot of time reading legislation this way.
Can we feed the world without corn? And yes, we can. Processed food actually costs more than organic food if you look at the weights involved. For example, tonight, again on our break we saw a family of 4 (one toddler, one baby) spend $19 for dinner at QF, buying crap at the cafe. They could buy one of our chickens for that, and it would last 2+ meals, and have money left over for some yummy veggies. But they would only see that they were paying $4lb for our chicken.
I'm such a Joel Junkie that I had nothing big to add but appreciated the man's intelligence and ability to answer even the most vague question in an interesting manner.
Ironic that my friend was buying her take out dinner as we were on our way to the second part of Joel Day in Courtenay. Dance with Dinner. Connect with your food. Know how it's raised. Know what it ate. Know how it is prepared. Prepare it! Know your farmer.

During Dance with your Dinner Joel spoke of our disconnect with food - kids who don't know that carrots grow in the ground. How at 4 pm 75% of people still don't know what's for supper (me some of the time - that's why I made yummy tomato sauce...) How 25% of meals are eaten in the car. (Only if I buy ham and cheese croissants from Comox Valley Bakehouse on the way to swimming from piano.....) How we spend an average of 20 minutes in the kitchen preparing and cleaning up after meals. (Ok, I feel like I spend my life in the kitchen......so I have no idea where this stat comes from!) How our average food item travels 1500 miles. In 1900 the number was 100 miles. How some kids don't even know what a pot is....they just open boxes and microwave their dinner. Or like my friend, pick up take out at the supermarket. And let me tell you, not much at that store looked appetizing to me - Overcooked, overfried, overfoodcolored, sitting for overlong. YUCK.
Here in the Comox Valley there is a real grassroots movement of parents and people to meet the farmer, buy at the farmers' market and buy local. It is the buzz. Hopefully a long lasting one and not a fad. Gardening is huge here and in Cumberland, the small village near my home there are community gardens run by kids with moms supervising. Our farmers' market is full twice a week at the a field with live music, baking and of course coffee. I love going for the atmosphere. I love seeing all the farmers.
All in all an interesting evening but perhaps the wrong talk for the group of people who were there....We are already converted, we know all the shocking data - What is the next step?? How can we change the world and the attitudes of our fast food nation?

More on Joel to come. So much buzzing around in my head.

Every minute counts.....

2010-09-19T21:38:00.000-07:00

My youngest woke up wonky today. Screaming instead of asking, screaming instead of anything really, screaming when he fell and bonked his head - that cry wolf syndrome thing. Really really frustrating start to a day.

But here I am, and as far as I know here I am for awhile. Thank you soooooo much for that whoever or whatever is in charge.

The worst I feel is tired or hungry. Thank you soooooo much for that whoever or whatever is in charge.

The most I have to worry about is if my kids are ok, my garden chores are done, my house is tidy enough, or if the animals are fed. Thank you soooooo much for that whoever or whatever is in charge.

I look out my window at the farm I love everyday while doing piles and piles of dishes or folding piles and piles of laundry (ok that's only every couple of weeks.....) Thank you soooooo much for that whoever or whatever is in charge.

I have a great husband and partner. We have great kids and a great life. Thank you soooooo much for that whoever or whatever is in charge.

A friend, not a close one, but someone I know has just been given the news that her breast cancer that she thought was cured has spread to her ovaries and lymph system.

Someone who never came close to deserving this, like anyone does.

Someone who has a wonderful husband, small son and a life.

Someone who is inspiring and kind.

Someone who is strong and good.

She didn't ask to but she has given me the gift of each and every minute of my day.

Life can be so short, don't waste it.

Journey to the end....

2010-09-16T20:52:00.000-07:00

Today was the day, the turkeys go in. Lucky for hubby he is away elk hunting. Which left me and 20 fat fat turkeys to get in a trailer that I can't back up to the abbatoir. Lucky for me, the woofs we have right now are quite capable!

Yesterday we penned them - no food......
And this morning when I got up at 6:15 am I could see out my bedroom window that my interior lights were on in my car....yep dead battery and no jumper cables to be found. Neighbor lady and sometimes farm helper (free labour) was over helping (she can back trailers up) so the two of us set off on a hunt. The tractor's battery was also dead (kids playing with hazard lights) and she went back to her house to get our farm truck (and look for cables) that her hubby sometimes uses.....
The battery was really dead and Cedric, woof from Belgium, industrial engineer, was figuring out alternatives when NL showed up with truck and cables.....Truck started and the loading finally began. Easy peesy just herd them in....right? Wrong!!!

Turkeys have a sense of doom I guess. They also don't like plywood ramps and dark spaces....So we figured out we had to carpet their ramp!
See the cool double layered pony trailer? Cedric announced to me earlier in the week there was no way 20 fat turkeys were going to fit in our small pony trailer. Um, right. "I'll build a removable second layer" Thank you Cedric. The boys went in below.....

But we had to push them in.......one by muddy poopy one.....
That finished.....

We had to catch and carry the ladies to the top bunk. Yup, heavy, poopy, heavy, upset, heavy, muddy, heavy, strong, heavy turkeys hand placed on the top bunk.....

Even a net to prevent turkeys flying er plopping out the back as we drove off to the abbatoir.....NICE job Cedric!

Wonder what people thought as they passed me on the highway.....

Do I have the balls....

2010-09-15T22:18:00.000-07:00

Do I have the balls? (Be sure to read the article in this link!)

I've read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food,
I've seen King Korn, The world according to monsanto, Patent for a pig, fed up, food, inc.,....etc...etc.....
I can and garden...
Hubby hunts...
We grow our own meat birds and have layers...
We have pigs....

BUT:

We drink coffee.
I love chocolate.
I love cheese.
I shop at Costco and Superstore....

I have some changes to make. Do you?

What one finds in the camera.......

2010-09-14T21:30:00.000-07:00

Mummy, can we play in the pig food?

Mummy can you take a picture? **You take the camera August....**

So there I am on the phone in the background....NO IDEA they are still taking photos....
The series is pretty funny....lots of death and dying.....

There are a lot of photos along this vein......I got a good laugh!

Local Potato Field

2010-09-13T21:38:00.000-07:00

I watch the potatoes growing on a farm that is right next to a main road in our town. The farm has a history in the valley and was home of one of the valley's first farm markets. Through family problems, divorce and etc the farmer went bankrupt and the farm was sold to a charity that maintains the land for waterfowl and leases out the farmland to local farmers to use.

Today I drove by and I could SWEAR it had been sprayed with a herbicide. The potato vines were totally dead dead dead and brown. Weeds around the field were dead too.

Google is a great thing.

Potato Vine Herbicides

Herbicide Application and Remarks

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Potato Vine Kill

endothall
Des-I-Cate Rate: 0.75 to 1 lb ai/A (1.5 to 2 gal/A)
Time: Apply 10 to 14 days before harvest.

Remarks: Use higher rate during cool or cloudy weather or when vine growth is heavy. For ground applications, the addition of 3 to 5 gal/A of diesel fuel or 1 pint paraffin- base herbicidal oil for each 20 gal total spray may increase speed and overall vine kill. No wetting agent or emulsifier is required; endothall will emulsify diesel fuel or herbicide oil. Add diesel oil last to avoid possibility of forming an invert emulsion.

Caution: A restricted-use herbicide in Oregon. Do not use high rate, diesel fuel, or other oils if soil moisture is low or temperatures are high, or stem ends may discolor.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

diquat
Diqual Rate: 0.25 lb ai/A (1 pint/A) or up to 0.5 lb ai/A (2 pints/A) in a single application.
Sequential applications may be made, but do not exceed a total of 0.75 lb ai/A (3 pints/A) per season before harvest. Idaho, Oregon, and Washington special local needs labels (ID-960014, OR-960034, WA-960028).

Time: Make last application at least 7 days before harvest.

Remarks: Do not apply more than 0.5 lb ai/A (2 pints/A) in a single application. Apply with a nonionic surfactant at 8 to 16 oz/100 gal spray mix. Allow at least 5 days between applications. Do not apply through any type of irrigation system.

Caution: A moderately toxic herbicide that requires protective gear for handling and
application. Follow all use restrictions and precautions given on label. Do not apply to drought-stressed potatoes. Make last application at least 7 days before harvest. Do not feed forage from treated potatoes to livestock. AND HUMANS CAN EAT THESE POTATOES????

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

paraquat
Gramoxone Extra Rate: 0.25 to 0.47 lb ai/A (0.8 to 1.5 pints/A) + nonionic surfactant at 16 to 32 fl oz per 100 gal spray mix

Time: Make last application at least 3 days before harvest.

Remarks: Apply in 50 gal/A water with thorough coverage.

Caution: A restricted-use herbicide. Follow all restrictions and precautions on label. Do not apply more than twice with a minimum of 5 days between applications. Do not apply to potatoes within 3 days before harvest. Do not use paraquat if potatoes are to be stored or used for seed.ARE YOU KIDDING ME.....AREN'T ALL POTATOES FOR EATING, STORING OR SEED???? Do not pasture livestock in treated fields. WHAT ABOUT THE WATERFOWL THAT WILL SPEND THEIR WINTER THERE???--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

sulfuric acid (93%) Rate: 17 to 28 gal/A

Time: At least 5 days before harvest.

Remarks: This material is not as dependent on temperature or other environmental conditions as most other desiccants.

Caution: A restricted-use herbicide. Sulfuric acid is very caustic. Protective clothing including dust/mist filtering respirator, chemical-resistant headgear, protective eyewear, chemical-resistant boots, and waterproof gloves must be worn. SPRAYED RIGHT BESIDE A MAIN ROAD AND RIGHT BESIDE THE PLANNED FUTURE FARMER'S MARKET!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

monocarbamide
dihydrogensulfate
Enquik Rate: 20 gal/A diluted 1:1 with water for 40 gal/A
Time: No specified time; allow adequate time for skin set.
Remarks: Must be applied diluted. Surfactant must be added. This material is much safer to user (less caustic to skin), but is as corrosive to cotton, nylon, and some other materials as sulfuric acid. Consult label for full directions.

Caution: Do not mix sulfuric acid and urea to make this solution. Use the premixed solution.

CAPITALS are my words and bolded only were on the website.

I am horrified. I understand potatoes are sprayed after harvest as well to stop "sprouting". I will be buying organically locally grown potatoes from now on. And making more of an effort to increase my harvest. I have no idea how many I will have but my fingers are crossed......

And since most of the lables say don't let livestock in what does this mean for the waterfowl (swans, canada geese and ducks) that spend their winters on these fields???

I will take and add photos to this post tomorrow.

Canadian geese foraging in the field next door. You can see one herbicided potato field in the background....BROWN. This photo was taken from the main road in town at a stop light. Pretty cool main road with a farmer's field next to it eh?

Um, YAH, HERBICIDE!!!

See the burned weeds and the ones that were missed at the edge of the field. I pulled over beside the road and took the picture out my passenger window.

Too quiet on a rainy Sunday afternoon....

2010-09-12T21:34:00.000-07:00

Last week the boys found a pipe in the ground that came from nowhere....it just started....(I don't want to ask how they found it....)

So after Daddy dug around a bit trying to find out WHY it was there he left it.....it sat there for a couple of days, (Daddy has now gone elk hunting.....)
Until today...when two cousins and one neighbor boy came over on a rainy Sunday afternoon....

Hmmmmm What should 6 busy boys find to do??? Rivers, canyons, dams.....
"MUMMY! We dug out the WHOLE pipe!!!!!"

Yep the whole thing.....

And then set it up where they could get a hose into it.
I got SOOOOOOOO much done in the house.

Tis the season......

2010-09-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

For canning.....

and here is my start....

I've done 4olbs of cherries, 60 lbs (minus what the kids ate) of peaches and 7 jars of tomatoes

The valley suffered from the cold wet spring, bad pollination and now a dire lack of apples....I've got 18 jars of apple juice left from last year and may not get the 100 jars or so more that I need to make it thru the winter...

Tomatoes are just starting and I have a whole shelf to fill up.....I picked more 45 pounds and started a batch of "Family Secret Tomato Sauce".

The smells wafting through the house are almost making me swoon!!!!!

Me and Barbara. The work now is the fast food of winter....

That's what I tell myself anyways.

Our Tax Dollars at work....

2010-09-09T22:26:00.001-07:00

This happened here this week:

Tomatoes and Dahlias!

The overhead flights are non stop as the big industry in the area comes close to harvest......Good thing mine are in the greenhouse. My TOMATOES that is......

Garlic...

2010-09-09T18:24:00.000-07:00

A thing of beauty....

We are so happy with how it turned out this year.....

Wouldn't this make a great puzzle?

I'd love to grow garlic for a living.....

As of right now we've broken even and have paid for our organic seed garlic....

Now to convince hubby to buy some MUSIC garlic to grow next year!!!

Cukes

2010-09-07T18:21:00.000-07:00

Our third year growing pickling cukes...

(Jar of fermented pickles...)

A very cold wet june and a bumper crop of slugs put a damper on our pickle patch....

A late start but wow they keep on coming....

Everyone else in town is done and we have a bumper crop on the vines....STILL!

I pick every other day (usually with Woofs!) and quite frankly am getting tired of seeing pickles.....but I still have to fill this empty shelf in my canning cupboard!

And the shelf waiting for more tomatoes......

So much for camping.

A couple of things....

2010-09-06T20:19:00.001-07:00

A couple of things I'd rather not repeat....
Removal of an impacted wisdom tooth buried up in the darkest depths of my jaw. Still hurting. Been a week. Ow.
116 Meat birds in one coop one rainy Monday morning. Lots of poop. Lots of slimey poop. Holey shoes (crocs). Can you say "go down faster than the blink of an eye" Not pleasant. One farmer chick flat out in chicken shit. Not fun.

The secret ingredient....

2010-09-05T18:22:00.000-07:00

Oh how I complained to everyone who would listen

(and to everyone who probably didn't care to listen......)

My beans were not growing.....

but now.....

It has become the secret ingredient - above TACO meat - with chopped beans....

I have sooooooooo many beans....so far 17 one gallon ziploc bags.....I blanch and freeze on cookie sheets....

and more and more coming.....I guess the plants were growing massive root systems when it was too cold in June to grow up....

And the neighbors have already taken some....who else can I call????

I see lots of chopped bean filler in all our food this winter.....>

Honest Farming

2010-08-29T21:03:00.000-07:00

If you spray your berry plants and flowers are your berries spray free?

The BC Berry guy told us to spray chemical fungicides this year and to tell our customers we didn't spray our berries. The ultimate in misdirection in two ways. It insinuates that we are spray free altogether and neglects to mention that many sprays are systemic.

If you use chemical herbicides on your berry plants are you spray free?

I don't even know how to address this one. If one is concerned about the environment then this is an important distinction. Do chemical herbicides linger in the soil and are they in the berry plants anyways?? Well speaking for strawberries we have never sprayed herbicides as all the warnings involved tags like "Be careful about your timing and your chemical mix as you can severely affect your strawberry fields" I think the chemicals are there. Our "pesticide" guy, when he dropped off our cover crop seeds and organic fungicide was FLOORED at how great our fields looked. He repeated more than once "YOu're doing this organically??"

If you use chemical fertilizer can you claim that your veggies are organic?

We used to think fertilizer was food for the plants and concentrated natural compounds the plants used. Kind of true. Chemical fertilizer was the last change we made to become more organic. As we evolved we learned more and more about the fossil fuel use, our carbon footprint, building the soil, the harm concentrated chemicals can cause....the list is endless. We did not claim to be organic until we stopped using chemical fertilizers....we still have them but are trying to give them away.....All our friends are greenies!!!! There are farms that are claiming organic that are still using chemical fertilizers.....

If you grow "local" tomatoes in a greenhouse hydroponically are your tomatoes quality?

The workers have to wear gowns and masks to mix chemicals to feed the hydroponic system. Tomatoes grown in sawdust. Yum. Have at em......I'd rather little boy pee thankyouverymuch!

If you consider all sprays "organic" as they are made from organic chemical compounds are you lying?

Yes we have a farmer friend who has told people to their face he is organic. That he uses only organic sprays. He is SO FAR from organic it is almost funny.......

If you raise animals and give them naturopathic remedies (some not even recommended for human consumption) can you claim they are organic?

I don't know how to address this one.....

One must really really question the farmer to get the real answer.....

My funny old friend....

2010-08-14T21:20:00.000-07:00

I'm so sad tonight, very very sad.

As I stood and watered my as yet unplanted grape plants I thought of the funny little man who came to our farm 2 summers ago to buy our strawberries. He came because he read we were now "spray free" and he wanted our product.

He found we also had pickling cukes and he came back.

And then we couldn't get rid of him.

Mr. Ernie Scarbossa. A man with a life long love affair with food, gardening, cooking and preserving. A man who wanted to teach us all he knew as if he knew. He brought me his strawberry wine....truly scrumptious. He swore it was only possible because we were spray free. He brought me his bread and butter pickles. Instant love on my part. It is now part of my pickle season routine. His recipe. He brought pickles, zuchinni relish, anti pasto, garlic bread (never never had better....and he told me his secret - my lips are sealed - for now), chicken cacciatorie, red wine, cucumber relish....and he had so much knowledge to share. He had my mum and I up to his place to show us how to make his zuchinni relish and would barely let us do anything. He was very precise in how he cuts, brines, sterlizes and cans. He brings in California grapes every year and helped us start our own wine in the fall. He showed us how to put gouda cheese into the wine dregs and make some undescribably good cheese.....He gave us pointers in our garden and with our garlic. I entered some of his pickles in the fall fair; he won.

He has gardened his whole life and hated chemicals. He swore to me that one year his garden didn't grow because the compost he was given had herbicides in it....

He grew up and lived alone near us in the tiny town of Cumberland but recently moved because the strata wouldn't let him build a canning storage hut and wanted him to put away some of his tomatoes, rosemary and grapes from his front steps. He is 78 years old and never married.

Such a funny little man. So much knowledge to impart and sometimes so, dare I say it, annoying. We have a Scarbossa-ism in our house. We would say something like, "Do you think we should make some pickles?" And he'd say, "No! No! Let's make some pickles" And go into a long description of what we should do, how and when. Now when we are goofing around use his "No! No!......." - a positive negative....

He gave me some grape plants in the fall and I still hadn't planted them when he came to get his strawberries this year. (To my horror!)

He said he would be back on the first overcast day and we would plant them together.

He didn't come, I did wonder.

Today a mutual friend came with some very sad news....

He had an aneurysm between his knee and foot and had his lower let amputated. He was recovering nicely and with his positive outlook was looking forward to getting on his foot again. And then the superbug hit him. He is now lying in isolation in the Nanaimo Hospital fighting this antibiotic resistant bug that the HOSPITAL gave him. I am so scared that the outlook is not good. I am so angry.

Here are the pharmaceutical companies that he avoided his whole life coming to bite HIM in the butt. The feedlot animals being over medicated creating bugs that are going to be the death of us. So far they only take on the weak.

When is power, profit and the almighty dollar no longer going to be the motivation for government policy?

The sentence itself is an oxymoron. It's kind of like trying to think about where the universe ends...

Cheers Ernie, I am thinking of you - I hope you feel my love.

Education!

2010-08-11T11:11:00.001-07:00

Check out this!

My Geese Know....

2010-08-07T16:50:00.000-07:00

Where their food comes from.....

The local bread outlet gets rid of excess....to farmers. It's sickening really the waste bread we pick up for our livestock. Some of it is not even outdated.....We signed a waiver....We are NOT allowed to eat or sell the bread we pick up it is strictly for the animals....

The organic bread goes to the geese! It has selenium in it, which is missing in our soil....The geese are not stupid, they know what's in those bags, they were pulling it out of the back of the truck!

Is this not the ultimate irony....We are trying to eat from the land and the animals are eating our throwawy waste....And I don't even want to think about all the plastic bags we are dealing with.....and the multiprocesses, packaging and fossil fuels that went into producing the bread...

What is wrong with our society people?!

Brewing Tea

2010-08-07T16:33:00.000-07:00

To the untrained eye this might not look like much....

I see gold....green gold....
Maybe it's more recognizable on straw.....hint...it's from the rear end of a chicken!
Green green gold.... the horse equivalent
This "tea" is brewed from horse manure. Composted horse manure!

(Hubby picked up a few loads last week.)

And this "tea" is brewed with chicken poop!

My poor garden is just so sad this year, partly the weather but part of the problem in my garden this year is fertility. That is a lack of nutrients and compost. We ran out of time in the spring and didn't get much on and used strictly organic slow release fertilizer which would be great in addition to other amendments....

So what is the quick garden food fix??

Research!

Manure Tea!

So I head out to the chicken house and grab a bunch of poop/straw, I pick up the poop that is EVERYWHERE (a whole nother blog post) and dump it into a large plastic container. I've tried to re invent the wheel and didn't bother with the burlap sack or pillow case that most websites recommend the manure is put into....I just threw the poo in, added a scoop of soil (micro organisms), and filled the pails and containers with water.....(Let the water off gas overnight before adding poop if you're on city water!)

Stir often, I probably stir it up to 5x a day. I've read a fish tank bubbler works wonders....or a sock with a rock tied to a string to sploosh up and down.....I find I can lift the straw up and out and sploosh it back in making lotsa bubbles....oxygen is important!!

Chicken manure tea should brew for 3-6 weeks...But the Horse Poop Tea brews fast, like the next day fast........

So I scoop out a bit of the liquid without the chunks....

Pour my liquid green gold into the watering can. Do you know how hard it was to take this picture and pour at the same time??? THAT'S why it's focused on my fingernail.... I still like the photo though!

Dilute with water down to a "tea" colour.....

And water very very carefully (no splashing!) I watered my brocolli, caulis, peppers, and squash.My eggplants already look different, and YES I left some tea free to see if there was a difference.
A quick easy environmentally friendly "mircle" grow food!

I plan to do my rhubarb this week.

I have great plans for my garden next year....

Tongue Tied Tuesday!

2010-08-03T14:27:00.000-07:00

My kids know.....

2010-08-02T20:37:00.000-07:00

**warning some photos a bit graphic**

Where their food comes from.....

I've written about 'fresh from the field bacon' well about a turkey???

We had a turkey with structural defects....He couldn't walk very well and as he gained weight it became harder and harder for him to move.... It became hard to watch so we had to do the deed...

We had lots of interested bystanders.....

We had lots of helpers.....

and intensely curious kids....

who checked out all aspects of the poor turkey.....
like tendons and plyers and toes that move!

and legs...

tongues and eyelids and well I won't show the rest of the photos.....

think brains.....

But the end result, well, nothing like a strawberry fed free range turkey!!!

A Whole New Appreciation....

2010-08-01T23:25:00.000-07:00

Looks pretty cool....lets give it a try!

A neighbor down the road has 5 norwegian work horses and asked if she could put them to work......!

One horse got to eat and the other work..

Everyone tried to pretend they didn't want to go first........

The first try was along the edge of the fields....Not so easy!!

Then we moved to the ploughed field that's sprouting weeds.

A hot and dusty job.....and tiring for all involved...including the horses

Even the woofs had a go!

And of course my boy wanted to try.....I guess when we talk about pioneers he'll have whole different appreciation for what they went through.

When everyone and everything had had enough (it was HOT!) oh about 20 minutes and four circles around the field later.....

She hooked them up for a nice carriage ride home....

And I couldn't resist adding this shot of the barn (ready for a paint job.....)

So how in the heck did they break sod on the prairie all day long?

And I promise not to complain about folding my mountain of clothes that I didn't have to handwash in a creek......

Finally Some Veggies!

2010-07-31T23:32:00.000-07:00

Last year I had so much to harvest I went a little crackers....This year I planted less and now I'm paying - wishing for last year. We had a long cool spring which slowed everything down. These are my first zukes....

My squash plants last year looked like a jungle and we just finished the last few. The chickens and pigs had some, my friends had some and the compost pile had some - It's hard to finish more than 350 squash in one winter!!!! They are starting to come this year, but it will not be as bountiful as last year!

My eggplants have barely grown since I planted them and have just started flowering. I doubt I'll have any....

Ditto for the peppers....but my fingers are crossed!

Now salad greens I can grow, and I love taking pictures of them. MMMMM Salad! I've lost count of the number of plantings I've done....

Woo hoo Cauliflower! One from our second planting and the third planting is in already!

Bush beans are flowering....my pole beans are pitiful!

My fava/broad beans...loaded. The tall ones are the "rogue" seeds the rest are dwarf....(My pole beans usually cover and grow over the orange fence in behind......mensch!!)

Snow peas, snap peas and pod peas are all starting to kick in. I have second and third plantings on the go - I love peas! So do my kids - haven't had any in the house yet!!!

Vampires Be Gone!

2010-07-30T21:21:00.000-07:00

Last fall we had some wonderful french woofs who helped us build raised beds in our garden and plant garlic....

Lots and lots of garlic.....We've planted garlic before but always in the spring and not much...

And we always ran out before the summer ends.....

Not this year! And in a true Circle of life sort of moment the french woofs came back to visit before heading back to france.....JUST in time to harvest the garlic they helped plant!

We took the drip off more than a week ago, but found the soil surprisingly wet.

We decided to leave it on the cart for the night to dry before brushing the dirt off...!!!!!

This is about 1/4 of the garlic....er.....methinks I've morphed into my mother....we have enough garlic for the entire Comox Valley!

Is your mouth watering???? Mine is and I've had a big dinner!

Today we brushed off the dirt from yesterday's harvest, braided them and hung them in the carport.....and then harvested two more carts full!!!! (And there's still more!)

Truly a thing of beauty....

We got us some turkeys!

2010-07-29T21:54:00.000-07:00

They are free range now and loving it.

They sit around me as I watch the kids in the irrigation pond....And peck at my hat!!! Turkey pecks are BIG!

They are certainly funny looking fellas!

Can someone explain please what the evolutionary equivalent of a worm hanging over your beak is useful for - Some are over an inch long now!!!

Moving Day!

2010-07-28T21:41:00.000-07:00

Time to move the pigs off the cover crop field onto the 3rd year strawberries....

Unhook the electric fence, take down the poles....and lead the hungry pigs to their new field...

Once the fence was down the pigs had a different idea. 21 pigs ran in 21 directions with 4 woofs and 2 farmers chasing......

Thomas our french woof is the pig whisperer....but even he couldnt get them to follow him.....they had ideas of their own.....21 of them!

Eunmi, the reluctant korean....slightly scared but trying her best to herd the pigs OUT of our new plantings (loaded with ripe strawberries....)

Eventually I had to put the camera down and help!

We gave up trying to get them to the new field, got the new fence up and then worked as a team to get the pigs where we wanted them....amazing what a little organization can do!

I missed some GREAT shots....

But here are the happy happy pigs.....nothing like a pig eating a strawberry fresh from the field!

Whew that was exhausting! Gave those darn farmers a good run for their money eh

Robots

2010-07-27T21:06:00.000-07:00

So last night as I struggled to get 3 high energy boys into their jammies and out to the tent where they were sleeping for the night, I had a "out of the mouth of babe's moment"
I must have said to Sawyer on 3 separate occasions as I got teeth brushed, laundry on, jammies on etc. "get your jammies on" and finally I went out to the tent and brought him back into the house to get his jammies on. I was tired (party here on Saturday night) and grumpy and lectured at him (I know I know lecturing doesn't work) "Man, just for once I'd like to say 'Get your jammies on' and you would run and get your jammies on...." and he looked at me with his little pixie face and twinkling blue eyes and said, "Mummy, then I'd have to be a robot. Do you want a robot?"
Quite frankly I don't. I want my Sawyer. And he reminded me I'm trying to encourage them to live fully and freely. No I don't want a robot. Thanx bud.

My tomatoes!

2010-07-26T00:04:00.001-07:00

Here's a shot looking into the greenhouse this week. When we first moved on to the farm (2006) we didn't use the greenhouse.....Then a friend brought us some homegrown tomatoes YUM - there is no comparison in the flavour between a store bought and a homegrown tomato - and ours in the garden got the blight (It can be quite rainy here in August/September).....So I asked my mum if we could grow a couple of plants in the greenhouse.....Apparently my idea of a couple and her idea of a couple are a mite bit different....

Below: A shot of a INdeterminate or Vining variety strung up. I have to remove the "suckers"

Same plant below with 2 "suckers" removed from where the leaf joins the stem.....(NOTE: These suckers can be rooted early in the season for extra plants.....)

A new variety we're trying out "Tomacchio" apparently super sweet tomatoes that are great for sun drying or dehydrating....I haven't had one yet - my kids get to them - hard to be mad....Darn the kids ate my tomatoes!

A shot of my determinate or bush varieties of ROMA tomatoes.....they are my favourite type! Awesome salsa, awesome sauce, awesome flavour! I tie up their cages usually in more than one spot as they eventually fall over with the weight of their fruit....

At a certain point in the summer I prune the bush varieties - I cut out extra leaves and new flowers....enough is enough!!! I did it after this photo was taken....

And I have a monster beefsteak coming.....

An "Early Girl" looking great!

My grandfather was a horticulturist and created his own f1 varieties...His cherry tomatoes were amazing - my kids still talk about them (He died at 99 3 years ago!). He kept tomatoes all winter inside and had early tomatoes each spring until his late 90s, yes LATE 90s!!!! My mum has tomatoes and is now busy teaching me......

I never think we'll have enough and come September I have to phone friends and beg them to take tomatoes off my hands.....

The photo above was taken after I pruned the plants back. I took 2 totes of leaves out of the greenhouse! The vining tomatoes I chopped half of the bottom 2 or 3 leaves off and I did a lot of thinning in my bush varieties - airflow and light into the middle is my goal....Can you see a difference between the photo above and the first photo of the post?

A shot of the de-suckered plant with it's bottom leaves trimmed....(And can you see the chickweed growing in the ground behind. We ate a lot early this season in our salad!)

And above is what happens when you think a Vining or indeterminate plant is a roma when you plant it.......Lots of huge branches with fruit everywhere lying on the ground....It took me a long time to tie this one up.

We have the greenhouse on drip irrigation, fertilize with 8-4-4 organic fertilizer, bone meal and fish compost. Little boy pee diluted 10:1 is a great amendment as well.....We plan to winter our layers in this greenhouse with access to outside (back their henhouse in under cover for the winter) ...which should make for some rich soil!

I read last year somewhere that at a certain point all the leaves are taken off the plants to promote ripening....I may try it this year....

I bought a few "heirloom" varieties and except for the "Green Zebra" they are not growing or producing well.....The right side of the greenhouse is mostly heirlooms......

I'm hoping to finish last years tomatoes before these ones ripen :)

Hope this helps someone out there......

I know I have boys when.....

2010-07-25T22:52:00.000-07:00

Notice the marked darts......

Pond Creatures!

2010-07-25T22:39:00.000-07:00

We have a fenced irrigation pond on our property that we no longer use for irrigation.

It is 14 feet deep with steep sides and it's a little on the murky side.

It has a high level of road salts in it - too high for strawberries anyways....

Long story...read our farm story HERE

Anyways it has come to my attention that it is home to many cool creatures....

A stunning show of colour.....

About 4 or 5 species of Dragonflies................

Some token goldfish.....

Which are not good as they are NOT native so eat frog and newt babies/eggs etc.....bummer!

And this funky bug....

Some water stick bugs otherwise known as Water Scorpions

Lets look a little closer....

And closer still...

Some skaters....

Some Water Boatman....

Some snakes, Kingfishers, Blue Herons, Wild ducks, frogs and swallows that evaded film....

And some pond creatures of a different sort.....

The pond is well used by all the creatures on our farm....

Back to the Water Scorpions - They are carnivores and do bite...

So it was a good thing that my youngest carried this one across the whole pond so I could take a picture!

Monsanto Magic

2010-07-21T20:49:00.000-07:00

Today we held an Open House on our farm as part of the 30 day Eat Local Food Challenge
We had a steady stream families show up to see the farm animals, pick strawberries and, best of all, run through the farm sized sprinklers.
The local radio station set up its live broadcast by the Green Team.
Of course Don and I sat with Lynn around her table while people arrived for berry picking, sprinkler fun, animal visiting and tractor climbing. The conversation revolved around our farm eating local and of course pesticide use.
Monsanto was mentionned.
She knows all about Monsanto....and her story made my guts churn.
She grew up in the 70s in Saskatchewan in a group of 35 homes around a park. One park of seven that was part of some field tests. Field tests for weed controlling chemicals by - you got it - Monsanto. Once a week they were spraying and the kids were playing. Kick the can, hide and go seek, eating the white part of grass shoots, daisy chains, frisbee.....
And now 21 of those 35 households have cancer. She herself is 10 years clean and 6 of her 7 siblings have battled cancer as well. Most of the cancers are clustered in the last 10 years...
A very very scarey story.
The very company that developed Agent Orange produces one of the worlds most popular herbicides, GMO seeds and is trying to patent a gene in a pig. Is that not a sentence that should make everyone sit up and pay attention to what is happening to our food?

Must have been a full moon.....

2010-07-20T22:38:00.000-07:00

WereStrawolf....

And YES that IS a strawberry!

I've sliced it in half and planted it.......we'll see what happens....

Turkey Lurkeys....

2010-07-19T22:27:00.000-07:00

Um, no guys I am NOT your mother and you can NOT come inside. And please DON'T cr@p on my front step......
They have been in a PVC pen on our front lawn (URGH, don't ask!) during strawberry season.....and then their door blew down....and they escaped. They seemed to really like our front deck, picnic table and family area......Not a great option REALLY. So we moved them to a grassy place away from the house. Their fence is more a boundary than a fence, they can walk through it if they try.
They came home a couple of times, they missed us! Apparently they like it there now - we haven't seen them in a couple of days.....
Today I saw a couple of them in the strawberry patch. Not long now until they are turkeys without borders!

Strawberry Season almost over!

2010-07-17T22:23:00.000-07:00

My 4 year old with his beautiful berries.....One day he sat in a row and picked 8 pounds...all I could see was his hat and a trail of slug bitten berries in the aisle behind him. I sold his berries. I sold the berries above too....
When the picking is good here it's really good! However our yields were down about 25%
Mother nature needs a good whupping! How dare she frost us then rain the ENTIRE bloom period????

The Pacific Northwest berry report says as much....lower yields, smaller berries and a bumper crop in.....

Yep, that was what I did while supervising the field....
I picked up slugs. Gallons of them. Happy happy ducks. Efficient conversion of slugs ----> fertilizer
I left these jugs in the shop behind my cashier (who also happens to be neighbor lady)......and went back in after awhile and yelled
"I TOLD YOU to not let them get out".....
She doesn't like slugs.
She quit.
I mean I fired her.
I mean we had a good laugh.....
I was directed by my employee to get them the heck out of the shop before I took the picture or I'd get the whupping!

Hmmmmm

2010-07-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

Is Mother Nature sticking her......nah.....

Happy pigs....

2010-07-12T22:18:00.000-07:00

See all the piggies in the distance.....and the yummy berries in the foreground....

Look a little closer, yummy yummy berries.....

Now look closer at the pigs, they are not interested in the least.....

No wonder we don't have any problems selling our pork!

Happy pigs sleep 80% of the time, strawberry fed happy piggs sleep more!

Weeder Geese update...

2010-07-09T21:32:00.000-07:00

Their PVC pen is the background. The door has been open most days for them to walk around....

It's been too darn hot and they like to hang in their pen - comfort zone thing I guess - most of their day is spent sitting in their water....
I still take them a couple of buckets of weeds a day harvested from this field....

They liked the sprinklers though, and boy do they need to eat some weeds! It looks like we're growing strawberries with our weeds!

With the extreme heat now (for us 30s is extreme heat) we've walked them down the fenced irrigation pond and left them and the quack quacks there....
Update soon on that one....

Bloomin' Summer!

2010-07-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

Swarm!

2010-07-09T20:52:00.000-07:00

A beautiful HOT day, and some stragglers left in the heat at noon picking strawberries....

The hardcore pickers were getting their winter smoothie berries....You many recognize this field, the geese were on it in March....
And a buzzing tornado passed overhead.....and landed in the willow tree next to the upper field....s
Honey bees! We called a beekeeper friend but they left before he made it over.
At this point "scout" bees are out looking for a better place to go.....
Lucky one of our pickers was a bee man...
Very cool!

What the heck?????

2010-06-27T21:37:00.000-07:00

Can't find this one in my BC Bug book, or online....
Found in the compost....
And WHAT are the thingy's on it's legs...babies? mites?

Strawberry fun....

2010-06-27T21:21:00.000-07:00

So what do three boys find to do during strawberry season?

Make dehydrated strawberries on the roof of the farm truck!

We had some dried strawberries this past winter in a granola that inspired them....
I've offered my dehydrator....but they are determined to do it their way.....

Don't ask what the clam was there for.....

More photos I should have taken.....oyster and clam picking!
Dehydrator is still available...

August made strawberry juice today with the lemon squeezer....I was too tired to take photos but it was PRICELESS andI should have!!! ....Can you say STRAWBERRY JUICE EVERYWHERE????? Including the floor, drawers, butter, and counter covered...which reminds me I have to freeze it - August wants it for the winter....go figure.
Strawberries strawberries everywhere......

Cool Moth

2010-06-21T23:20:00.000-07:00

The boys found a super cool moth....

Pretty non descript walking around and perfect colors for walking on tree trunks and decks that need painting.....

Until it is threatened......

SCAREY eyes!!!

Of course I had to include this shot ;)

Pretty cool hands on example of natural selection in nature.....

Saving our bacon.....

2010-06-20T22:14:00.000-07:00

It became apparent that one of our pigs had an injury that it would not recover from.....he was still up and about and eating but things didn't look good.....

Who ya gonna call?????

Crazy Granma Pam of course......Never one to shy away from a dirty task she and hubby got right to it.....

Selecting the correct tools....

We fed the pigs and she did the deed. The eating pigs didn't even glance at their fallen comrade.....

Who was carried away quickly....we don't want to traumatize anyone...or anything.....

And set to drain on the convenient lift.....

Three very interested helpers .... asking over and over "Will the ribs be good? Will the ribs be good?"

And the anatomy lesson was pretty cool too.

Now to get the halved pig out of our strawberry cooler......before the season starts this week.....

ACK!

Faces of Today!

2010-06-17T22:32:00.000-07:00

The Great Experiment......

2010-06-16T22:53:00.000-07:00

Farmer Don finishing up our new goose tractor......designed to fit over our newly planted strawberry rows.....
which are in the field behind the goose tractor

Famer Don and the geese having a conversation, they are quite vocal and answer when spoken to.....
The geese chosen for the job...you can see where I've hoed...and the rampant weed growth elsewhere....
We've got our fingers crossed.....

Two chinese weeder geese attacking the weeds.....BUT also trampling new strawberry plants.
Result: Fail
Although I was hoping we could put them on our new fields,
they trample the plants and we need these plants to send out mega runners (daughter plants)
We have read that they do better on established fields.
Back to the drawing board.
We have to figure out an easy way to keep them where we want them to weed.
To get them back to their buddies behind the house
on the other side of the driveway we opened the gate and
they followed me home to the other 5 geese and 6 ducks....it was pretty cute.....
a happy reunion was had and again i went out with a bucket collecting SLUGS and weeds
for my babies...

Turkey Lurkey

2010-06-16T22:01:00.000-07:00

Please please let me out of the barn, I promise I won't find a way to die, PLLLEEEEEEAAAASE!

Hay guys, I'm pretty sure that big grey one is not one of us, whatdyathink???

No sunhat? Great, I went bald young and now I have to burn my scalp too!

In desperation to get them out of the barn we fenced our lawn and got them out - with a heat light at night in the shed. It is still quite cold and they need it to be 20 C or 70 F........We have read in more than one place that turkeys look for a way to die until they are about 8 weeks when the suddenly become very hardy. Ours are 7 weeks old now.......Luckily the sun has come out every day since they've been out. We have a moveable pen built now so when we move them off our lawn (soon I hope) we will move the pen/turkey tractor around daily and then get them back to the house for night.....

They chirp and chirrup all day, and are quite funny in their gawky run arounds.....I'm not sure I'll be able to eat one!

Many Faces.....

2010-06-14T20:59:00.000-07:00

Dirt!

2010-06-13T21:53:00.000-07:00

We watched Dirt last night. Wow. I feel like standing on the tallest building and shouting to everyone to take note, listen, act, make a difference. Why don't people see? But I understand. I wasn't ready for the message 2, 3 or 4 years ago. I evolved.
I want to write a profound post, a post that everyone reads and the lightbulb goes on, but I'm not such a writer....
Taking care of our dirt is so important.....the dirt is the basis for everything. It is the cause of wars and mass migration. When dirt dies, there is no food. Africa. The film footage we have to watch of starving people we try not to look at. The french scientist Pierre Rabhi went to the African country Berkina Faso (I'd never heard of it either) and turned a desert into farmland that supports 100,000 farmers. By taking care of the dirt, so much can be done. An informative interview HERE.
Monsanto and Monoculture destroys the dirt.
Monsanto claims that their gm seeds are the answer to world hunger but they neglect to mention the downside of their technology. Instead of diverse, sustainable farming methods monoculture crops such as canola, wheat, soybeans, corn and rice require not only the purchase of their seeds but also expensive equipement to apply the pesticides and then to harvest. (Not to mention the long term health implications of pesticide use....) They also don't address all the nutritional needs of starving peoples.....Some crops, such as GM cotton require more fertilizer than regular cotten, which led to the suicides of many bankrupt farmers in India = they were never told they had to not only buy the seeds but also extra fertilizer....

Hundreds and thousands of acres of forest are being cut down, the land farmed out and then more forest being cut down. With proper farming techniques the land could be utilized properly and forest could be saved. Why is this so hard to understand and implement?

The dirt dies with monoculture. Diversity leads to flexibility with changes in the environment from year to year. Organic and sustainable farming builds the dirt. The dirt is protected from erosion and thrives providing for us.

Why is there no labeling if GM is no big deal?

The big deal is that people may not buy GM out of principle, even if the food proves to be the same......which is debateable....

I feel so helpless when I see where the world is heading.

The movie particularly hit home for me as our farm was as described....an overfarmed, overfertilized, overpesticided monoculture with decreasing yields and increasing pestification......read our story here.

"Africa is not poor. Ethiopia alone, if properly cultivated, could feed the entire African continent." - Pierre Rabhi, Dirt! The Movie

I wasn't kidding.....

2010-06-10T22:29:00.000-07:00

When I said they were spotted, striped, black, orange and well.....

I wasn't kidding

Lucy and Dezi with their batch out in the morning....

They take the goslings all over the farm and on day 2 out and about there is still 4......

Never leave craigslist open when your 8 year old is around
... now we're getting 3 layers that lay blue eggs....

Bluebabies!

2010-06-08T23:10:00.000-07:00

Tear up the sod and two not so healthy trees.....

What on earth are we up to now? It's not like we don't have WAY too much on our plates.....or anything.... but you know, when you find established plants on craigslist for $18....you do what you gotta do...........BUY EM!!!

And then figure out where to plant em!!!

The plants are 11 years old and came with pretty good root balls....

Peat moss, composted manure and helpers.....I did research.....

This one got right in the bucket with the peat moss/manure slurry!

Wetting the peat moss is important and anytime Mom says "Play with sprayer" you gotta know everyone wants to help!

Water them in.....

Maartje a dutch girl woofing here with us loved this job! We planted all 10 and are thrilled with the thought of our own blueberries.....NEXT YEAR.....we pruned off all the fruit this year so the plants can concentrate on getting established......

After adding amendments to the hole (Peat moss and composted manure) and amendments around the plants when we set them in the ground, we turned sod upside down around the plants. We plan to add more peat moss around each plant, some irrigation hose with emitters(Blueberries are shallow rooted and weeds can kill them....) and then LOTS of bark mulch on top....A local organic blueberry farm adds 4 inches of bark mulch a year.....Our soil here is naturally ph 5 (we have to add lime to our strawberry fields) so that is perfect for the blueberries.....

My mouth is watering.....

I have high high hopes for these bluebabies!

Welcome little ones....

2010-06-08T22:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the day the goslings were due we saw some cracked eggs...

and heard peeping....

We headed out this morning and saw this.....

and watched the cuties all day.....

They love to sit and peek out....

Mom's not so happy.....

So so cute!

This could be on a card.....

We are a bit worried now that we looked at them TOO much today, hopefully tomorrow she will bring them out....I worried they need food and water....

Curlies arrived!

2010-06-07T21:41:00.000-07:00

Can you say HEAVAN??? Do these piggies look happy or what?
Check out my link on the left for the MEATRIX, and be sure to watch MEATRIX 2...
These pigs come from a farm on the mainland....sadly no tails....

And these little guys came from a farm on Gabriola.
And are they every STRONG and LOUD!!! ACK!!!!
It was my turn to move piggies, it's NOT fun, and they crap a lot.

Black, spotted, orange, striped....SO CUTE!!!

Poultry again....

2010-06-07T21:30:00.000-07:00

Poor Lucy, she has to endure us looking at her every day.
Apparently sharks and geese share some evolutionary history......
(PS One gosling is completely hatched, one is almost out, will update photos tomorrow!)

Come on fatties, out you come!
I almost fell for it "They don't WANT to come out"
Now when I open the door in the morning they all bumble out....and fly around the yard, kinda.
Think big gawky awkward person...
Of course they don't want to come out when they are first given the opportunity,
they had to get used to it....

This photo is old, they are already bigger, but it is
STILL TO DANG COLD for them to go out......
What cool birds to raise!

Gifted....

2010-06-05T21:56:00.000-07:00

So I'm sitting with friends and one particularly obnoxious friend of mine, whom I like a lot, but he is OBNOXIOUS! started ranting about the school board and what idiots they are.....I said, of course, "well take your kids out of school and then you don't have to worry about the school board" and then I got from him, "They're cutting the gifted program, my daughter needs to be challenged, and they're paying for grade 7 band and cutting gifted. My daughter needs the extra challenge blah blah blah!" (His daughter is 7) I said the same thing again. He went on. Finally I said, "Well of course if my kids were in school they'd be in the gifted program and I guess I'd be pissed off too...."
And then I told him,
Today my kids jumped on the trampoline for about 2 hours,
got gloves on and collected slugs to feed to the ducks - walking up and down strawberry rows for hours,
then they built a dam in the ditch,
found a caterpillar and more than a few ladybugs,
put said caterpillar on a leaf and floated him into the culvert and waited for the poor thing to come out the other side,
floated leaves through the culvert for quite some time (think pooh sticks)
used a pulley to pull themselves and each other up into a tall tree (Ack!),
harvested mosquito larvae and fed the tadpoles...
And that is JUST what I noticed.....
Pretty gifted kids eh?

King Corn

2010-06-03T21:57:00.000-07:00

So here we are watching King Corn again with some woofs on our farm. Along with Omnivore’s Dilemmna the message is clear. Subsidized corn makes for cheap food –from pop to hamburgers. Feeding corn to cows is bad – cows are grass eaters. Cows finished on feedlots with corn for too long become ill and have to medicated. A certain percentage of cows have abscessed livers from eating corn when they are slaughtered. YUCK. Corn is bad for cows. But to go further isn’t corn bad for humans too? Look at obesity and type 2 diabetes said to be lifestyle and diet related. Isn’t corn bad for us? Eating too much HFCS, corn, is bad for us…It is killing us and will cause the bankruptcy of the medical systems/governments. Caring for lifestyle related problems is costly. The government is subsidizing a cheap food and paying through the nose for the results. But can the system be changed? I’d like to think so but being consumer driven with big biz and big money involved - Shareholders, companies, stocks, bonds, futures, advertising, deals, …..MacDonalds, BurgerKing, KFC, Wendy’s ……death.

Ultimate IRONY!

2010-06-01T23:27:00.000-07:00

Just checked out my last post and noticed a google ad

FOR MONSANTO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (For round up ready canola!!!)

WTF!!!!! (and this is a polite blog!) #*(#&%(&#(*@&#!!!!!

I guess I'll remove MONSANTO and ROUND UP from my labels for that post.....

Infiltrators.....

UPDATE: That didn't work, I'm now removing adsense.....

ANOTHER UPDATE: I went to delete adsense and I see I made .50 for my click on that ad....now, does that mean MONSANTO is paying me??? If so, I think EVERYONE should be clicking on that ad a WHOLE BUNCHA TIMES!!!!! Off to test if I get more money if I click on that ad again!

Drive myself crazy

2010-06-01T22:46:00.000-07:00

We just watched a free documentary called FedUp! basically about the lack of labelling and hence the lack of choice we have in North America regarding gmo food but also about the spiral of effects gmo seeds have had on cultures and food systems around the world.
GMO is NOT genetic selection, where we choose the best tomato plant and keep seeds to grow next year, GMO IS fooling with DNA, and genetic pollution is unstoppable. Once there are foreign genes in a seed and food system there is NO WAY to remove them. Ask the mexicans with their native corns.....
We have been duped people.
The revolving door involving Monsanto, chemical company employees and the US government EPA and etc employees has ensured that we have no choice. (Canada does what US does EXCEPT with RGBH thank god)
The shreddies my hubby eats every morning for breakfast contains GMO (round up ready) sugar beets.
The ice cream we eat contains GMO corn (HFCS)
The canola oil we use, even if we buy organic, has probably been polluted by genetic pollution.
I am going crazy.
It's all about the mighty dollar, and guess who has it? NOT the farmer!
Thank god no rgbh here or we'd have a goat already.......
Watch the movie....

And then watch The Meatrix at the Sustainable Table...an awesome website on food, farming and sustainability.....

And then mapquest.ca the closest looney bin.....I need to go........

Now that's a.........

2010-05-31T22:00:00.000-07:00

Goose poop.....

You can always tell where they sleep because there's a mongo pile....

Doesn't stink, really, it's processed grass!

Gotta convince all my strawberry customers somehow....

Veggie Garden

2010-05-30T21:02:00.000-07:00

Onions...

Fava/Broad beans (dwarf) and beets....with salad greens interplanted...

This one will be in my tummy soon.....

Did I mention we love garlic?

More photos coming as the tomatoes are growing in the greenhouse, potatoes are up, dill is planted, peas (3 plantings), beans, carrots and parsnips are in.....

Salad Greens....and Cabbage Maggots....

2010-05-29T20:48:00.000-07:00

I love being able to make a salad from the garden....

I'm sequentially planting more carefully this year.....

Really, I'm hoping to have my own salad all winter. I refused to buy salad trucked 1500 miles to me in plastic....until I was so desperate for salad I had to....

I must do winter greens this year.....I found a new blog that mentionned chicken manure and a hot bed....I've been thinking on that all day.....I'm sure there'll be more on this at some date far in the future, like September....

So last year we planted out all our brassicas in May....

And after a couple of weeks they died....

Cabbage maggot.

My mum's solution in previous years was to.....put a MOTH BALL

under the plants when planting out.

It works.

Yep.

MOTH BALL.

YUCK!

We refused last year and lost about 2/3 of the plants. Which meant we had the right amount as my mother is slightly nuts and plants enough to feed the entire Comox Valley.....

One of my salad mix dropping....it must be a type of cabbage....And there were a basillion maggots eating its' roots.....

And in the next raised bed....a very happy brocolli. The internet is a wonderful place. Apparently if you block access with a barrier the fly doesn't lay it's eggs. (Remember my long barrier story? Same idea different bug...funny how that works) Knock on wood NOT ONE has dropped this year.

This is plastic from an old boat but inner tube plastic, felt, thick landscaping fabric all work. Cut them 5 inches square with a slit to the plant's stem.

So I hope the Comox Valley wants some brocolli this year.....

The Day of Pigs

2010-05-28T18:00:00.000-07:00

Great excitement today....the pigs arrived....

A Farmer friend brought them in from Vancouver....
They had to be carried from the truck to the pasture.....

Apparently NOT a nice job.....Piggys are STRONG!

Can you say SQUEAL???????????

The pigs too....

Still no idea of the piggy havan (heavan is NOT the right word!) he's going to.....

Finally a calm one....probably #16 of 16

Grass, Dirt, Worms, Bugs.....COOL!

After running laps they had a piggy pile nap....

They look a mite bit sunburned eh?

Hubby was not impressed with carrying the pigs and when I said there's nothing hunkier than seeing farmer guy carry pigs to pasture....he said come and hug me. I guess the pigs pee too....

Wowza!

2010-05-27T19:51:00.000-07:00

Remember that MONGO egg we had?
Well we cooked it today....

Cracked it open and out poured......another egg!!!!
The second egg was shell less with a membrane.....
I thought it was a yolk with an air bubble but August quickly clued in and shouted "An EGG IN AN EGG!!!"
I said I wanted to see one. (When we googled our "shell less eggs" we read about this kind of egg.....never thought WE'D get one though!)
We got one.....
I popped the membrane and the white of the second egg came out.
Sawyer had the priviledge of eating this egg...
He said the membrane was chewy.....

Slug Success

2010-05-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

Well I know in the past I've complained about my mother....but today she really came through for us.

She showed up with a bucket of slugs. 200 of them in fact....Why she counted I have no idea. More on this later.....

We headed out to the guck tractor. And started throwing them in.

Huh! What's this??

Can you say GOBBLE, and not the turkey kind?

WAHOO!!!

Shake and Swallow, visit the water to help, slime o rama, YUMMY!

Only 170 to eat before we run out......

Oh Say Can You Say .....Slugcess??!!

Which reminds me of a time in my young life that I remember. I was about 4 or 5 and we lived in Vancouver with a green area in front of our house. There were a lot of slugs there and I guess I must have mentionned this fact to my mom.... My mom and a friend were a bit "lit up" to say the least and they said "If you get 100 slugs we'll eat them.....shellless escargot!" So out I march (and I can remember flashes of this vividly...) and get 100 slugs in a bucket....and bring them in....My mom's version is that they slugs were crawling out everywhere....Well I guess I must have gone to bed at this point because now I only remember my mom's retelling of the story. Basically they boiled the slugs and ended up with a pot full of slime and slugs....not entirely appetizing. As the red wine was flowing they decided to BLEND the slugs and eat them on toast, and this is EXACTLY what they did. Slug Pate.

Yup that's my mother, she'll eat anything.

I have a lot more mom stories.....

Poultry Update

2010-05-25T22:16:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd do a little update on the various feathered members of our farm family....

Big guys working on newly planted strawberry field....EAT THE WEEDS!!!! Our 14 big guys are free range on the farm. I see them walking up and down aisles munching away. We have to figure out how to fence them once strawberry season starts! They have LARGE poops. As the Manitoba Farmer lady described them to me "Processed grass with a bit of icing sugar on top" She neglected to mention they are close to dog poop size! I can imagine they might turn a few customers off even though they are not stinky at all, they are seriously JUST GRASS!

Lucy is sitting on 6 eggs in her goose barn - 2 are hers and 4 we stuck in a week later (When we found a nest in the cover crop) We've got to be careful and try and remove the two eggs that are further along to hatch out in the house and let her keep the 4 later ones.....or the other way around, we haven't got that far! We're looking forward to the goslings though!

The girls are laying 12-14 eggs a day and we are still getting a large double yolker every day, we love the eggs and at this point aren't managing to accumulate any to sell, but we are saving money on purchased farm fresh eggs.....

Broilers: The inflato chickens are inflating. They are almost 4 weeks old and are pretty big now. Hubby had to modify our brooder room - we added another 4x8 sheet of flooring and gave the chickens and turkeys each a section.

We are readying an outdoor fenced area for them to roam. We're not sure how much they will roam, but the option will be there. The soil isn't so good so I'm picturing the soil being improved with copious quantities of chicken poop, cover crops being planted in between broiler batches which the next batch can then munch down.....We built the fenced area so the tractor can get in if necessary. (Not planned, the wire fencing ran out so hubby made a modification that turned out to be a tractor gate-brilliant!) Our weather is unseasonably cold and we can't let the turkeys out until it's 20 degrees out (70)....

Turkeys: They are CHARACTERS. One sits in the feeder and eats. If we leave the top gate open they are checking out how they can escape......They have a funny gobble-cheep right now and are acting like turkeys with their wings and tails. They are inquisitive and remind me of raptors on Jurrassic park - especially with the sounds they make...I bet the developer of the raptors had heard turkeys! I can only describe it as a turkey purr! WE have to figure out where to build a permanent pen/shelter for them but the nights are still a bit cold for them....

DUCKLINGS/Weeder Geese: I LOVE LOVE LOVE THEM! My guys can munch through about 5 buckets of chopped greens a day now. They chow it down! I REALLY want them to develope a liking for creeping clover, devils thumbprint and other pesky weeds.....They are not tame, but will come for me if I bend over and talk to them. They are outside all day every day now in their duck tractor which we move every two days. They seem pretty happy! I've thrown in slugs but have yet to positively see a duck down one. EAT THE DANG SLUGS!

I call it a guck tractor - goose + duck - And truly the guck they produce in one day is amazing! Hopefully our lawn grows well behind them! It's the only part of our lawn that is mowed....with all the rain we've been having getting anything mowed or ploughed is a bit of a challenge right now!

We have a "Duck house" that we put them in at night....an old coffee kiosk we bought off craigslist and converted....This will be where the ducks are trained to go at night so we can get their eggs.....but somewhere out on the range, not on the driveway in front of the barn.....We want them to be free range once strawberry season is over....We're not sure yet about the chinese geese going in at night....must explore options!

Did I mention we're behind in the strawberry farming work?

The pigs arrive the day after tomorrow......

Housthen, we have a problem!

2010-05-24T22:28:00.000-07:00

I love gathering eggs....have to fight the urge to beat the kids
into the henhouse every day.....the thrill of the find...the treasures my ladies
leave us everyday...warm and clean....

My girls love their nesting boxes.....

Imagine my surprise at this .... egg?

One poult egg, one large farm fresh and the monster!!!
The world record is only .9 cm (just under half an inch) longer than this beaut!
As the mother of large headed babes, I empathize with my poor hen.....

The Ant and The Spider

2010-05-22T22:20:00.000-07:00

"Mummy come see something cool......and it's not an ant!"

I have a feeling the spider is not sitting on the flower he is meant to!

(Can you see the ant?)

Can you see the ant on the other side....

What trap was this ant walking in to?

August took a BAZILLION photos of the spider.....and flowers, and strawberries, and kittens, and and and...

Ignoring ALL the signs to the contrary...

2010-05-19T21:26:00.000-07:00

Has this ever happened to you? You get something set in your mind and your brain ignores all evidence pointing or even BLARING FULL BLAST to the contrary??? LIKE ALL POSSIBLE CLUES THAT YOU HAVE YOUR DATES TOTALLY WRONG????
So we have homeschooling "Camp" this week. The boys talk about it all year and LOVE coming. The district we are registered with sets it up at a bible summer camp about 2.5 hours from our home. Kids and families of all ages registered with the district come and activities are organized every day with lots of free time and choice. There are talent shows, spelling bees, group games, movies, dancing, campfires, night games, boating, hiking you name it. It's fun. The rooms are family style dormitory.
So for the past 2 years we've gone Mon - Tues - Wed 2nd week of May, so when we get the email this year I ignore the dates and write it on our calender for Mon-Wed.
Emails come in with itineraries, I sign the boys up for the talent show, I skim emails and the boys get more and more excited. We leave Monday morning for camp leaving two woofs in charge of the farm.
We arrive to an empty camp. The boys burst out of the car with wild abandon like kangaroos set free from the zoo ready to run and hide and play in the glorious sunshine.....
Hmmmm says Don, are you sure it's today?? Kind of in a tongue in cheek kind of way....
The delayed light bulb goes on. VERY delayed lightbulb. That's me, delayed.
Oh. My. G*d!
You mean the talent show on Thursday night wasn't a typo?
The dates 19-21 NOT 17-19 mean something?
The facebook entry by their teacher-facilitator that said something along the lines of "hope the weather is good wed-thurs-fri for camp!!" I read the night before we left wasn't a mistake?
The intinerary I looked at for arrival time with the big WEDNESAY across the top was correct???
Seriously I missed a lot of obvious clues, most of which were very obvious. If you'd asked me the dates we were going I would have said 19-21 and I even told people that's when we were going, but that was MONDAY the 19th!!!
How does one's brain do this?
Sawyer wouldn't get back in the car, Holdy wailed for 45 minutes and Hubby, well, he was more than ticked. We can't afford a day off at this time of the year (farming), let alone 3 for camp.....so much to do so little little time.
The woofs tink we're nuts when we arrive home.
So many chances to catch my mistake missed....
So what have I learned....your brain can trick you.
And today, before editing this post I wrote last night, I got a Yahoo Reminder that my teacher-facilitator is coming for her "visit" today, which is actually next thursday, because I booked it in my mind for the thursday after we get home from camp (not to mention the DOCTOR and DENTIST appointments I had to reschedule.....)
LOSER
Lesson?
We are often prisoners to "cliched" mindsets even if evidence points another way, PAY ATTENTION. This can apply to a lot of life in general. Think about it.
Kids must go to school when they turn 5.
You must go to university to be successful. (I was raised this way)
Boys must have short hair.
Boys must not wear flowery purple jammies. (For the record mine do!)
Punishment makes kids learn.
My list could go on, you get the picture....

At least I could say we arrived first.

A Long Legged Visitor....

2010-05-16T20:37:00.000-07:00

Last week we had a visitor in the very tippy top of a dead tree behind our barn.....

We think he was checking out our pond.....

Which is behind the photographer.....apparently he likes the big dog fence around the pond as he has become a constant fixture there......

I hope he eats up all the non native fish farmer guy put in the pond....I'd rather have frogs and newts!

When I finally get a photo I'll add it!

Salad Bar

2010-05-12T22:05:00.000-07:00

Any guesses to what this crazy farmer lady is doing?

Do you see....oh....about 10 or 12 types of weeds......?

Chopped baby goose small?

Can you say happy geese (and ducks)? They go through a bucket a day!

They'll go for the weeds over the grain hands down.

My research tells me that it is very important to train them to eat what you want them too. They live for a long time and a well trained chinese weeding goose can be a very useful tool on a farm. We have lots of weeds.....I'm hoping this cuts down on some of our labour....

The Goslings Arrived!

2010-05-11T20:46:00.000-07:00

And this cutie patootie is not ours....a "tufted" goose, it had a lot of character. Doesn't he remind you of a toe headed kid in "Little Rascals"? I wanted to kidnap it and keep it he was so darn cute....but when you order with others to share costs I guess you have to hand over their babies.....I have hopes that we can trade goslings next year.....

Our chinese weeder geese.....small yellow guys....

They LOVE us. My sister's hubby Greg picked the geese up in Sumas,WA for us. We thought all the paperwork was in order. The phone call came.....desperate....but Greg being the diplomat that he is managed to get the info we needed so we could get the info he needed to get the darn geese into Canada! Who knew!?

Their kids socialized these geese VERY well. (I'm sure there's some snappy quip I can make about socialization here, but it alludes me.....EEEEEEAnyways......) The geese yak up a storm when we come into the brooding room and outside they run after us in the pen (which is WONDERFUL!). They were outside for ages today LOVING it! They even had a bath!

The brown guys are the ducks, who love the geese. Slugs and Weeds begone!

See the hunky farmer guy who was NOT going to order goslings from the states.....He loves them too....

I hope they're still neat when they're big!

Snappy socialization comment: Apparently socializing with not only your peers but those of other species, ages and sizes makes for some super nice geese. That tranlates pretty nicely for homeschoolers, eh?!

Important Workers!

2010-05-10T20:45:00.000-07:00

Everyone has heard of the collapse of the honey bee colonies in North America.

Mites, viruses and unknown variables have led to the collapse of many honey bee colonies. Somesay it is the rampant use of pesticides that is partly to blame. Pesticide use is up 1ox and yet pest damages and losses have doubled.....in the last 10 years. (Food, Inc.)

This little fly like bee will hopefully be the future of pollination. We have many many of them in our greenhouse. We drilled holes in our beams, we have logs with holes drilled, we have wood with holes drilled in them. We love mason bees. We have heard they do 20,000x the work of honey bees.....

We asked a friend to make some smaller mason bee hives and we plan to sell them and give him the money.

See this little guy?

And this mega mason bee condo?

And these cocoons??

We had a local mason bee expert visit us tonight.....

She brought us a gift.

Not only the gift of knowledge but the gift of some new mason bees.

In the time of a short visit Monica imparted invaluable information.

Our holes and hives are not sustainable. Can you see the difference between ours and hers?

There are mites on every flower that are spread by infected bees,

the bees bring them home and continue the cycle.

Monica's hives can be opened and the bees can be "harvested". Then she washes the MITES out of the cocoons. Over and over and over. Thousands of mites.

Mason bees have mites, especially when they reuse their holes.

Sometimes they have so many mites on them by the time they get out of their holes they can't even fly....and the best holes are 6 inches deep 5/16 inch drill bit.

We need to get to work and make some new hives I guess....

Tomorrow I'm going to try and get an observatory....apparently the mason bee life cycle is fascinating to watch.

Which brings me to this:

When we got our lawn chairs out of the shop, next to the mason bees.....l

We found what I thought was cat puke all over them....

Look closely though at the little white egg......

And then I figured out it was a mason bee eggs sitting on a piles of pollen....the mason bee made its nest in the folded up lawn chairs.....And when I unfolded them I wrecked the nest.

Can you say Royal Jelly?

August tried some......spit it out....

We might try and save them tomorrow....

Spring means babies....

2010-05-09T20:40:00.000-07:00

Turkey!

Chickens!

Chinese goslings!

Kittens!

Future weeder of ASH Berry Farm!

Oh to have the time to lie in the sun......

Nature at work!

More baby ducks!

Out they go!!!

2010-05-03T20:32:00.000-07:00

Don and I always work best under pressure and after the fact. Why do we try and reinvent the wheel? There is a reason that people have their brooders and chicks in the barns and sheds...what were we thinking having them in the house? The smell. The noise. The smell. The disintegrating box. The smell. ARCK
We happen to have a barn. In the barn is an insulated "cold room" probably used by previous farmer guy to store bulbs and plants. We don't have much in it. There's no windows and the door to outside is blocked. Access is from inside the barn.

We put an electric radiator heater in the room this morning.

So we clear a space, put down a piece of plywood, build a wall, put up bracing for lights...and out went the birds!

Farmer Don making sure the babes don't have "pasty butt" - He checked a few of them.

Comfy looking babes....

When they sprawl out to sleep you have to double check that they aren't sprawled out dead!!

The darkheaded guy above just to the left is a turkey! We will have to separate them in a couple of days as turkey's need different food....more protein...!

No that white thing is NOT food and NOT a place to sit!

One flew over the cuckoo's.....

2010-05-01T21:18:00.000-07:00

Our farm has now been taken over by birds and I'm slowly and surely going quackers.....

The geese are now free ranging - they just eat so much grass so fast the fencing was too much trouble to keep moving, so we just opened it up and let em go......and they do a route thru the farm every day. To say that it is picturesque to look up from weeding to see a gaggle of geese murmuring to each other 10 rows away is an understatement. They are such characters. Again, every 12 minutes some processed grass is deposited by 14 geese. Everywhere. So far not near the house. Processed grass is not smelly, and disperses fairly quickly......but still at almost the size of a dog poop it's a pretty incredible amount of fertilizer.

The best is the 3 eggs a day. THREE VERY BIG EGGS!!!
The ladies are laying a dozen a day right now! We still have our double lady and they very neatly lay most of the eggs by about 11. I did build 4 more nesting boxes out of large round plant pots....jammed together side by side and screwed onto a board with another across the front so the eggs don't roll out. Works well. The ladies love them!

They run to us whenever we get in their pen and are quite game for a feather stroke.

From a distance we see them running up and down their fence frantically after whatever the other has found....And they love squash. Luckily we have about a few acorns left over from last year that are not quite edible anymore....but are fine to cut in half and feed the ladies! (The spaghetti, sweet mama and stripetti are still rocking yummy! I'm surprised I'm not orange from all the squash we've been eating!)
Ducks: Arrived. Grow fast. Stink. Messy. Cute cute cute. Characters. A lot of cool information can be found HERE HOWEVER mine are outside tonight and they are only 10 days old. I couldn't bear it any more.....They go thru their water like crazy. Hubby on day 2 built a 2x4 frame with chicken wire on it to fit on the floor of their brooder for them to sit on up over the floor...and put a cover on their water so they couldn't jump in and a cover on their feeder so they couldn't sleep on it and crap in it.......The mucky sludgy poopy mess everyday underneath them was incredible.....They've been outside now for 4 days during the day and this is their first night out.....in a makeshift pen in the greenhouse, with a light on them, straw underneath them and I hope they will be ok.....As for feeding them a finely chopped slurry of veggies (see above noted webpage)....HA! I find and pull up all the weeds I want them to be responsible for when they are let loose on the fields....watercress, chickweed, clover, shephards purse....they are developing the exact palate their mama wants them to - no unschooling for those suckers. EAT AS I SAY. Now I just hope they didn't let that BIG BLACK SLUG get away today I put in with them......August and I have designed and tried to build (read hubby put together) the floor for the duck house. Ok, when hubby told me I had to cut 45 degree angles for bracing I was like, well you're going to have to show me the trick for that I don't know how. Did you know that the skill saw blade moves to a 45 degree angle? doh.

Tomorrow I hope to find time to work on the walls......Did I mention hubby is beta testing NEED FOR SPEED this weekend......
Earlier this week in desperation I was going to try and set up an outdoor run for them with some of the pig fencing, however it's not QUITE warm enough (it is in the greenhouse....) My mum's ex came over (I called and practically begged...) and built the most amazing duck tractor in about an hour. I should patent it. It's hexagonal, with pvc piping and joins, about 4 feet high, 14 foot diameter with 1 inch chicken wiring attached with those pull plasticky tie thingys, don't know what they are called. Amazing. Will for sure be putting ducks and goslings in there until after strawberry season.......and moving it around.......

Sad postscript: The ducks made it through the night problem free (a quick google search told me I wasn't being cruel) but sadly our dang dogs had at them today. So much for being poultry trained. They systematically in about 5 minutes flat annilated them. I had JUST moved the pen to a clean spot in the greenhouse, removed the night shelter roof, changed their water, fed them weeds and gone inside. Not minutes later saw the dog......See farmer lady run screaming from the house in her slippers.....I was so upset. Devastated. Sad. Stupid stupid me for not making a better temporary pen. I have already ordered more ducklings, but feel terrible. Lesson learned (the hard way) Zapper collars go back on. (NOTE: The ducks were not in the pen in the picture above, but just a make do pen with short sides...)

I can hear a lot of peeping, which would be the 52 chicks and 26 turkeys in two brooders in my front hall. Arrived yesterday. Incessant peeping. Very fluffy and cute. All meat birds. Stink! We hope to figure out a way to move them out of the house tomorrow. They have to have access to heat at 95 degrees which is quite hot......there are infra red lights on them at all times.

Have to build a couple of sheds for them too.....
Our goslings arrive in a week.....
Quack! Quack! QUAAAAAAAACK!!!!!!!!

Want vs. Need

2010-04-30T22:21:00.000-07:00

As I lie in bed at night with the boys to calm them to get to sleep, a constant battle emerges....whose turn is it to have mummy hug them, who gets to put their arms and legs where and whose back gets rubbed, what song gets sung.....this is supposed to be relaxing guys.....I digress. I put my glasses in my pocket and inevitably a leg is thrown over me and I say AGAIN (you'd think I'd learn) If you break my glasses it will be very expensive to replace them, pleeeeeeease move your leg.....
August: So, mummy, do you think that the little bit of plastic and metal in your glasses is worth all that money?
Me: Nope.
August: So, mummy, why do they cost so much then?
Me: I go off on a tangent about monopolies and stuff and obviously I was being asked a rhetorical question because this came out next.....
August: So, because you NEED the glasses they can charge more and other things you NEED cost more, but plastic crap toys made in China that you WANT but don't NEED are cheap so you'll buy them anyways......what do you think mummy?
The wisdom of children.

A warm spring day.....

2010-04-19T23:06:00.000-07:00

Woo Hoo Spring is Official Here! The ASH Berry Boys having their yearly mud bath!!

Poultry farm?

2010-04-18T22:20:00.000-07:00

What would you do if you had a slug problem? Like a serious slug problem. Last summer we had a problem with botrytis (mold) on our strawberries. The slugs were part of the reason...they travel from berry to berry sampling, sampling and spreading....
So today after discovering that my peas-that-have-not-germinated have and are leafless, we brought out the slug bait (Certified organic and safe (?!)...)......which works in a personal veggie garden, but on 3 acres of strawberries????
Truly sustainable and organic solution??
Ducks.
Hubby got online....usedcomoxvalley or something like that.....
We've got 6 khaki campbell ducklings arriving next week. I hope they're hungry!
Ducks love slugs. I hope they love LOTS of slugs. And I mean LOTS - at dusk the slugs just came out of everywhere, it's freaky....One staff strawberry picker we had carried each and every one off the field and saved them, others picked them into their "moldy" berry buckets and fed them to the pigs, slugs were a serious issue last year.
I chatted with the farmer providing us with the ducklings (ever tried to get OFF the phone when you're chatting with a farmer??) and I got an earful....I asked if they ate as many slugs as Indian Runners....he said "Well I don't have a slug problem..." I guess my question is answered then. He went on to say that they lay an egg a day every day of the year. His are free range but sleep in a small shed. They lay their eggs before he lets them out in the morning at 9. He herds them in at night and locks them in to prevent loss to predators.
Since my dogs appear to be chicken friendly now, (Thank you Joel Salatin, zapping collar appears to have worked after 2 training sessions.....) what's a few more birds running around the farm.....
Did I mention hubby ordered 50 broilers and 25 turkeys....arriving on the 30th....
We have..I mean he has to get building, we have some poultry sheds to get up and runnning...He's blaming me of course. I don't remember ordering them.....

On a side note we just moved the geese and chickens and it appears to stress them out. We aren't getting the geese eggs we were for awhile and the chickens laid 3 shellless eggs! One survived the fall and we ate it! Apparently they don't like being shut in and hauled to their new pasture......Research tells us it can also be put down to new layers and growing pains, but our best day was 9 eggs and today we only got 5, yesterday 3 and 3 shellless........so we think there is a link.
The ladies' new pasture is partly where the pigs were last year and I noticed that the ladies had eaten up some egg shell fragments left over from last years compost fed to the pigs.....so to be on the safe side I roasted up the eggshells I'd been putting to one side and ground them in the foodprocessor and spread them for the chickens - who gobbled them up.....So the extra calcium will be good I think.... Hubby thinks that if we'd had the birds since they were young and they were used to being moved it wouldn't be so stressfull to them.....

Isn't farming fun? Ask me in a month.

Double Double.....

2010-04-13T20:32:00.000-07:00

My girls have started laying......lets hope our double double stays a double double!

Overheard....

2010-04-07T09:06:00.000-07:00

Holdy was talking to K, the amazing german woof who is back for the 4th time before she heads back to Germany, and he told her some interesting things.....

"you know, the ancient egyptians stuck a pointy thing up the nose and pulled out little pieces of brain, and then they could go to the afterworld.....my grandpa was burned.....I just want to be buried when I die...."

random photos found in camera

2010-04-03T20:37:00.000-07:00

Ok, plugged in my chip today and found some unexpected pictures......

My youngest loves to act to the camera, I have pages and pages

of photos of him in different poses...

See that cute black kitty with the suspiciously fat gut??

Overexposed fried goose egg.....

I'm getting ready, maybe today......

Ms. Pacman anyone.....

Our cat had kittens....4 little cuties....

Have I mentioned we have a couple of arcade games in the house? This one hubby bought for cheap to put an 'all in one' in (you know Frogger, donkey kong.....well I don't know since I'm not a gamer....but anyways....another project) ....and it turns out we love the game! 3D tetris AKA Blockout.....and you can play against each other...It's a great time waster......

We did it! Paper!

2010-04-01T20:25:00.000-07:00

We made paper! It was easy.....

After seeing some grasses from last year decomposed, flattened and dried in sheets that looked like paper in the field, August said, "Hay, what is this, it looks like paper!" (Some weird freak of nature had sheets of "grass" bleached and paperlike....)

I said paper can be made from grass....of course he wanted to make paper.

He grabbed a handful of grass (Winter Rye to be exact - and I only know this as it's our cover crop.....) and stuck it in water.

There it sat for a few days.

Momma got on the puter.

The internet is a wonderful thing.

Unscientifically, without measuring anything, we made paper from scratch!

Step 1: Pick grass, cut into 1-2 inch pieces, blend in food processor - the ONLY blend we did.

Add to pot with water.

Cook on stove for a little while - an hour maybe 2.

Step 2. Take ashes from woodstove.

Add water. Let sit.

Filter off some liquid (caustic soda)

Took awhile - sieve and filter clogged a lot.

Took clearish filtrate and poured into grass mixture.

It started foaming immediately. (Caustic soda breaking down cellulose)

We cooked a bit and then left sit on the stove for a week or so.

STINK.

Stink doesn't describe the smell.

Wash grass fibres.....poured grass mixture into sieve, put grass back in bowl, filled with water and repeat....until the water is almost clear.....

The delay on the stove was caused as I realized we needed a fancy wood framed screen thingy to lift the paper fibres out of the water....

until I figured out I could use a bacon grease splasher stopper. (Technical term)

We put the bacon screen (bend handle up) in the bottom of the big stainless steel bowl (oops have I forgotten to mention everything MUST be stainless steel??)

Poured grass/water mixture in carefully. We let it settle a bit, stirred it around gently to even it out, and then carefully lifted screen out......

Turned upside down on to some clothe diapers on a cookie sheet

Let dry in front of woodstove.

Voila!

Unbleached paper!

It's a little wrinkly but definately paper.

Very very cool!

Helpful websites:

Paper making (Caustic Soda instructions)

Grass paper making with Pink Frog

PS I'm not kidding with how I did it. Totally slap dash and it worked!!!

Kind of the way I follow recipes..........

Amazing book!

2010-03-31T21:17:00.000-07:00

Gabor Mate. Need I say more?
In the realm of Hungry Ghosts.
Amazing.
A must read for everyone, including those contemplating parenthood either biologically or thru adoption.
An insightful book that sheds light on the demons of our past (childhood), present (who we have become) and future (our children we are trying to do our best by).
Forgiveness and/or understanding. Many many Aha! moments.
Empathy and concern and sadness for those caught in addiction....be it shopping, alcohol, narcotics or food
New understanding of the roots of addictive behaviors...
As the co author of Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers with Gordon Neufeld, Gabor reiterates the importance of attachment parenting and connecting with your kids.
Describing his early childhood, Gabor sheds light on my own mother's beginnings....
I cannot emphasize enough what an amazing read this book is. I haven't even finished it yet.

Weeding weeder geese!

2010-03-29T12:46:00.000-07:00

So we have 14 geese. I know I know we said we wanted 6 - 8 - but the farm we got them from wanted to get rid of them AND we only got 2 females in our first bunch.....We have a couple earmarked for the freezer......

This is the strawberry field where they have been......

Can you tell where the fence was??

We moved them today to the second half of the field (you can see a second cost free old trailer we have ... er .... had plans for........)

Did you know geese poop every 12 minutes?

When we first put them in the field we didn't electrify the fence.....big mistake. It didn't take them long to learn they could both walk over it and/or push through it. It only took a couple of days of electricity to teach them to stay in.....A couple still braved the shocks to get out, but soon tired of that trick. We are relieved as we need to be able to contain them.
Geese don't like strawberries......at least until they ripen!
They certainly mowed the grass down....(this is the field with the runaway cover crop......)

What my kids get up to....

2010-03-27T21:14:00.000-07:00

What do my kids get up to in a typical couple of days......

Well August wanted to make paper from grass. He got the idea out on the field where he saw some grass from last year in lying down in sheets that look like paper. We talked about the Egyptians and papyrus and the next thing I know he wants to make paper....he brought some in and ripped it up and left it in water. So of course I get online and look up how to make paper.

I'll do a post on this when and if it works out.....

Needless to say, we got grass, we made caustic soda....we have some grass and caustic soda sitting in a pot on the stove waiting for a wood screen with wire netting......

Hotwheels anyone?

No!? How about Meccano??

Build a fire?? (and make a complete mess in the yard)

Dig up maple seedlings....to sell!

A chalk city with properties, crosswalks and roads.

Jungle gym, fort building, swinging.....

Ropes between trees anyone?

Trampoline games. They've invented many, this one involves chalk,

properties and scorekeeping....

Buttons. Who knew the $3.99 bag of buttons at Walmart could bring so many hours of entertainment. Games, trading, make believe (buttons are alive you know) sorting, crafts....you name it!

And these are the things I could take photos of this evening

(yes my house is a mess!). I'm just scratching the surface.

Finally chickens!

2010-03-26T20:54:00.000-07:00

We spend a lot on eggs. The boys can go thru 2-3 dozen a week and we have been meaning to get some laying hens. Llast year we got an old run down trailer for cheep and thought it would convert easily into a great little hen house. Easy peeasy! NOT.

August and I scrape out old cracked caulking to try and make it waterproof. And don't even ask me how I feel about tube #2 of silicon that turned out to be faulty and DID NOT DRY, so I am now in the process of RE SCRAPING OUT AND RE CAULKING......

Hubby tears out the insides,

ripping more and more and more out as he

discovers a lot of water damage and rot.

He frames in new walls...and a new floor....

Insulation....

August got to work and built a ramp....

August and I put up wiring (look behind him) to stop the chickens escaping!

I cut some alders down and Don Fashioned a roost. It's on hinges so I can lift it up and clean underneath it. The floor is lino and the walls painted with latex bullseye 123. You can see a home made feeder waiting for my girls. We use pine shavings as bedding. They are stored in the toilet area.

The girls spent a week in our pony trailer waiting for their new home. They got out and flapped and flew.....we decided some wing clipping was in order! You can see the upside down bucket-homemade waterer in the background! (and August's ramp!) They are busy eating grass and chickweed and dust bathing. So far (knock on wood) we have no escapees!

The fence is a cheep Electric netting with some plastic chicken wire attached. We need to fence them as they can't wander our strawberry patch during strawberry season!! We bought the wrong sized netting so had to make do......We will be moving the hens around so we need a portable fence. In the background you can see the pig house!

Hubby even fashioned nesting boxes under the counter for my girls. I figure I can put some boxes on the counter if I need more!

The boys and girls frolicking in the field!

Happy Hens exploring their new home!

The first night when we closed the girls in all 15 were jammed in the nesting boxes. They'd never seen a roost before!!! I had to block the nesting boxes off and we had to place the girls on their roosts for a couple of nights. Now we have 13/15 sitting on their roosts to sleep!

It's a nice portable hen house, but it would have been faster and easier to start building it from scratch. However, the end product is easily moved and warm, it has electricity, and will do nicely for the girls over the winter!

Did I mention hubby was at the feed store today enquiring about turkeys????

Elderly Parents...

2010-03-11T20:57:00.001-08:00

Wow, there's a loaded topic title...I'm in the middle of dealing with my 83 year old father whose health is failing fast. I've been trying for 4 or so years to get him to consider moving to a seniors' residence. This would eleviate his loneliness and my worry....a double bonus. He doesn't eat properly, clean properly, he can't see, can't hear, can barely walk, can't cook - oh the list is long. He's at my house 1-4 nights a week. He eats, sleeps and well sleeps. After one intervention with my dad I had him weeping on the phone. It was a truly horrible feeling. I can't go into details but believe me the situation is YUCK. After another mini crisis (my father is a retired doctor and I caught him writing his own prescriptions......which I CAN'T believe - the pharmasist obviously owes my dad for something...) I finally had to go in and see his doctor, a man our family has known since I was a kid on a social basis. I said told him that it is very very cruel to leave it this late and make me the meanie. He said to me "No, it's cruel that he's blaming you for getting old." He has been trying to get my dad in to see him for a year but my dad is avoiding him as he knows where it is going. Obviously writing his own prescriptions (quintuple bypass 12 or so years ago and mulitiple other problems) allows him to avoid going in.....I'm to expect tears, manipulation, guilt trips and so on. This sucks. I bet it sucks more to be my father.

I promise never to do this to my kids.

Did I mention my mother is 14 years younger?

I hereby declare my sister gets to deal with her.

Life goes on.