A Productive Day on the Farm

Today the weather gods smiled on us and gave us a mild day with no rain. Our list of to-dos had gotten long and neglected, so we decided to tackle some of the tasks. I cleaned out the barn and made space for a new load of hay, and I also took down all the garlic that had been hanging and curing. I selected some of the best looking heads of garlic and broke them down into cloves, which I then planted in the raised bed on the west edge of the property. This year we will have two rows of garlic instead of three, and I hope that will be enough.

Jess busied himself with cleaning out the goat shelter on the east side of the property, hauling out all the old soiled bedding material (straw). We put down fresh bedding in the shelter and then moved the female goats over. We left the male goats on the west side, and Our Nubian buck, Valentine, has been crying loudly ever since. I think he misses his lady friends. Poor guy. We're really hoping the girls are pregnant this time. If not, that means that our buck isn't doing his job and we'll have to find a new buck.

Jess hauled that trailer of soiled bedding over to our newly built cedar fence and laid down a thick layer of it as mulch along one side of it. We'd like to kill the grass and add some organic matter so that when spring arrives, we can plant some trees and blueberry bushes and maybe do some actual landscaping for a change.

Once Jess finished that stinky chore, he cleaned out the chicken coop and added fresh wood shavings to the coop and nesting boxes. Two stinky chores back to back! The chickens will be happy though, and maybe the ducks too. They've been sneaking into the chickens' nesting boxes and laying eggs there, silly things. Although I can't really complain because at least someone is laying eggs regularly while the chickens are on vacation! I hate having to buy eggs at the store.

A Hard Frost

It's November on the farm, a typically slow time of year. The hens have all decided to takea break from their hectic job of daily egg-laying and have been lazily foraging about the property for the last several weeks. Each morning I collect the eggs and find only two or three in the nesting boxes. I'm amazed each year when the winter solstice arrives and then in that first subsequent week of the days getting longer, egg production picks up again. The hens know. Vacation has officially ended and it's time to lay again.

Last night was a very cold night, and I was on edge because two nights ago a predator got into our coop and killed our largest rooster, a buff orpington. I'm surprised the predator (raccoon seems the most likely) stopped at one chicken and didn't kill the whole flock. He/she apparently moved on to the neighbour's flock last night because I could hear the sounds of chickens being murdered into the wee hours -- very unsettling and heartbreaking for me, having no way to help. My suspicion is that the scent of our dogs may have discouraged the predator from sticking around our farm long term, but we will have to remain vigilant for a while.

Our coop is beautiful, but I noticed this morning that the roof leaks. That explains why the bedding material is so damp. I'm not sure what to do about it, but maybe Jess will have some ideas. I'm going to the store to get cracked corn today. The chickens love it, and the process of digesting cracked corn generates heat and will help to keep the chickens warm during these long, cold nights.

Halloween Treats

It's Mandarin orange season, and I had a hankering for some chocolate dipped orange slices. They're very simple to make really. All you need is some good quality chocolate, in this case, Bernard Callebaut, chopped up and melted in a double boiler. Peel the oranges, pull apart the segments, and dip them into the melted chocolate. I arranged them on a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet to let them set. I was impatient, so I put them in the fridge, and 20 minutes later, voila! Delicious, chocolaty, juicy orange slices. They didn't last long.

New life on the farm

Moving from the big city to the farm in the summer of 2013 was exciting -- all of our talking and dreaming turned into reality, and suddenly we needed rubber boots and pitchforks. Our sweet little two acres in the heart of the Saanich Peninsula was a horse farm when we purchased it. The soil was terribly compacted from years of hosting too many horses, and there was a big gravelly riding ring in one corner. The property almost seemed inhospitable to life. It was a flat, sunny, barren blank canvas with a creek running across the lowest section at the back, barely a trickle in the summer, but sometimes overflowing its banks in the winter. It didn't take long before the name Creekbottom Farm was born.

That first year we tried to break up the soil a bit, but it was difficult. We planted a cover crop of winter rye in the fall and left it until spring. By then it had grown up lush and green, and in the process, it had rooted deeply enough to break up some of that compacted soil for us. We tilled it under and built up some raised beds. After receiving back the results of our soil tests, we made a custom mixture of organic amendments and mixed it all into the soil beds. In our first year we planted peas, carrots, potatoes, kale, spinach, greens, beets, chard, tomatoes, garlic, beans, corn, and way too much squash. Zucchini, summer squash, winter squash -- so much squash! The garden surpassed our wildest expectations and produced an amazing bounty of delicious veggies, and we spent the summer months gorging ourselves. September was a month of preserving, and we froze, canned and fermented as much as we could. I can't think of too many activities more deeply satisfying than filling the pantry with homegrown preserves in preparation for winter.

Also in that first year, we set up a chicken coop and run, and we populated it with a lovely mix of heritage laying hens. We started with about a dozen, and before long we were collecting multi-hued eggs each morning. Next we added goats. So much to learn! Our research indicated that Nigerian Dwarf goats are both small and thrifty, and produce delicious milk with the highest butterfat content of any goat. So we got ourselves two does and impregnated them in the fall. Spring arrived with the birth of five adorable kids! We realized almost immediately that milking a Nigerian Dwarf is a nice idea but practically impossible if you have regular adult-sized hands.

Further research led us to purchase two beautiful purebred Nubian does and a buckling. Nubians are a full-sized dairy breed and produce delicious milk with a butterfat content of approximately 7%, giving it a smooth, creamy and rich taste. They were in milk when we purchased them, so we continued milking them until January when they started to dry up. We were anticipating that they were pregnant by that point, but alas, our young buckling was too small and inexperienced to successfully impregnate two bossy and mature does. We've been without milk for this whole year, and we have our fingers crossed that our buck, now considerably larger and stinkier, will have done his job.

Our farm keeps us busier than I ever could have imagined. Thankfully, Jess is strong and resourceful and capable, and he has taken on the bulk of the outdoor work, which requires such a diversity of skills from carpentry to running the BCS to shoveling out the coop and goat shelters to trimming goat hooves. He's amazing. I busy myself with the lighter chores, feeding the animals, planting seeds, tending the flower beds, but mostly, cooking meals and keeping our farmhouse clean and organized. It's a partnership that, for the most part, works very well for us. Our project list never diminishes but instead grows ever longer.