May 24, 2012: Farm News

Hello:  Still no rain, not good of course.  We are watering the garden each day and I use the word watering rather than irrigating since the latter implies some system that supplies water to an extensive area at the same time wereas we are hand watering with watering cans or with a regular common garden hose, not good of course. Most everything though is looking good because we are getting water to the plants but it takes far too long to do things this way. The one benefit as a result of the dry weather is that we have fewer weeds to contend with and a weeding is always as good as a watering.

We have had extra help on several occasions over the past few weeks, so we are still getting stuff into the ground and we are getting a lot of weeding done that so most of the rows look really good. We do have several nice photos taken over the past week some taken a bit earlier.

This one was taken a week or so back and is a barn swallow at the top of a post. The barn swallows came back in late April, the tree swallows had come back a couple of weeks before. Each year we have several pairs of them return to nest in our barn but at times their will be many, many, perhaps a hundred or more diving around over the fields, especially during haying when probabnly a lot of insects are disturbed and are thus available to this wonderful flier.

This was the swarm of bees that we managed to capture and transfer to a new hive box, this was reported in our blog a week or two back. The swarm was about 5 feet from the ground in a small hawthorn tree and was about the size of two

Gabriel is bringing our old Milking Shorthorn, Barb,back to the barn. Gabriel is 4 years old, Barb is at least 16. Barb has always been a friendly easy going cow, just perfect for being herded by a little cowboy.

The cows and the sheep. The cows, with their calves, are on the path heading from the barn out to pasture for the day after the morning milking

A portion of the garden two days ago. Far to the left the four beds of garlic and overwintered onions blend into a mass of green. There are also 4 rows of broad beans there too. The next bed looks quite bare but has three rows of very small carrot plants. These beds are about 320 feet in length. The three carrot rows run half way with the other half being three rows or parsnips.The next bed is three rows of onions, the next is two rows of edible pod peas. The wheel hoe is in the walking path between the peas and the next bed which is spinach and th bed on the right that is in full view is two rows of kale on the outsides with a row of lettuce down the centre. The bed on the far right running off the right edge of the photo is more onions.

footballs.

The word, football, down at the very bottom, belongs up with the caption to the bee swarm. It was to be the last word in the caption but twice it has migrated on it’s own to the bottom were it appears now. I am going to leave it there because attempts to retrieve it may cause other strange and unwanted changes to happen. Very frustrating and annoying.

May 17 , 2012 : Farm News

From a couple of weeks ago. Three chickens and a duck doing their thing. The chickens are very good at spreading manure droppings in the pasture with a lot of scratching. The hens also lay eggs.

Hello:  We have been waiting for rain. The amount we got last week was much less than an inch and one inch would have been considered a minimum weekly amount to keep things growing good. Up until the past week or thereabouts we have had sufficient moisture in the ground, the temperatures were not that high and the vegetative growth was small enough that plants were not drawing up large amounts of water. Now those three things have changed and the lack of rain is now quite noticeable. The regrowth in the pasture has slowed, we have been doing extensive watering in the garden every day for the past week and to-day we had the barest sprinkle of rain from a once rain- promising cold front. We really do need rain, soon and lots of it.

Just to whet your appetite, this photo is from about 4 years ago in the late summer looking east in our vegetable garden. It is late in the summer as the summer squash on the right has a lot of powdery mildew on the leave sbut we also have newer planted vegetables in the centre of the photo.

Otherwise things are rolling along quite good, we are getting a lot in the ground now and the horses are working the garden nearly every day. All of the animals still have adequate pasture. We have had a good bit of help too and this has been extremely important to us at this stage in the garden planting. If anyone else has been thinking of coming out to get a little workout  working in the garden, this is definitely the time to do it as we have so much that needs to be done all at once. Give us a call or just drop by… half an hour or half a day, it doesn’t matter, we can use all and any help and we would be very glad to have any thanks.

I have been so busy this week that I wasn’t able to get any pictures from the past week and I have not had time to prepare this message and therefore this blog will be a little shorter than usual.

 

These two lambs were about three weeks old when this photo was taken in late April. They are very good looking Border Cheviot types.

One last thing. For those out there who have been considering purchasing a CSA share for this upcoming season, please contact us as soon as possible, right away, and let us know your intentions. We have had a lot of interest in the CSA and we really need to know soon how many sharers we will have and the share sizes.  This will help us plan the garden.

Thanks all and tune in again next week.

May 10, 2012 : Farm News

Maggie and Gabriel transplanting red kale, green kale beside Mccenna who keeps watch over all. William is having an afternoon nap. He is dozing under Aerron’s coatin the row over just behind Gabriel.

Hello;  A very eventful week beginning with our two hives of bees showing distinct signs of wanting to swarm. Bees swarm when they decide that their present home is unsuitable and this can be for many reasons. They will exit the hive all keeping tightly together around the Queen and for the first day will settle in a tight mass somewhere close to the hive while scouts fly about looking for a suitable place to start a new hive. In these here parts swarming usually occurs more to the end of May or in June but this year beekeepers all round have been reporting swarms from their hives for the past week or so. Aerron and I were lucky in that the swarm settled on a small Hawthorn very near the hive so that we were able to get a couple of hive boxes, the lower one filled with empty foundation and the upper one completely empty., close under the swarm and  were able to brush a good number of bees into the box and get the lid on and to our relief we were able to see,  the next morning , that the bees had all gone into the boxes we provided. We now had a new hive and with little more luck the old hive will produce a new Queen (not all bees leave in the swarm),  and we will have gotten a third hive. A fair bit of time was involved including a trip to Better Bee Supplies in Cambridge for the purchase of hive bodies and foundation.

On Friday evening,  Saturday from noon ’til eleven p.m. and on Sunday afternoon, due to the efforts of  “Hearts  Content” Organic Farm, we shared table with them at the food and wine exposition; “Grandelicious” inside the Brantford Civic Centre  This was done on very short notice so we had lot of work to do in a short time. We thought that it was a succesful effort and worth the investment in time and work   As a bonus  the financial investment   was quite small.

In spite of all the distraction we still managed to get a lot of garden work done this week. Aerron worked up various areas of the garden on several consecutive days  and we were able to clean up about four beds and transplant a bed of kale and lettuce and this in spite of a couple of wet days. The rain was of course really needed and we were happy to get what we did though it all amounted to much less than an inch.

The whole gang: William (still napping) ,Briar, Gabriel
The whole gang: William (still napping), Maggie, Briar and Gabriel planting Kale with Lauren observing carefully, McKenna watching and Aerron driving Wimpy and Marie on the disc harrows working up where the potatoes will go.

Briar, looking wet,it is raining lightly, returning to refill watering cans, the team resting in the background with the discs

The captions to the photos do have some errors which I can’t figure out how to correct once the whole post thing is posted.  One day maybe I can get this WordPress  set up and all sorted out but until then my apologies for these occasional muckups.

If you are thinking of signing up for our CSA, then you should contact us now or at least very soon. Telephone or e-mail or drop by for a visit though best to ‘phone ahead to make sure someone will be around. Thanks all for your paticipation and interest and look again at this page next week for next weeks Farm News update.

The lost caption for what should be the second photo from the top reads as follows: Briar in the foreground standing by the broadbean rows with garlic and onion beds in the immediate foreground and Maggie planting kale with Lauren carefully observing and Gabriel digging holes and Aerron and the team discing what will be the area planted to potatoes, McKenna as always keeping watch over everything.

May 3, 2012 : Farm News

Hello :  This has been better week because we at last got some rain, not sure how much, we keep forgetting to get a new rain gauge.  Aerron did a lot of work in the garden with the horses on the disc harrows. We were going to plow the cover crop wheat , but have decided that it will disc in just fine and we can save a little time. The discing takes quite a bit of time, they are very large discs and it  normally would require at least six horses to pull them round the field for a good long time without any breaks. We only have the team; two horses …  so they can only do about one and a half rounds before needing  a five or ten minute break. We have sown a full row of snap peas (the large edible pod type) and another full row of the flat edible pod, the snow pea. We also had to do quite a bit of hand weeding in a couple of beds as the weeds were quite heavy and we wanted to get rid of some thistle by being sure to get as much of the root as possible. We moved a lot of the propogating trays from the greenhouse to the hardening off area … twenty-one yesterday  joining the twenty- six that were out there already. The twenty -six are now ready to be transplanted out into the garden., onions and lettuce mainly. The greenhouse now has a bit more room and we will start to seed some of the more frost sensitive plants such as eggplant, tomatoe and pepper. The rain was really needed as the pastures were getting quite dry and the garden will also benefit. We also need a bit more warmth and the forecasts are a little more encouraging that way. All in all things are going along quite well and we are more or less on track to were we would like to be.

The ninth lamb standing with her mum with the first lamb in the foreground

Here are just three recent photos of new beasties on the farm. We shall try to get a nice bunch of garden pictures up for next week . The tiny bird is in our broad bean row. The broad beans are only about an inch and a half high. It is a newly hatched Killdeer and is doing just fine. The cat is one of the barn cats with one black kitten and three gingers born this past week in the calf pen, also doing just fine.

April 26, 2012 : Farm News

In the greenhouse, two trays of broccoli and one of dinosaur kale

G.B. and a buddy lounging on a pile of cardboard boxes in the woodshed

Hello:    What happened ?  The week went by and  we seemed to be quite occupied the whole time doing many little things. Aerron managed to get another pasture fenced and ready for the cows, they are now rotating through the meagre pastures at the rate of about two days per field… if the pasture grasses were growing really good each pasture would feed the cows for 5 or 6 days minimum, the problem then would be to keep all the pastures gazed close enough that the grazing plants would not be growing too fast. But we do have a very serious problem in that it has been far too dry,  we have had some rain, which of was course welcomed, however it has been nowhere near enough. Warmer temperatures would also help but by far the greater problem is the lack of substantial moisture. We have pulled the sheep off pasture as they have eaten it right down; it will soon recover with a real good soaking. The horses have a large enough area that their pasture is O.K. for a little while yet.

We have done more work in the garden getting the rows ready for planting, we have sown a little more in the greenhouse and have moved about 20 trays from the greenhouse to tables outside near the garden so that they can harden off so as to be ready for transplanting, probably 4 or 5 days will see them ready. The term “harden off” refers to the process  of gradually exposing plants to full sunshine and allow them to be strengthened  by the wind, always being careful not to make the transition so quickly that plants are damaged.

Eddy, Potatoes in pots and a kitty

If you have any interest in joining our CSA,  please contact us , we are still able to take on more sharers but we do need to know as soon as possible and of course one of the principal reasons for the CSA is for us poor farmers to have a bit of extra spending money for that most expensive time of the year for us,   So give us a call, send an e-mail or drop by. If you do leave a message on our telephone message machine or send an  e-mail, do allow a couple or three or four days for me to get around to replying, but I will reply as quickly as I can.   Thanks all and watch for an update next thursday.

The sheep, last days on a diminishing pasture

April 19, 2012 : Farm News

Three of 9 cattle beast moving down the path to pasture

Hello:    We have had another busy week, actually all of our weeks until the late fall are going to be busy. We finished the fencing for the expanded pasture, put the cows out on friday and have since moved them through two more pastures as part of the regular rotation which is necessarily very short at this time of the year. This is unheard of around this area, putting animals out to pasture so early. We are about 4 weeks early this year, mid to late May being the usual time. We don’t anticipate any problems going out to grass so early though a good rain would really help. We did have some rain but it was not nearly enough, just better than none. Not helpful to have cold nights either though this is a small complaint.

We are somewhat short handed at the moment as your favourite blogger here is recovering from an upending,  of which he has no memory,  after having tried to move the horses last friday. A trip to the emergency dept. at the BGH  confirmed no heart attacks, strokes, broken bones or serious injuries had occured. A very sore back though has dramatically curtailed my activities but mending does seem to be progressing quite rapidly. Lesson here ? … avoid any attempts to lead a horse over a wire lying on the ground, get rid of the wire first.

The more able bodied here have seeded a lot more into trays and have put a bit more into the garden so work is proceeding approximately on schedule and really the weather has been quite good for working in spite of it being a bit dry and at times a little cool.

All the cattle on grass with the two horses in the back

William, Gabriel and our favourite yearling ram Joseph

The photo above shows just some of the many trays of newly seeded vegetables  in our greenhouse. These contain lettuce, kale, cabbage, onion and kale. These trays are now ready to be put outside where they will be carefully acclimatized to the great out of doors for about a week, before they will be ready to be transplanted into the garden. Be sure to give us a call or send us an e-mail if you are thinking of getting a vegetable CSA share for this season. Please spread the word about us, we can use the publicity and check the site again next week, we’ll have another update with more photos. This little Cheviot ram is a real nice friendly little sheep. The Border Cheviots, at least the ones that we have, are quite docile showing no inclination to butting with the head, Joseph here , who is about 14 months old, will, if you have been scratching him and you stop,  gently but firmly nudge your hand  constantly until he gets another good scratch. Come for a visit and if we can get him to come maybe you could give Joseph a good scratch.

April 12, 2012 Farm News

Vegetables set out on display for CSA pickup

Hello;  A set of photos taken in the fall of 2010 illustrate, to some degree, the variety and the quantity of vegetables on offer for CSA sharers at the regular, weekly CSA thursday pickup. The one picture of the garden, taken this past tuesday, April 10, shows that our onions and garlic are growing good; a spot of rain would greatly improve the growth.

Vegetable basket for a typical share, fall 2010

  

Another view of vegetables set out for the CSA pickup

Work this week has concentrated on gathering firewood and fixing fencesThe one pasture that we are preparing for the cows to go out on first is being expanded so new posts have to be sunk and new wire strung. This is quite a bit more work than simply doing repairs on last seasons fences. The dry weather is very good for gathering firewood, which we will have to continue to burn for some time yet, but pastures and the garden do need more than just a splash of rain to get that grass and  those vegetables really growing. Warmer temperatures are also a requirement — but not too hot just yet. We have had the sheep out on a bit of grass for a week now though they still get a bit of hay since it is really too early, the grass does not have enough growth  yet.  The cows are very anxious to be out on  pasture and hopefully by the noon on thursday they will be grazing. Their pasture, like that of the sheep does not really have enough growth, and we will have to be careful with it though with warmer temperatures the grass can really put on a growth spurt and we will might have a time keeping it gazed low enough. If that does happen we will just take some of the pasture out of the grazing rotation and let it grow and  cut it for hay.

The photo of the onions and garlic growing in the garden; April 10, 2012 . The onions in the picture are on the far left, are smaller, and do not show up well in this photo. The plants which are so obvious are all garlic of various varieties and I believe that the ones on the left are the most popular variety, Music. They are all doing so well and the lack of a mulch on the western half of the planting has not had any affect on the growth. The mulch will be beneficial as the season progresses by suppressing weed growth and helping to retain moisture. We do now need to go along the unmulched portions with the hoes as there is sufficient weed growth to make the effort worthwhile. We still have beef cuts available from our freezer and from the garden we do have some small geen onion (last season’s regrowth) and small garlic greens, not from the rows in the photo but from the site in the garden of last seasons garlic planting. These are garlics that went unharvested last fall. That is it for this week , please look for another update next thursday.