Happy Pigs, Baby Chicks!

We've had pigs on the farm for a little over a month now, and they are steadily working their way through the trees, happily digging up all the yummy roots they can find! Our first set of pigs is now more than double the size they were when they arrived!

The baby piglets have just graduated from kindergarten, where they were learning how to respect the electric fence and to drink from their custom water barrel. Today, they moved into the trees with the older pigs. All I can say is that they looked cheerful!

Now, you may wonder how I can say things like this, babies in kindergarten, cheerful piglets, and all that, when I know I'm going to eat these animals. Well, around here we like to know that every animal, whether it's destined for the dinner plate or the breeding program, has lived the best quality life while in our care. So yes, I am fond of these little piggies. Apparently, one or two of them even have names! They have a yummy destiny to fulfill, and they will, but I'm not going to treat them like livestock. It's not good stewardship of the creatures placed in my care.

Speaking of cute, check these out!

On tuesday, 500 baby chicks arrived from the hatchery! These are our Red Sussex cockerels, who will be very tasty natural meat one day, but for now, are simply adorable, cheeping balls of yellow fluff! They are quick on their feet, very wary of our big boots when we come to feed them!

Every day seems to get busier around here! Our veggie deliveries will probably begin in a month, and hopefully before then, we'll get the mole population down in the garden, and stop them from stealing our plants! If it's not one thing, it's another, right?

Until next time, happy Victoria Day!

Plenty of New Beginnings

It's been a long time since I last posted here. It's been a crazy winter and spring. Who would have thought that the snow would finally show up in time for the first day of spring??!! Oh well, we need the moisture in the field!

The greenhouse is in full swing, after a few failed attempts to get the furnace working. But it's chugging away now (thanks Dad!) and the plants have moved out of the kitchen and are doing their best to grow big and strong in the heat of the sun. At least they're happy with 30 degrees every day!

A new year is time for trying new things. We're buying 100 egg-laying hens this year, and trying out a new breed of meat birds. I say new. I mean new to us. It's actually a cross between two heritage breeds! And so we will be having egg and poultry CSA shares this year! Check out the website for details.

The animals have also started having their babies, and we get to hear the tiny cries of little goat kids, and watch the calf (Tina) frolic happily. I have unfortunately tamed her, as I had to bottle feed her for her first three days of life, so now I have to keep her and make her my milking cow! It won't be tons of milk as she is also a heritage breed meant to be dual-purpose, but our family doesn't really need that much milk, and her calves will be good solid meat animals, which isn't common from a milking cow.

Soon, the snow will have melted off of the fields, and we'll be able to get them cleaned up and prepared for planting, which could be happening in as little as 4 weeks from now! Time flies when you're having fun researching and planning, but there comes a time when you have to leave the computer and go get your hands dirty. That time has come for me. I'm going to go plant more seeds in the greenhouse!

Keep it real. We always do. Aleah

R&R, Seeds, and Christmas Markets

Hey! It's been a long time, hope you didn't miss me too much! We were delivering our CSA shares until the first week in October, followed closely by Thanksgiving, followed closely again by our wind-up party. And then, the frosts started coming, so we were busily finishing up our personal harvests and winterizing the farm. Now, as of this week, winter has decided to stick around, and we're buried beneath 8 inches of snow. Thank goodness for the new tractors, or we might actually be stuck here!

Now, we've taken some time to relax and try to find winter jobs - not an easy task, you know! We also attended a couple of Christmas Farmers Markets to spread our name around a little more, hopefully to get a few more shareholders for 2012! I like Farmers Market people. All you have to do is spend a few hours sitting next to them, and all of a sudden, you're friends!

Right this second, I mean, after I finish typing this post, I'm selecting and ordering our first batch of seeds for next year! We're going to have to plant the tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and onions in January to have them be ready for the summer. We definitely want a better crop of those items than we got this year. Not that they were a total bust, they just could have been much better! I have found a few suppliers who specialize in heirloom seeds, so most of our crops are going to be tried-and-true heritage plants like we want them to be. A few things only come in hybrid, though, like orange cauliflower, so we have to decide if we want it badly enough to accept a hybrid here or there. One thing is certain, however. We will not be planting any GMO seeds at all. Certain things like diseases and pests can be better managed than by messing with a plants' genetic structure!

Well, I suppose I'd better get ordering those seeds. Be sure to tell all of your friends to sign up quickly, so that we don't underplant (not that we're planning to!), and then they can have their share in all of these yummy veggies!

Chickens, Recipes, and Kudos

My, my, my. What a crazy week this has been. Could have been worse. We could have had to go to Market this weekend as well as the rest of it, but it would seem yet another disaster has been a bit of a blessing in disguise. We had a hailstorm last Monday. Ten minutes of ice balls falling from the sky and a week of sweat and toil. We had to sort out all of our salad greens so that our shareholders could get a few decent meals out of the deal. Well, as a result, we had nothing to go to market with, but it was just as well, because we had a big job to do on Saturday.

We butchered about 160 chickens with our extended family and a few friends to help us. It's not a pretty job, but someone's got to do it! So they're all in the freezer now, and we've got white meat for the next year, until it's time to do it again...sigh.

But we've got to give a big shout-out to our 2011 shareholders. With the hail and all that work, we needed to be able to deliver our veggies sooner than planned, and everyone went along with the last-minute changes without complaint. Thanks guys!

Well, I'd better sign off. I've got to go find some new and exciting recipes for this week's share veggies - and last week's too. With some new and slightly more unique items ripening daily, it's sometimes hard to know how to cook all of this stuff. So it's off to the testing kitchen! Let you know how it turns out.......;-)

WWOOFers, Potatoes, and Eating our Disasters

Live and learn. Sigh. Oh well. There may be room for improvement here, but it's already clear that this year we are unable to grow a few crops successfully. Prime examples of this are Broccoli and Bok Choy. The bok choy was the worst. We tried starting some from seed in the greenhouse. They promptly went to seed before they even grew more than a few leaves. Trying not to let anything go to waste, we steamed the leggy little plants and had a decent meal out of it! The broccoli actually made it out into the big garden, and seemed to be doing really well, forming little heads that we anticipated would grow into larger heads before long. Not so. Those little heads started flowering! They were no bigger than a small spear of your average sized grocery-store broccoli. A nice - little - stir fry followed, but there is nothing more promising coming up in the broccoli row. There's always next year - right?

In other news, our potatoes have started to ripen! We pulled up a few plants to find tiny little baby potatoes, too small to be called "new" yet, but getting close! We'll be talking about them with our shareholders this week - because they're the only crop that got a dose of fertilizer this year. If everyone is good with it, they'll be tasting nice fresh 'taters in a week or two!

This week has been busy, but super productive. Why? Well, because last Sunday at the Farmer's Market, this family came up to us and asked if we were looking for WWOOFers on our farm. Were we? Heck yeah! So they came on Friday and they're here until this Friday, and we're basking in the wonder that is six extra pairs of hands around the farm. So much so that we filled out an application to be official WWOOF hosts. When everything is done by hand and there's only four of us in the family, a little extra help from time to time is a welcome change. Thanks, guys!

Tornadoes, Recipes, and Radish Tops

It's been another busy week here on our farm. We're right in the middle of week 2 of our CSA deliveries. This week, they include radishes, romaine, lettuce, mint, basil, spinach, swiss chard, and lambsquarters. It's the second week that we've had radishes, and we've come across something rather unique about radish greens.
Last weekend at Bearspaw market, our neighbour told us about a traditional french soup that used radish greens. It piqued our interest. So we went searching for ways to use this item that we have so very much of, it seems. Turns out, the greens are healthier than the radishes themselves! Who knew?! They are a source of calcium, iron, magnesium, folate, vitamin A, C, K and other nutrients. We threw them into a smoothie this morning!
I'm thinking I should find a few more recipes for them to put on our website, but that will have to wait until this afternoon. I keep trying to post relevant recipes BEFORE we send the veggies out to our shareholders, but time does not allow it, it seems. C'est la vie!
In other news, since when did we live in tornado alley? We've had 3 warnings in the last 2 weeks. Thankfully, it passed us by all three times! Whew! Let's hope this pattern keeps going, we really don't want a tornado around here!

Zucchini, Weeds, and Recipes

It's a beautiful blend of sun and cloud today, giving us a nice break from the heat every now and then. We're weeding the top garden today, and the goats, chickens, and horses are all enjoying the 'fruits' of our labours! At least someone appreciates the weeds!

In among the radishes where we've planted some zucchinis, we're seeing tiny baby squash starting to emerge. Finally, something other than lettuce and radishes! It's good to see the beginnings of new crops, as we would like to see some variety around here. On that note (sort of), I've been adding new recipes to the website, so if you're wondering what to do with all the radishes...check it out for a few neat ideas!

This week has also seen our first deliveries starting on Wednesday! We've been able to meet most of our shareholders already with a modest first week's CSA basket. Here's hoping for bigger and better things in the weeks to come!