Monday 23 June 2014

This update has been brought to you by the letter 'B'



Well the kale must be kicking in because I’m feeling like I’m coming out of the haze…..so on that note, lets get you up-to-date on the comings and goings of the farm thus far….

  1. BELLA – that big fluffy white ball of ‘almost a farm dog' is AWESOME!  She’s settled in well to hanging at home protecting the house and her human flock of sheep… oh, on that note…. it was quickly discovered that there are certain instincts you can’t change in a dog… and with Bella… it’s herding. YUP, she’s constantly attempting to herd us to some unforeseen paddock and away from some unforeseen danger. It’s amazing really…. she does this a variety of ways:
    • by pushing you from behind with her head
    • coming around to the front of you and walking into your path forcing you to move where she wants (pretty good roller derby move…she’d rock as a blocker)
    • she’ll lean on you
    • or she’ll put her open mouth on your leg or hand provoking you to move
It’s completely endearing and totally annoying at the same time. I’m constantly explaining to her that I am not a sheep…. mind you she doesn’t seem to listen…. The other amazing thing about Bella is her friendship with Mr. Fab Finn’s cat Greywacke Jones… the two hang out together all day….. Bella will jump around him in an attempt to ‘play’ and Greywacke taunts her with hopeful anticipation when WHAM the paw comes up and SMACK in the air AND THE CHASE BEGINS!! Greywacke runs and Bella chases… up a tree, into the garden, up the play structure or onto the pool deck ~ these are all NO BELLA terrain and Greywacke knows them well…. two days ago Farmer Luke let Bella out in the morning and said that a very groggy Greywacke walked out behind her…. love me some inter animal friendships!!

super sweet friendship ~ in the end though...cats are in control!

  1. THE BARN – this has become a bit of a dirty word in our house… it’s the silent elephant in the room….. it’s the furrow in the farmer’s brow….. it’s the one thing that is preventing us from truly soaring….. there have been some glitches in it’s assembly and we’ve had to patiently wait for everything to fall into place ~ I am glad to say that the engineer has now signed off on the project and we hope to have all the animals home and grazing by the beginning of July ~ THERE I SAID IT….. ugh, the Irish in me can’t believe I just said it…. but I did and I’m owning it (fingers-crossed…please make it happen, please make it happen, please make it happen)…. the hay is being cut this week in anticipation of the cows and sheep coming home…. the solar-powered electric fencing is sufficient to begin the rotational grazing …. solar-water pump is next and then WE’RE OFF!! It’s so close I can almost taste it……and it will be nice to get the house back because that is one big ass elephant!
 
enough already ~ lets get this party started!!!

  1. THE BOUNTY – this past Thursday we had our first chicken harvest of the season…. this involved Farmer Luke and WWOOFer Phillip getting up at 5:30 a.m. and heading out to the field and wrangling 100 chickens into cages…. I’ve never witnessed this but it does remind me of a funny story….. hahahaha lesson’s learned by a farmer ~ our first season we had a friend grow some chickens too… as a general rule the day before harvest you are asked not to feed the chickens…. Farmer Luke chose to move the tractors onto plywood for the day…. our friend decided to put a tarp down because he didn’t have plywood to use…. then it rained.......lets think now…. after chickens hang out on a tarp for a day there tends to be some waste (for lack of a better word....or is that the better word?)…..and then it RAINED.   ......now try wrangling chickens....can you say chicken run slip and slide! ~ EWWWWWWWWW! Yup…. it happened and it wasn’t pretty…. hahahaha just picture it…. Farmer Luke arriving home at 7 covered in…. well.... you get the picture….. all he said was, “well we now know why you shouldn’t use a tarp” ~ BHAHAHAHAHA!! we've since discovered that it is fine for the chickens to eat just grass so now we only have to take out their organic feed…. of course it’s better and less stressful for the chickens too ~ not to mention the FARMER.
anybody for some delicious smoked chicken quarters? such a sweet bounty...

So there you have it ~ this update has been brought to you by the letter B ~ Bella ~ Barn ~ Bounty…..and the number 3


OH for those wondering…… the latest canoe fishing challenge did in fact result in complete soakage but the canoe remained upright…… the sky fell this time…. at least no shoes or cell phones got wet!




  

Tuesday 17 June 2014

Finding inspiration amongst the mundane…….





Among or amongst? ……huh...I checked and surprisingly there is no difference between the two other than the fact ‘among’ is Old English and ‘amongst’ is Middle English…. so really it’s just a matter of the writer’s acoustic sensibilities….. um….. I'm sorry….. SEE WHAT I MEAN?!? Obviously I’m scrounging for inspiration….I mean…among or amongst? Come on now…

so I’ve sat down and started about four posts since my last one…. I’ve attempted banter about wwoofers, eggs, potato bugs and Bella…. I’ve listened intently on Farmer Luke’s downloads throughout the day hoping for a morsel of ‘something’ for which I can just jump on the tangent train….but nothin’…..nothin’! My lack of inspiration of course could simply be the result of something I call ‘beginning of market season haze’… After the first few weeks of market season…. weekends become a blur….. you beg for muscle memory to ease the transition smoothly…. 6 a.m. on Saturday morning IS normal….. 6 a.m. on Saturday morning IS humane… 6 a.m. on Saturday morning IS good for you…… when in actual fact 6 a.m. on Saturday morning IS like a big warm bear hug that lingers a bit too long….. OK…. yes... you get the picture….. I’m clearly off the adrenaline of ‘YAY MARKET SEASON!!’ and ‘it’s a well rehearsed play’... blah blah blah….. the reality is I’m staring at a 21 week run and it’s a soldout house every single weekend!!! ….so ‘transition’ is putting it mildly….. of course, layer that with not having any right to complain as Farmer Luke is up at 5 a.m. on Saturday, 6 a.m. Monday through Friday and 7 a.m. on Sunday….he wins! Of course I wasn’t attempting to beat him….

SEE?!? I mean mundane right!.....I'm talking about our sleeping patterns for crying out loud (hahaha ~ I totally heard my mom in me right now!) 

It’s Tuesday and I’m already planning for Saturday having just gotten off from Sunday…. that’s one day off folks…. and it wasn’t off…. oh no!… it was full of case digesting, telephone calls, letter writing and accounting… I know what you are thinking… “what’s not inspiring about that?!” ….YUP… not even my sarcasm is colourful…. I’m just blah…. BUT FRET NOT everything picks up a bit around bean season (which incidentally is just around the corner)… by then the overload of kale in our diet has kicked in and we get a second wind!

So here’s hoping for a renegade chicken just before Thursday’s harvest….

come on chicken....give me SOMETHING to work with!!
.....or maybe we can rehash an oldie but a goodie as Farmer Luke attempts the canoe fishing trip again this evening with our Austrian WWOOFer (I kid you not!... it's now the 'canoe fishing challenge')….. 

 
a mundane photo of Mr. Tippy Canoe

.....or perhaps something inspiring will burst forth from the kale patch…..    

KALE! .... I can hardly contain myself....ok I AM excited about kale chips!
.....stay-tuned folks as it can only get better than this!

 




Tuesday 3 June 2014

effective mosquitoes, flannel sheets and kid germs…..



being sick in and of itself just plain sucks.....being sick while trying to sleep in a humid room while kicking yourself for not changing the flannel sheets sucks even more......OH WAIT!...being sick and overheating on flannel sheets while swatting mosquitoes is just plain OBNOXIOUS!! Luckily I'm an insomniac....so now I'm up and I can kill those buggers face to face...while sick and overheating....



….so why not write? right?......WHAT!!!!?....are you kidding me?!!....... ok…being sick and overheating on flannel sheets while swatting mosquitoes AND a big noisy fly is pretty much breaking point!! 

Hello 1:29 a.m. …..for the safety of myself and the fly I need to vent onto the page in a long diatribe about sickness… flannel sheets in summer weather…. mosquitoes…. and noisy big ass flies…



  1. sickness: whenever I’m sick I can’t help but think about the kids…. yes, the kids…. and not in a ‘OH NO now I’m going to be less of a mom’ kinda way…. nope…. it actually suddenly dawns on me in a complete moment of ‘aha!’…. “holy shit they did feel like crap!”…. that moment when you feel their pain… their stuffy head and runny nose…. their slightly swollen glands and phlegmy throat….. WHOA… wait a minute…. phlegm?.... who the hell knows how to spell that off the top of their head?.. and if like me you can’t… good luck sounding it out…. there is just so much going on phonetically!!! …ok…. anyhoo… ya…. that moment I realize I probably shouldn’t have finished their virus infected dinner attempting not be wasteful…. or maybe ‘kiss torture’ should not have been on the agenda during those critical days when the small humans were contagious…. ya…sickness…. that’s what I think… sniff sniff cough… I will be more aware in the future…
  2. flannel sheets in summer weather: um…. ya…. epic fail on that front!! ...and I’d like to say this was the first time this has happened…. I really would… but the honest truth is every year I am faced with the same crappy night’s sleep prompting me to change the sheets…. in fact from this day forward it will be called “SCREAMING HEAT FLANNEL SHEET” night…. an annual event!....nice….. and it’s not like I can wake Farmer Luke from his restful (albeit mosquito interrupted) sleep to….um…. change the sheets…. now can I?....risk that… you don’t wake a sleeping farmer…at least not mine. So after tossing and turning, sweating and sticking, swatting and cursing and dreaming of various ways to cool down (would Farmer Luke notice if there was a sopping wet cold towel next to him?…. do I go and steal one of the children’s fans #whydidntigetours? #wtf? ....hmmm I bet the wood floor is cold…) …the thing that sucks the most is that you don’t want to be uncovered (hence potentially cooled down) for fear of the mosquitoes that are just waiting for warm steamy flesh to be exposed….. ARGH!!!!!!!!!! ..... in the end I simply gave up and here I am dreading the moment I need to get back into that bed with my already feverish body and inevitably have to meditate through the heat…ugh……
  3. mosquitoes: ahhhhhhhh the quintessential icon of a Canadian summer in the country… when that small window of cool spring sunny days allowing for endless unbridled outdoor activities breaks and the onslaught of swatting and itching begins… that time when the world of bug spray and citronella steps onto the stage… as I lay in bed endlessly swatting at the air in hopes of killing the buzzing in my ears I can’t help but think of a saying I heard from a very brief… very inspiring... and very influential meeting last summer…. the saying is “if you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito”….DAMN RIGHT!!! Interestingly this was said by a man who ran unassisted across Canada raising money for children’s hospitals…. Mr. Jamie McDonald. One night last July Farmer Luke brought him home after passing him running on our road near dusk… always willing to help someone out we happily took Jamie in for the night and fed and watered him…. what an amazing AMAZING man…. incidentally he began this run after cycling 14,000 miles from Bangkok to his hometown in Gloucester, England AND gaining the world static cycling record pedaling straight for 268 hours…. yup, I’m exhausted just writing this… and this guy just happened to run by our farm and needed a safe place to crash…. um, ok!?!… from that day forward we followed him as he continued to run UNASSISTED across Canada from summer to winter finally making it to the western coast just after February ~ AH-MAZE-ing!!! …that’s one mosquito I’m happy to say has passed through my life… check out our addition to his documentary (10 mins and 22 secs in....there we are) and I HIGHLY recommend watching more of his videos as he's really funny and... well...  Canadians rock and their hospitality is astounding!!… bet you get hooked… wow I just managed to turn an annoying encounter with a mosquito into an uplifting and inspiring moment…huh.
  4. big ass noisy fly: …um….sorry….he didn’t make it.



2:13 a.m…..well that killed a few minutes…..now I’m still sick…. only slightly overheated and cooling down….. and the mosquitoes seem to be feasting on the humans upstairs and the fly is…well…gone…. huh…wonder what’s on the food network?                 



night night