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Dan said: Where's the picture of Daniel in his suit and tie for the graduation?

Farmer Jo said: lol! The gate was just too narrow for us to go through with the big tractor, so we needed the 16-footer to make it easer to access. We will probably put your gate at the end of the chute.

gary said: oh no, I've been fired!

Farmer Jo said: I know the picture is not great - I wanted to take another few, but the camera died on me! I will try and get it sorted out today so that I can post better pics later this week.

Farmer Jo said: 30 feet is not NEARLY long enough! I want 300 chickens and the coop is only 8 feet wide, and 6 to 7 feet high. I keep telling Daniel to build it 40 feet long!

Dan said: Separate coop. But be reasonable... a coop that is 30 feet long isn't a coop anymore; that's a warehouse.

Farmer said: I say, process them all and have a huge chicken BBQ...

valgal said: do the seperate coop!

valgal said: Oh, and Stew!

For Dan at work!

Posted: June 17, 2013 | Leave a Comment

Here you go Dan, a picture of Daniel with a tie! Nice and formal, lol.

And Nerissa in her work clothes.

Today we will be building shelves for the pole barn while Daniel cuts grass for the neighbours and then does more fencing so we can move our sheep over to the new pasture.

When we are done with the shelves we have to clean out the jugs in the barn and make five jugs ready for the new layers. They are currently in three jugs, and getting a bit big for the space, so we can put twenty into each jug to give them room to move. In two weeks time I plan to let them roam freely in the barn for a few days, and then we will open the doors and let them roam all over the paddock for a few weeks. Hopefully by then the other layers will be used to going back into the coop at night and the new ones can follow them in. That's the plan - reality may be a bit different :D

And a monkey! He loves his trees....

Pasture and neighbours

Posted: June 16, 2013 | 1 Comment(s)

We have been praying for a solution to feed for our flock. The twenty acres is in bad shape and needs to be re-seeded, and left for a year. We were going to fence off the back of the property for extra pasture, but it would be a big job and take weeks. Our sheep are in need of food right now.

And so, by God's design, the property next to us was sold, and the new owners approached us and asked us to please put our sheep out on their land to keep the grass short! The property is HUGE, and already fenced with buffalo fence, with another area that is fenced off to make a runway. The only problem we have is water, but we will lay a pipe from our well to their land and pump water into a trough every day.

We were out there today fencing off a piece to keep the sheep in. We still have to fix a few places where the fence is broken, and add a gate, and then we will move the sheep over. What a blessing this is!

We mulched the raspberries in the orchard yesterday, and today, while the parents were fencing, the girls got in and mulched the strawberries. We still have to mulch the rest of the trees in the orchard, but this is going to help keep the weeds down for us over the summer months.

We took a walk in our vegetable patch as well, and things are starting to grow nicely there. It took us three days to plant the patch, but it already looks like we planted too little! Next year we may have to extend the patch forward a bit, depending on what the harvest is like this year.

Looks like the summer is going to be really hard work, but we will reap the benefits of home-grown fruit and vegetables for a long time.

By Dan, June 17, 2013

Where's the picture of Daniel in his suit and tie for the graduation?

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Rain, rain, rain, and more rain.....

Posted: June 15, 2013 | Leave a Comment

It has been raining for weeks now, with a few sunny patches in between the rain showers. We even had a tornado watch one day, and I ran out, rounded up the sheep and put them in the barn paddock so that they could find a little shelter during the storm. No tornado, thank the Lord, and later the sheep went back out to pasture.

The front yard looks terrible! We have all sorts of junk from the Mundare farm, and we are trying to get around to cleaning up the mess, but we need to build shelves for the pole barn to put the stuff on. Daniel went out this morning and harrowed the hill at the front of the vegetable patch. It looks a lot better now, and we will plant nice lawn grass on this hill.

I managed to get into the orchard and weed four rows of strawberries this week. I will be weeding the other two rows today, and then putting straw down to stop the regrowth of all those weeds. After that the raspberry canes need to be mulched, then the rest of the trees in the orchard will be mulched too. Daniel is going to fence off the back of the farm to provide more pasture for our sheep; that will take the whole weekend!

And finally, nothing related to farming, but important to our family: Nerissa had her grade nine graduation ceremony last night, so this picture is for our family in South Africa. We all dressed up and were very proud of our girl. The teachers commented on her integrity, and we know that they are right - she never has anything bad to say about anyone, and she always does what she says and speaks the truth without malice. Well done, Nerissa.

Chickens and Dogs

Posted: June 10, 2013 | Leave a Comment

We FINALLY got to slaughtering the broilers! There were only thirty left, so we thought it would go a lot quicker than the last time, but we were wrong. It takes roughly a man-hour per bird from start to finish.

After setting up in the morning we had breakfast, then got to work. Chimone had a friend over and they both came to help. We ended up with a great system: Daniel chopped the heads off, Chim scalded and plucked, and Michaela and I did the gutting and washing off, then put the birds into clean water to be taken inside. This step took five hours.

Once inside, I cut up twelve of the chickens into pieces: breasts, drumsticks and thighs, and wings. The carcasses I will use for soups and stock. The hearts, stomachs, kidneys and livers were also washed and packaged. I packed the legs and necks in separate bags as well.

The rest of the birds were just packaged whole for roasting, but I have way too many roasts in my freezer now. Next time I will be cutting a lot more of the birds into pieces. The washing and sorting of organs will also be done last, not first. That part took me two hours! I was up until 2am Sunday morning doing the wrapping and freezing.

Another lesson learned: have more knives! We only have the one decent knife, so I could not get the children to help me. I will be buying another two knives and next time we can all cut the chickens up together and get to bed earlier.

While I was cutting up chickens, Daniel and Nerissa moved the dog pen. It's new place is under the trees, which will provide shade for the summer. The water bowl is now on a flat surface, no more messing and dripping! The fence around the pen will still have to be raised a little higher, to about 8 feet, because both the dogs can jump over what is there, and we don't want them in the barn terrorising the chickens and lambs.

Once the dog house was moved we celebrated the day's work with burgers. It has taken us a whole year to get to use the BBQ, and we have missed it! This summer we plan on having at least one BBQ meal every week, and I will keep that gas bottle filled right up.

Today's thoughts

Posted: June 7, 2013 | Leave a Comment

I took a look at the orchard yesterday, and it is growing really well. I have tried to fertilize the trees, but it takes more time than I have available. It will be completed this weekend, and then I will repeat in three weeks time. It seems like most of the saskatoons have made it and are sprouting leaves and blossoms, so we planted them at just the right time.

The strawberries are doing really well. We are looking forward to the fruit they will bear in a few weeks time (hopefully). I will be making a lot of jam to keep us through the winter and into next summer. We use about a jar of jam every two weeks so we need quite a few!

We do have problems with the sheep: they need to be sheared urgently, and we need more pasture! Shearing is a huge task and we are still unsure how to approach it. Professional shearers are now charging $4.50 a sheep, and at the moment that is just way too much for us to pay - we need to shear 200. We are beginners at shearing and it takes Daniel about twenty minutes to shear one ewe. That adds up to a lot of time, but he should get better as he gets more practise.

The other problem is pasture. Our twenty acre field is in really bad shape and needs to be reseeded with a good pasture mix. We have the flock out on this at the moment, but it won't last the whole summer. We have seeded the ten acres with fall rye and a mix of other seeds, but it needs another month to establish before we can use it. We have had a neighbour offer us pasture if we dig a dugout for him. This could be our answer, we will just have to work things out pretty soon.

Besides all our problems and working dawn till dusk (11pm!) we are still loving our farm. The sunsets are spectacular, the weather is great for being outdoors, we have hummingbirds, swallows, robins, chickadees and nuthatches, and we hear the call of the ducks, loons and geese. It is a pleasure to wake up and experience all of this wonderful world every day. God is good!

Vegetable patch

Posted: June 6, 2013 | Leave a Comment

This past weekend the children had the Friday and the Monday off school. It rained almost all the time, but Nerissa and I got stuck in and planted the vegetable patch. Here's what we planted:

- three rows of potatoes
- the fourth row was half potatoes and half zucchinis
- onions, beets, onion seeds
- carrots
- carrots
- little finger carrots, purple haze carrots, beans
- sugar snap peas
- more sugar snap peas
- zucchini
- cucumbers for pickling
- lettuce, spinach, cabbage, pumpkins (a row of mixed vegetables)
- sunflowers

Daniel fenced the patch in because the dogs go charging over the ground to chase the cars, horses and ATV's that go by, as well as birds and butterflies! A temporary gate has been put in, which we will later replace with a proper gate so that we can get the tractor and implements into the orchard and vegetable patch.

So now we have an orchard and vegetable patch at the back of the house, and in a few year's time it will look really nice. It means a lot of work for us this summer, I can already see all the weeds coming up!