Happy First Day of Fall! I know not everyone welcomes fall like I do; you know who you are, those of you who see fall as a harbinger of winter. Cold long Canadian winter. Now I am not a huge fan of winter. I enjoy it probably up until late January and then it starts to wear on me. Thankfully that is just  about the time the seed catalogues start to arrive; so sanity saved.

Fall, or autumn as one of my grade school teachers tried to drum into me, fall is my favourite season. It is the time when all our hard work on the homestead surrounds us, the jars of canned food and medicine, the freshly butchered chickens and pig in the freezer the root cellar brimming with squash, turnip, carrots, apples and potatoes. The weather is amazing, warm days and cool crisp evenings, the first aromas of woodsmoke in the air. Mother nature's beautiful colour display, snuggling into cozy sweaters, having time to think as the workload slows down to a mangable 70 hours a week.  Fall is time to sit back and enjoy your family friends, all your hard work and most importantly, the beauty surrounding you everywhere you turn.
















I think we should turn the first day of fall into Homesteading Day. Doesn't matter if your entire harvest is three bottles of jam in your closet! You are a homesteader at heart and you are well on your way simply because you have done something! There are many people out there who share your dream of the house / farm in the country  who haven't done much but dream: but you actually did something, You canned three bottles of jam, you took the time and money to purchase your supplies, you read up on how to make and safely can your jam, then you did it! That hot, humid Saturday while the other people took a drive in the country in their air conditioned cars dreaming about which property they will have "someday", you stayed home canning jam and becomming a homesteader.
So for you and everyone else who is living the homesteading life, Today is our Day! 
 
Join me in celebrating the first International Homesteading Day!

We will be celebrating by butchering 15 chickens, how will you celebrate?

Hey Everybody, well it has been another crazy week here at the homestead! The push is on to get everything done as we feel fall closing in. It really is a weird September, we have had frost for the past two nights now, we were lucky to escape the snowfall they had out west,  but the cold mornings are a hurry up and get it done kick in the pants; and the forecast for tomorrow is calling for close to 2 inches of rain.

 The guys have been busy getting the garden ready, they have moved close to half a ton of rock, by hand, away from the new garden. There was an old  foundation smack dab in the middle of where the garden needs to be, the pigs did  a great job of rooting up the rocks so they were close to the surface. KillWilly in particular loves tossing rocks around. The lower bed is leveled and Gary will be taking the rototiller, aka the beast, in there within a day or two to incorporate the manure from the pig yard. Then we will be planting garlic next week. We haven't received the Siberian variety I ordered from Vesseys yet, but it should be here soon and we have our own saved seed to plant. I was hoping to be able to plant a covered crop of buckwheat in the garden that we could till under come spring, but with  the cooler weather coming early I think we are going to end up just mulching heavily with old straw or hay. This is what the pasture looked like on May 20th of this year:

Then on Labour Day weekend after the pigs had been there for a few days:

Now today, the first terrace, closest to the camera, is leveled and just waiting for the manure to be worked in.

Speaking of the pigs, Patches has been bringing her latest litter out foraging
this week. They were born on the first, so she is keeping to the same schedule
she always has. They are starting to eat from the creep feeder, but had a great
time running around and pushing up dirt with their snouts! There is nothing that
is as hysterical to watch as a little piglet trying to catch a grasshopper. I
could watch them all day!

The doorframe for the new basement door arrived yesterday, so we should get that in next week. Then we can start closing up the basement at the back of the
house. That is going to make a huge difference in the amount of wood we burn
this winter, it is also going to make it easier to keep the basement at a steady
temperature for sprout production. After a year of experimenting Gari is producing well over 100 pounds of fodder a day and we want to double that for the winter! I have been busy putting together a guide to growing fodder, we are producing all this feed, winter and summer, on a set up which cost less than $150.00 to put in place. And it saves us somewhere around $300 a month in feed costs!  The animals love to get their fodder everyday.

The other preoccupation around here this week is getting ready for 4H Pro-show. This is the huge provincial show for all the top qualifiers for kids from 4H  clubs all over Nova Scotia, Reiley is showing both Ivan and Pepper next weekend. He was supposed to show both animals in conformation and showmanship but there was an overlap in the schedule so he had to choose between beef and goat for showmanship and has decided to show beef. So pepper will only be shown in conformation class. Reiley is also taking one of his wood working projects, and  will be competing in the beef and goat judging classes also. It is always a  crazy busy weekend with kids running on too much sugar and caffeine with too  little sleep, (barns open at 5:30 Saturday morning) and we wouldn't miss it for the world.

So, next week is garlic planting time, I may set up a couple of cold frames in the new garden and plant some greens just to give us a bit of an extended season. The tomatoes have all succumbed to late season blight so they
need to be hauled out and burnt, the heavy frost last night has finished most of
everything else off so a clean up in the garden is necessary. It is also time to
get the bees ready for winter. I will be opening up the hive and checking on the
amount of honey they have, insulating the unused portion of the hive and the
top. I am hoping to be able to remove those two plastic frames from the original
nuc which gave us such a headache in July. I don't anticipate harvesting any
more honey this fall. I would rather leave the honey there for winter stores
than have to start feeding them in March.  I am also going to be testing the soil in the new garden beds and  figuring out what amendments need to be done. It is easiest to do these in the fall and  I will  have a post next week about this topic.

 So the final full week of September, chores in the garden as we take most of the last of the harvest from the garden, there is still a lot of canning and preserves to put up, apples to can for applesauce and pie filling, pumpkin and some squash the rutabagas will need to be canned and I need to put up some more blueberry. On the herbal side I am drying sage, thyme and basil. I will be
potting up the cuttings I have for the herb "window" in the kitchen; rosemary,
basil and chives. The mint, lemon balm and othe tea ingredients are drying nicely. I will be attending the Christmas Craft Sale at the Digby Elementary School the last weekend in November. I will have a wide assortment of soaps and herbal products there as well as some of my silver wirework jewelry. Lots of fiddley things to get ready for a craft show.
I am also in charge of decorating the rental hall for Digby County 4H awards night on the 17th of October, (how do I get myself into these things?). I want to join the Exhibition Committee so the first meeting there is October 1st and I have just started working to try and resurrect the Digby Farmers Market for next year. On top of that Reiley needs to start schoolwork, There is painting to be done inside, the pantry and 1/2 bath to gut and build new, the regular 4h meeting schedule to start up again..... I think I need to lie down now.

I have always been uber organized, you have to be with five kids all going in different directions. This past year being here with just Gary and Reiley I have kind of let things slide, time to pull up my socks and get things running again. Honestly the busier I am, the more I can get done. Firstly I have to get the house running on it's schedule again. If you have a set schedule for your house, monthly meal plans, who cleans what and when; it frees up so much time. It was how I went back to school with four kids aged 4 - 10yrs. Not only went back to school full time, but  took a part time job as tutor and lab instructor in the nursing program, maintained a 3.95 GPA and kept the kids going to Girl Guides, gymnastics, karate, soccer and public school all while Gary was working 70+ hours a week and managed to meet the target of family meals at the table a minimum of 5 days a week. Yes I had a lot of support from Gary but the organization I had built into our routine made it possible. I have let it slide, time to get it back! Have a great day everybody! ( Remember to breathe!!)

I just posted a little op-ed piece on the facebook page:

There has been a lot of buzz the past few weeks about the rise in beef prices both on the hoof and in the grocery, I have had a couple of clients contact me to ask what we thought about putting on some calves to background. I posted this on the farming in the maritimes group but I thought it needed repeating here:

  " Jumping into the cattle market now is ill advised. Especially with the glut of pork and chicken that is about to hit...

Read More...

It occurred to me today that while I have spoken often of parts of our plan for Hand-Forged Farm I have never really laid out the entire plan for you. Today you get the full vision!

We first and foremost are a working homestead / farm. We will continue to produce fresh healthy food for ourselves and the community. The structure for the market garden is being put in place this fall, so that we will begin selling produce starting in the spring of 2015. The first greenhouse will be completed late this fall. We will be offering a limited amount of CSA memberships next year and expanding as we bring the garden to full size the following year.

The garden also serves as a valuable teaching tool for those who want to learn the skills required to produce their own food. From WOOFER,s who stay for the season, or part of the season; to workshop participants who come for a weekend to learn a specific set of skills. There a few more plans that will revolve around the garden, but those details will need to wait for now.

The barn will grow also, to start with Gary wants to run 2 sows and a boar. We are on the hunt for a Tamworth gilt, he might also consider a Duroc. The pigs will continue to feed our family and local community. We will continue to sell weaner pigs but will also be raising more of our pork for sale. Gary is finally happy with the system he has worked out for growing sprouts as fodder and is now producing well over 100 lbs a day summer and winter. The animals are all doing very well on them and we are ready to expand. Keeping more pigs will also allow more hands on experience for those who want to work with pigs.

I want to build up the goat herd to six milking does, This will provide enough milk for our family's needs and my soap making. Again, the expansion will allow for more hands on workshops and teaching opportunities.

There are no concrete plans for cattle at the moment, but I have a feeling one or more of the boys may have plans in that area. This would be at least 3 years out right now.

Herbs are also an integral part of the plans. There is going to be a large herb garden which I will use for our medicinal herbs. I plan to use our homestead as a venue for herb walks and wellness retreats and workshops. We plan to bring in other teachers and leaders to give workshops; herbal weekends are a great place to start.

A new orchard of apples, pears, peaches and cherries is going to be planted next spring. Between the garden and the orchard, we will need a few more bee hives. I am planning at least 1 workshop next year for introductory beekeeping.

We have a food forest planned for an area close to the ridge line on the property, and I am working hard to bring a permaculture design course here in late next year or early the following year. Accommodations for WOOFERs round out the plans on the drawing board for now.

Whew!  When I write it all out it sounds almost impossible; but when I look back at what we have done in the past year I know we will bring it all together. It is what we have always wanted to do. We could just build up our property and become almost self sufficient, but we have always wanted to share our knowledge as well as learn from others. For us that is the only way to really become self sufficient... by being part of a self sufficient community.

Humans were not meant to function in isolation, a strong community of people with varying skills and abilities is the basis of any healthy society. We have, for the most part, lost sight of that fact. It is our intention to work with as many like minded people as possible to change that. The oft quoted "be the change you want to see", message is alive and well here at Hand - Forged Farm, and thank you for being along for the journey.

I thought it was time for a little update on this summer's projects. Remember these guys?

Well, they have grown a little...

Aren't they just too cute?  They are quite settled in on their little piece of the farm.

As I posted about 6 weeks ago, one of the major projects here this summer is building a road to allow us access to the back half of the property where our wood lot is. The guys have been hard at work moving fences and shifting things around so the pigs can start the "plowing" of the road. They finally finished and they moved the pigs onto the new road four days ago.
So back on June 24th, the area looked like this:

After four days of very happy rooting by the porcine division, our soon to be road looks like this:

Speaking of the pigs, Patches is due in less than a month, September 5th to be exact. She is in really good shape and having a grand old time rooting around in her new space...

As long as those three strands of barbed wire hold up we'll be in great shape.

The goats are also enjoying their digs this summer. Between playing on the stump and the rock and peering in to watch the chickens, days are very full indeed.

The knotweed battle has taken a decided turn in our favour. Gary has a new toy!

He has hit the big patch of knotweed a couple of times now and it seems to be working; apart from an awful smell and a patch of landscape that looks like a scene from Apocalypse Now. Anything has to be better than knotweed.

Everything else on the farm is incredibly green. Even though we thinned out a huge amount of weak, smaller trees There is still a great amount of shade cover and as predicted the undergrowth has grown up with the increase in sun.

The blue is the roof of the chicken hut, it is approximately 100 feet from the back of the house. The new road runs up just to the left of the hut.
We are about half way through the working season, aka summer. We are slightly behind where we thought we would be at this point, but all in all we are happy with how things are progressing. This comming week will be all hands to the wheel as Reiley and I will be away from the farm all the following week, August19th through the 23rd for the Digby County Exhibition.

Reiley is showing Ivan and Pepper on Tuesday afternoon / evening. Also, hopefully, on Wednesday for the championship classes. I will be judging the crafts and sewing categories for 4H on Wednesday, and Digby county 4H has hired me to be the barn manager for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. So if you are in the area please come down to the exhibition and see us and everything else. It is the 135th anniversary of this exhibition and we are looking forward to showing there. 

Have a great day everyone! Enjoy the super moon tonight, hopefully cloud won't hide it from us.

It was cooler today than it has been of late, downright chilly in Digby early this morning. That got me to thinking about fall, and planting garlic. If you want to grow great garlic in our colder climate I recommend planting one or two varieties of hard neck garlic this fall. Now is the time to order your supply of garlic to use as seed and to start  getting the beds ready for planting.Garlic is not hard to grow, but is a little  fussy about where it likes to be. Well drained soil is a must, garlic planted in wet soil will rot. Make sure the ground you select for garlic beds drains well in spring as that is the time of year when garlic is most sensitive to excess moisture. A loose, soil with a moderate amount of
organic  material is ideal.

We prefer a milder garlic at our house, we have been growing and saving bulbs of Legacy and Music varieties for several years now. Legacy is an heirloom variety, brought to Canada by German settlers in the 1800's. It is moderately spicy when first harvested, dries and store well and mellows with storage. I find it particularly good for roasting. The picture at the top of this post is some of our Legacy garlic. The other variety we grow is Music. Music produces big bulbs of white garlic. Although Music is a thin skinned variety, many layers of thin skins, it stores exceptionally well when dried immediately after harvesting. Music is a mellow flavoured variety and I prefer it for flavouring sauces. This year we are going to be trying a new variety, Siberian; It is a a spicier variety at harvest but also grows milder with storage. It is supposed to be very hardy, and has a darker burgundy coloured skin. We are trying it here this year because I am slightly worried about the typical freeze thaw cycle of an average winter in Digby county.


Regardless of the variety of hard neck variety you choose,  now is the time to select a location for your garlic bed. It must be dry, garlic does not do well in wet. Planting of fall garlic should be done about three weeks before ground freeze up. Now in Nova Scotia this could be anywhere from early November to early January. We usually plant the  last week of September; but you need to  keep an eye on the long range weather forecast. If it is for a prolonged warm spell delay for a few days, if it is going to turn cold plant earlier. You are trying to achieve a period of good root development but you don't want any green to emerge. Now is the perfect time to till you beds and plant a quick growing cover crop which will germinate in 7 - 14 days. We use buckwheat. This will then be worked in as green manure before planting your garlic.

Garlic can be planted in single, double, or multi row beds. Ideally you should have 4 - 8 inches between bulbs on all sides. The larger spacing for the elephant varieties. If you want higher yield per square footage, and smaller bulbs and cloves are acceptable then you can stick to the smaller spacing. 

You can save a portion of your harvest for planting. When choosing bulbs for seed, save the bulbs with the biggest cloves. Individual clove size is of more importance in determining the resulting bulb size than the size of the bulb it came from. In English: Bigger cloves equal bigger bulbs. Small cloves, even from large overall bulbs, will produce smaller bulbs. So save your seed from bulbs which have big cloves. Dry your garlic as soon as it has been picked.  Do not separate the bulbs until you are ready to plant the following year.

When planting time has arrived, separate the cloves being careful not to damage the cloves. Roots sprout from the bottom of the clove, the not pointy end. When you separate the cloves they should pull cleanly away from the basal plate, the piece where the roots of that bulb grew from, if part of the basal plate comes off with a clove just gently flick or pull it off of the clove. Plant your cloves pointy side up, with the tip being approximately 2 inches below the soil.  We have found anywhere between 2 - 3 inches is fine.

After you have planted your cloves, you must mulch. This will help protect the cloves from early frosts and slow down the emergence of green shoots if the weather stays warm.  The rule of thumb here is about 4 inches.  Garlic is one of those plants which suffer heavily from competition, so weeding is imperative.. One note of caution; if you are having a wet year, do not mulch again as garlic will rot quickly.

This should get you through the planning and planting of your garlic crop for this year. Remember: hard neck varieties for fall planting, large cloves with a minimum of 4 inches between bulbs, a minimum of two inches of soil between tip of clove and top of soil, in loose well drained soil, with four inches of mulch on top. Next spring we will talk about caring for the growing garlic, to cut or not to cut the scrapes, pest and disease control, watering and then harvesting and preparing the garlic for storage.
 
As always, I'll be happy to answer any questions, just post them in the comments. Have a great day everybody!

If you have had to change meal plans just before supper, or even
worse, mid stream as it were while cooking, you need to get control of your
pantry. The good news is organizing and maintaining an organized pantry is not as difficult as you think.

First of all, what is a pantry? At it's most basic, a pantry is simply your collection of foods and foodstuffs from which you create meals. The
better stocked, or deeper, your pantry the easier it is to quickly prepare
nutritious and tasty meals.

So, even if your pantry currently consists of salt, pepper and some
mustard, you can apply the following method and build a deep pantry to feed
yourself and your family.

The first thing you need to do is record EVERYTHING you and members
of your family eat for at least a week. Two weeks is better, a month is ideal.
Just keep a notebook on the counter or the fridge and have everyone write down whenever they take something from the fridge, or cupboards to eat. Also write down every time you purchase takeout or eat out at a restaurant. If you already use the meal planning method of grocery shopping you are already a step ahead,  but it can be worthwhile to door the notebook exercise, because if you are  anything like us you may plan to eat X, Y and Z but sometimes life happens and  you end up eating X, D and R that week.

 So, you now have a notebook full of raw data about your family's eating habits. You need to sit down and organize this data set. You can do this with pen and paper, or if you are the technical type use your favourite spreadsheet program.  Organize the data into items that you can store with no
refrigeration, items that have a short lifespan and require refrigeration, and items which are longterm storable but in a freezer.

So, nothing too difficult yet. This is where most people, my family  included, get a good look at how much processed and "junk" food they have been eating. The good news is this process will help you steer your family to healthier choices.

The first category to look at is the long term storage items which do not require freezing or refrigeration. These dry goods will generally be the backbone of your cooking. Here we find things like pasta, rice, spices, sauces or ingredients to make sauces, flour, oil and sugars etc. What is the item you used the most of during your recording period?  The second most used? Go through the list and you will quickly see what you should have the most of and what you do not need to have large quantities of.

Our dry goods list looks something like this:
               
Tomato sauce, flour, black beans, tomato paste. oatmeal, brown rice, chicken
broth, beef broth, kidney beans, brown sugar, yeast, canned tomato soup, egg noodles, baking beans, molasses, cream of mushroom soup canned, white sugar, apple cider  vinegar, baking soda, salt,  baking powder, chocolate chips,pie fillings, pudding mix, shake n bake, pickles, jam , relish, Dijon mustard, popcorn, BBQ sauce, ketchup etc. This varies depending on the season, but that  is the list that you will always find in quantity in my pantry.


Now, the amount of food you store will depend entirely on how large your family is and how much room you have. I like to have at least three months of dry goods stored. Not all of it is in my pantry. At any given time there is usually food stored elsewhere in the house. Especially right now as my 'pantry' is a collection of awkward shelves sitting in the room that will be my pantry when we get around to renovating it in September or October..
A stand alone pantry is ideal, in my vision, a pantry will house stores of food, many small kitchen appliances, and will also have  counter space for working and an small sink. I should get everything but the sink when we put in the new pantry here. In the last two houses we have lived in, Gary and the boys have built pantries in existing closet space.

These have worked just fine and were cheap and easy to install. It can be a little extra work to keep them rotated properly and hungry teenagers can completely un-organise a pantry in under a minute. So if you are short on cupboard space, have a look at a nearby closet or stair well that you can convert..

So, now we have a list of staples, a place, or an idea of a space to keep them, where to go from here? We could just go out and buy a month supply of everything on our list but odds are most of what you eat is not going to be on sale that week. So here is how to build your pantry on a budget, slowly.

Yep, that's it. The secret is you have already done the hard work by tracking your food usage and compiling your list of staples. So now you start to build your supplies without charging a massive grocery bill to your credit card. You will remember that I don't have a credit card and advise everyone in our self sufficiency workshops to ditch theirs.

If you will be using your existing cupboards as your day to day pantry have a good clean out. Throw out all the out dated food,, and anything that has not expired, but you know you won't be eating, donate to your local food bank. Now you can start building your supplies. Watch your local flyers, if you are a coupon person continue to work with your coupons. If you use four cans of tomatoes a week and a store has them on sale for 50% off, buy eight or ten or however many you afford. (If this were me I would buy 24 but I will get to that later.) Keep in mind that next week you need to buy the four you will use next week. Once you get a month supply of that item, start with another. Remember to place the newly purchased items at the back of the shelves to keep your products fresh.

After a while you will open your pantry doors and discover  that you have a lot of food stored. And you didn't need to go in debt to do it. Now you have reached what I think of as the saving point. Once you have reached a point where you have a few months of most staples on hand you can change how you buy groceries forever! This is the fun part, supermarket managers hate to see me come in. The manager of one of the supermarkets in Bridgewater saw me loading 2 cases each of chicken and beef broth into my cart and jokingly said, "you're supposed to buy stuff that isn't on sale too!"  I gave him a big smile and replied, "I only need whatever is on sale" and walked away.
For the most part this is how I shop. After tracking everything you buy and paying close attention to the pricing for however long it takes you to build up a good stockpile of staples you will know the seasonality of your staples. I only buy sugar twice a year. Once during the summer canning season,  and again during the late fall, Christmas baking season, when stores put it on as a loss leader. I NEVER pay more than half price for sugar. Occasionally we will use something more than I had planned and I will either pay more than I want to, or dip into the minimum 6 week supply if I know that item will be on sale in the next week or two.

You can also save money by experimenting  with producing some of your own staples. If you use a lot of tomato products, sauce, paste, canned tomatoes; try making some of your own. You can grow your own or try your local farmer's market. Go towards the end of the day, you may be able to pick up the last of the days supply for a lower price if the farmer doesn't want to take it home. An even better way is to build a relationship with one or two of the venders and ask them about ordering or buying a large quantity of product. Going back to our staple of tomato products, you can make homemade canned tomatoes for pennies a jar. You don't even need to make a whole lot of different tomato products. If you need tomato sauce, open a can of tomatoes, hit them with a stick blender, add some herbs, salt and pepper, a few dehydrated mushrooms and voila! You have tomato sauce. Much healthier and better tasting than anything you could have purchased.

If you refer back to my staples list everything that is in red type is something that we have made and canned ourselves.
We didn't start out that way, and I don't advise you to try and make all your own product at once either. Start with something easy that can be processed in a hot water bath. Learn how to make it, get comfortable with the process, and learn to recognise problems. Then when you are comfortable doing that you can try things which require a pressure cooker. In general low acidic products require a pressure cooker to get temperatures high enough to  kill off bacteria. A good reference book will give you good recipes to start with or the US department of agriculture website has good information on canning and recipes to try. Sadly, the Canadian site is pretty much useless.

So that is my recipe for building a deep pantry, you can also apply the same principles to frozen food. Freezing fresh vegetables in season is the cheapest and most nutritious vegetables you are ever going to get. Same with fruit. Fruit an also be canned, but do require a pressure cooker. Consider ordering a side of pork or quarter or side of beef for the freezer, it will cost you less and if you know where it comes from you can usually be assured that it was raised as you would have.

So, how does this tie back to Saturday's post? It's about control. Pure and simple. Taking back control of your life, and there is no better way to start than by taking control of your food. Imagine opening your cupboard and knowing that you have one, two ,or three moths of food for your family. It is like money in the bank, if something happens, an illness, a layoff at work the peace of mind is priceless. Food is a necessity, but it can also be a family building point. Even if it is only one day a week sit down as a family and enjoy a meal together. You will know your kids better I guarantee it! Have a great day everybody!
 

We are exhausted!  Even the dogs are wiped.  I have been coming back from a midweek migraine and Gary has been overdoing it for a long stretch. We have hit the homesteading wall.

We are at that point where we have been getting to know the land here for about a year, we know what we want to do, and what we have to do to get there.We can see it as it will be; but we are impatient creatures.

It is especially difficult as we were so much further ahead at the last place. Starting out here seemed like a huge step backwards, I know that when we get this place rolling it is going to be even better than what we could have built at the place in Bridgewater, but it just seems like we have been saying "didn't we just do this?"  way to often this week.

I think a lot of it has to do with the garden. Having been completely self sufficient , and then some, with vegetables it seems to be an admission of failure to me every time I have to buy veg this year.

We are making some progress, outside living space is coming around, Gary is having fun building rock walls. For some reason, unfathomable to me, Gary thinks building with rocks and bricks is fun. I am assured it is a "guy thing".  To be honest, I'm just pleased that he does find it enjoyable. I love a rock wall!!
 We have been building beds for the herbs, figuring out pathways, and access points. Sometimes I am my own worst enemy as I am adamant that just because something is functional does not exclude it from being beautiful. Yes, I only demand the impossible. I'm quite frankly surprised that Gary didn't throttle me years ago.

tomorrow is going to be a big day, I will be making strawberry jam on the cookstove outside. Gary and Reiley will be attempting to build the ultimate mink proof chicken pen as the first birds will be arriving on Tuesday. July 15th and we haven't had any birds yet. That is a record. I have layers coming with the meat birds. I have been buying eggs since last September when a mink killed all my beautiful barred rock hens and the roo.

I promise there will be lots of pictures tomorrow, for tonight I am off to prepare berries for jam while Gary cooks a couple of steaks and he seems to be making me a yummy spinach and goat cheese salad. I really am a lucky girl!

Have a good evening everyone.

We have been going through some old photos, looking at greenhouses we built in the past and trying to decide which way we want to proceed. There is the tried and true hoop house version:

Yes, that is a very young Mr.Reiley there. Either 6 or 7 years old. Or we could go with the beautiful post and beam that the boys built out of wood salvaged from an old barn:

While I am a fan of the latter, I am not sure how viable this is as the incarnation above took Gary, Jason and Graham almost two months to build. We are limited on manpower these days. We will continue to mull the ideas.

On the finished project side, the first raised bed is done and planted.

Yay! This bed is on the NE side of the house. That is the area we have been putting in swales and drainage to try and dry up the area and slow down the water flow. The potential site for the micro hydro project is also on that side.

The bees are in!!  I brought them home in that downpour on Thursday, and we added them  to the top bar hive today. We did get some pics so I will write up a post on Wednesday.
The work has also started on moving the Basement door to the side of the house and filling in "the Pit".

Attractive no? Anyway, the plan is to install weeping tile accross the back of the house, fill in "the pit" and install a new direct entry basement door on the side of the house.  The window just above the current basement door is going to be removed and we have a lovely set of french patio doors to go into that wall. The newly level ground will be our main outdoor eating, BBQ and hangout space.
Today the guys installed level markers and began knocking down the pile of earth on the right hand side of the picture:

So now you know what we have been up to this week. In addition to all the regular chores, feeding animals, weeding the garden etc.  There is just never enough time!
I hope to have the final pasture pig post on Monday. This one will cover feeding of both meat pigs and breeding stock. It May not appear until Tuesday. We will see how Gary is feeling, while I know some about pigs, he is the expert in that field around here. Actually I would say he is the expert in that field anywhere. See you soon. Have a great day every one!

The past few weeks the guys have been working on widening out the path that we have started to give us access to the back of the property. Last fall the path
was cleared to just past the pig's shelter. Now that good weather is finally
here we are getting ready to shift things around and open up more areas to the
pigs.

As I mentioned before, the front half of this property was harvested about 8 -
10 years ago, this has left us with essentially coppiced maple, ash and beech.  Unfortunately, the silveculture was not maintained and the understory grew out of control with alders. this has left underdeveloped weak coppices that have grown laterally in search of light.
We have spent a lot of time this spring going through the front ten acres of this property selecting which trees to leave and which will need to be thinned. The plan has always been to use the front 10 acres for gardens, pasture and housing. The back 10 acres will be left as a managed woodlot for fuel and lumber for building projects around the farm.
We have to build the road stable enough to be able to drive the truck back to the barn area for unloading hay and such. After the barns we just need it developed enough to haul wood out. Gary and Reiley have plans to build a "woods buggy",
I am going on the long term horse or oxen route. Our son Jason is an experienced horse logger. I grew up with horses so I feel comfortable with this route.

So starting next week, we will open up the pigs area and allow them to do
what pigs do. They are great for clearing out underbrush, removing small stumps, dis-lodging medium to large rocks and adding fertility.. So we will expand the pig yard and move up the lower edge of the fence. We will leave the area that is now the lower edge of the pig yard, where they share a fence line with the  goats, to sit fallow for a couple of weeks. Then we will move the goat yard up  to allow them to have the space vacated by the pigs.
Eventually most of the area that is now the goat yard will be garden space.
(When I say eventually, I mean next year). Gary has already started moving some of the larger rock to make terraces for the garden.

So, that is the focus of work for the next few days. Looks like we are in for a deluge tomorrow so I will probably be bringing home a bee nuc. We will keep our fingers crossed! Have a great day everyone!