May update

It's been awhile since our last post - its a busy time and Facebook status updates seem to be all we've made time for on the Internet these days.
Anyway for those of you who live in Canada, we sincerely hope you enjoyed the long weekend - it was a perfect weekend for us farming-types, a mixture of sunshine and rain, this all makes for happy plants. There are lots of exciting things happening around the farm these days.

We have the first, second and in some cases third succession of our fine-seeded crops in the ground.
We've also started our transplants, our plants that we start from seed in the greenhouse and move to the field once they are large enough. Our corn, cucumbers, peppers, broccoli, kale, tomatoes, kohlrabi, rosemary & thyme are going into the ground today. More transplants are to follow in the next two weeks. We like to start these in the greenhouse so that they get a leg up on the growing season, particularly in our area where the season is shorter.
Finally, we transplanted our annuals a few weeks ago - they are looking quite strong in the field and if our experiment continues to be successful, we should have fresh-cut flowers for market and our CSA member this year.

Even though the greenhouse is new to us this year, I'm not sure how we did it without one before. It is a hub of activity and is constantly packed with flowers, fruit and other transplants. The tomato and strawberry patio basket both at are heading for our CSA are growing well and starting to flower. We are making more room (from where I'm not sure?!) for our most recent sprouts: Pak Choi, Summer Squash, Spaghetti Squash, Corn (more!), Red Oakleaf lettuce and romaine.
It wouldn't be an update without something about the girls. The last two weeks has seen their egg production triple (!!!), as such we started selling eggs at market last week. Suffice to say we'll have more than enough to go around for CSA members and market customers. The newer members of the flock have also figured out that they need to lay their eggs in the nest boxes (for the most part) and where to go to bed at night (into the egg mobile!). To us it seemed to take awhile, but most of them have been with us for just over a month, which is quite a lot to learn in only one month's time. Last week marked the start of our egg grading and we're happy to announce that our eggs were very well received at market.
May is a very busy, but very special month around here. It's also our head farmers bday and Matt is a trooper working some of the longest days of the year on his special day. We're also really lucky to have been featured on the front page of our local newspaper for CSA & direct marketing strategy this year. Sometimes when you are doing good things, more good things happen. I'd say always, actually.
The much-needed rain seems to be dissipating for the moment so we're off to till, transplant and start more sprouts. I can't wait until they are all lovely food for us all to enjoy! June is sure to bring more sunshine, planting, harvesting and long days, but it also brings our CSA members and their families to our farm for orientation day! We're excited to show them their farm and all the wonderful places their food for this year will grow.

Happy May everybody, this year is shaping up great.

spinach harvest

Double Yoker!

Beautiful girl

After the storm

Front Page

Saturday morning home

Most Sincere Thanks...

Some days, most days actually, farm life is so rewarding one doesn't think about the risks of running this kind of business. We take for granted and rely upon our bodies to keep us strong and the work completed. We rely upon the support of our community (which we never take for granted). We ask a lot of our friends and extended family - to be patient with us at the end of the market day when we're exhausted, to be understanding when we're late for dinner because the sun was shining and we wanted to get that last row ploughed, tilled or planted. It not only takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community to support a farm.
Last week we received this email from a returning CSA member, we'd like to share it with you because these are the things that keep us going on the days when the sun doesn't shine and we wonder why the heck we are doing this.

"You are doing amazing work & I am so thankful for your dedication to doing it the ethical, organic way. Over this past year I've been learning even more about organic farming so I've been appreciating the value of the produce you're working on even more than I did before :) "

Thanks to L for her kind words (we asked her permission to reprint this). And thanks to you all for reading, writing, supporting, emailing, visiting and understanding this crazy (amazing, wonderful, beautiful, rewarding) farm life <3

A Carrot Tale

Sometimes farm life can be very forgiving. During August of last season, we had an abundance of carrots - some were small, some were big. But we definitely had good quantities. There was this one part of our garden, however, where the carrots were a little sparse and the weed pressure was quite high. In the hectic weeks of August (the height of our harvest & growing) we decided to leave the carrots in the ground and test out the strategy that leaving them there over winter is not only a great way to "store" carrots, but also improves their flavour. The theory is that the snow will act as an insulator and frost will make the starches break down enhancing the natural sugars in the carrots. We had tried this before without much success, but seeing as these carrots were few and hard to get to, we thought it was worth a try!

Then we forgot about them.

This week when Matt was testing out the plough, he ran it over the crown of said forgotten piece of carrot-land. Much to our surprise and delight out popped these beauties!

Fearing the worst and not wanting to get excited we thought that they'd probably be mostly pulpy, in the spots they weren't total mush. Maybe they'd make good soup anyway?

Turns out, they taste as good as carrots that we dig out of the ground in August. Actually, they may even taste better, not only because of their sweet, crunchiness, but also because they were a little stroke of luck and forgiveness from our land. Sure, some of them aren't picture perfect, but they are fresh, organic, field grown carrots...and its only MAY!!! That is enough for us to feel really great about - and to share at our Farmer's Market this weekend. We hope that everyone else is as excited as we are :)

Learning lessons

Today marks the end of our first week with the new girls, they've learned a lot...and so have we. In one short week, they have learned how to cope with wind and sun (no joke!), have learned to get in and out of their new home and to forage! They also learned (quickly) how to escape through the poultry fencing, if it wasn't turned on. 

The one lesson that we are still teaching them (this is where our learning curve comes in) is to head back into their egg-mobile at night. They really REALLY want to roost underneath the egg-mobile which involves us hand-bombing them all back in at night...in the dark. We've got a system down now though. We wait until its totally dark, put on some head lamps and head down to the egg-mobile. Once we're there, I (Leigh) get down on the ground (sometimes under the mobile) and haul all the birds out, two or three at a time. Then I pass them to Matt and he puts them inside. We have counted each night for the last few nights and the number inside grows by about 7-10 chickens/night. Which isn't bad, but its also pretty slow. 

One way to encourage the chickens to go back into the mobile (now that they've mastered the outside world, was to install their water font and feed hopper inside (instead of the stand-ins we had outside). Our other measure (under the advisement of trusted friends on the internet) was to leave the girls inside for a day, which we did yesterday because it was kind of chilly and rainy so it seemed like a good day to try it out. This strategy's intent was to deliver the message that inside the coop is home just as much as the outside. I guess we'll see if that had an affect tonight.

Another lesson in progress is utilizing the nest boxes. The barred rocks are experienced layers and they go right to the nest boxes, which are cozy and have some nice wood chips for sitting on (I guess?!?). The new brown layers aren't quite there yet, they are laying (though not quite with full mature consistency), but they are not laying in the nest boxes yet. One improvment in that regard is a barrier that we raise at night so the girls don't sleep (and poop) in the nest boxes. Nice, clean nest boxes mean nice, clean eggs - this is what we want. The nest box barriers can be lowered from the outside, while doing the morning chores: watering and feeding.

All in all, we are on a learning curve that is almost as steep as our layers. We're all enjoying the sunshine and we sure like watching "our girls" forage on pasture - it feels very satisfying to let the chickens be chickens. Enjoy the pics below of "where they've been" and "where they're going" - the difference is pretty remarkable.

"Where they are going": Today's new pasture - look at all that long grass & oats!

"Where they've been": After only one day of foraging, the vegetation is cropped and the ground is fertilized.

The barred rocks always come to see me at the fence, this makes me happy.

This barred rock is showing her foraging prowess. The bare-ish patch of ground is a spot where she has forage and kicked to find the choicest morsels under the grass. She's still going in this shot, onto a new spot. The brown layers are starting to pick up on this sophisticated foraging behaviour. 

Eggmobile completion

We have been full time chicken farming since the arrival of our new girls on Thursday! We've been teaching them about foraging and their new home. Some of our challenges at this point are teaching them to roost in their eggmobile and not in it's axles and also where to lay their eggs - the nest boxes, instead of the ground. So far this involves a lot of late-night chicken wrangling or bonding as it were. Though we have heard this should only take about a week and then they will, in fact, go home to roost as the old expression goes. We are keeping track of their progress, last night we had 10% of the girls inside so tonight we'll see what kind of learning has taken place. The new birds are also really keen to play games with the fence (ie - escape!), so we are about to electrify the fencing to make it clear that inside the fence is preferable to outside, although Blue would much prefer if they came out to play!

It feels really good to watch them learn to forage and scratch and eat green things. They are developing their intrinsic skills more and more everyday. On their first day they were afraid to come out from under the eggmobile and now they are proudly strutting down their plank and heading out to pasture. Their new feed, a vegetarian, non-GMO feed seems to be going down well and we're happy to be supporting our new local feed store, The Kakabeka Depot,  in Kakabeka Falls, ON.

Suffice to say, as you might suspect, raising 100 chickens is much different from raising 8, but we are enjoying it a lot. Its a great joy to raise chickens in a way that we can all feel good about. Enjoy the photos of the last days :)

Egg comparison: larger, lighter eggs are from the Barred Rocks, the darker smaller eggs are from the Hyline Browns

Here they come - new pasture! 

March of the chickens

Ready to forage in the new area, while fertilizing our fields. 

Bring on the green stuff!

Food & water...for now. The feed hopper is being installed today.

Still more...

Chickens being chickens

Pasture-raised pretty lady

one more egg comparison, the new pullet eggs will get bigger and bigger everyday, they taste just as good and I love their dark brown shell

Eggmobile Progress: More to come...

Well, we woke up the morning, like everyone in our region to yucky icy, snowy conditions. This has put a temporary pause on our fast & furious eggmobile construction. So I'm taking this time out to pause and show you our progress...in pictures.

Haywagon, soon to be eggmobile

This could be a problem, we have to move it.

sizing things up

Let's give it a go!

 The beast moves...

On the road...

 Hop on Leigh!

We made it to the where the work will be done.

 Haywagon demolished, the first wall it built.

Time to stand it up

Another perspective

Second wall going on

Roof on, 3 walls finished - that little square will be the door the chickens come out!

View through the first wall hole, the nest boxes will go in this spot.

Spring weather

This spring we've enjoyed record high temperatures in March and now in April the snow is long gone and the lakes have broken up. Although we've had quite a bit of rain in the last few weeks it sure beats snow, we've even experienced a thunder storm the other night. Considering in previous years the snow has been on the ground until early May, its a real pleasure to get out on the land early. Now will this mean that we'll get an early start on farming? Well, yes and no. Some early, frost hardy crops are going in, and spinach and sorrel planted last year are large enough to pick, but realistically its still going to be months before our transplants can go in, as the nightime temperatures are often below freezing. Additionally it could snow at any moment the weather chooses to go out, so we don't want to jump the gun and lose a crop.

However, the ground is drying up, which means we can start moving the tractor around on the higher parts of the land, including into the woodlot to fetch the hay-wagon out. The wagon will be pressed into service this year as a portable chicken coop ( known as an eggmobile), this requires some modification, and that process begins today.

For the next week I imagine we'll be eggmobiling it up around here!