Piggies arrived!!

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

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

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!

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....

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!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the ASH Berry Boys!

Greenhouse Gardening

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!!!