I love this time of day...er....night..?..The house is so quiet right now but for the odd human shuffling in bed or a kitty snore....generally I am engulfed in the oh so rare, and absolutely delicious, silence of the night. My time.
Of course the reality is I'll be exhausted tomorrow but who cares it's Sunday...
This is a perfect time to look back over the past 3 seasons since Farmer Luke and, ostensibly myself, decided to jump on the 'farm train' and embark on this crazy Animal Farm adventure.
Oh wow....k....where to begin?
Farmer Luke has always been a farmer. When I met him he was in England on a 2 year dairy farm scholarship. It wasn't until he had an unfortunate experience on a dairy farm outside of Toronto that he decided to put away his gumboots and hang up his coveralls and venture into the world of construction. Flash forward 4 years, one child (meet Finn), and a wake-up call later...Farmer Luke decided to put away his work boots and hang up his hardhat and take some time to consider his path. Conveniently, my work at that time took a steady run forward and business travel became my alternate mode of transportation. Also conveniently.....Ms. Forrest Rea was germinating inside me prepping for her appearance on December 30, 2010....SO COME ON....WHY NOT START A FARM?!....right?...
That winter Farmer Luke scouted out our area for willing landowners to lease him a couple of acres to get started ~ that's when Mrs. Ball came into our lives. She was an elderly lady whose husband had purchased the land and had loved seeing it farmed. Mr. Ball had since passed and the land had not been touched in a very long time..(ahem...organic...). It had 40 acres of pasture and about 60 acres of bush. Mrs. Ball was happy to lease us the land and she was super supportive of Farmer Luke's ideas. In fact...the Ball family have been incredible supporters of us since we met them. Mrs. Ball's son Chris, holds a special place in this farm....anyhoo I'll leave that for another day....and so began our first two seasons on leased land....
k....now rather than reiterating what we did......I think it would probably be more beneficial if I highlight some of the lessons we have learned.....there certainly has been a few...
1. chicken tractors should not be used on the lawn at the house....although an incredible source of beautiful free fertilizer (remember that dry summer where water restrictions meant brown lawns everywhere...um...ya...not ours...we were still cutting a lush green lawn twice a week!)...we soon discovered that chickens like a dust bath and will dig holes in order to achieve this pleasure....now lets contemplate this as we move the chicken tractor once a day....great distributor of fertilizer right?!...ya, and potholes ALL OVER the lawn!! Our lawn, now 3 years later, is still a liability ~ I'm contemplating having a sign drawn up saying "walk at your own risk ~ owner not liable for broken ankles...blame the chickens" ~ so ya....LESSON #1 chicken tractors belong in the field.
2. maybe having a newborn, a new farm, and no maternity leave wasn't such a brilliant idea.....but hey, we all made it through...relatively unscathed....no regrets. Just throwing it out there for those that might be in the same situation...
3. OH!?....so that's why they call it the 'pecking order'!!....we found this out the hard way....Farmer Luke began with 30 laying hens....15 in each chicken tractor...these ladies were Barred Rocks and, we later found out, they are known to be 'unkind' to one another ...to put it mildly....they were just unhappy chickens no matter what we did!! It was so frustrating because no matter what, they would just pick on each other...or they would pick, or rather peck, on just one poor chicken....their bullying was just incorrigible! We tried so many things to make these ladies happy. We put CDs hanging from the top of the tractor to try and distract them away from each other. We threw in 'interesting' objects for them to 'play' with. Nope...still unhappy and pecking on each other...! So one attempt at making these ladies happy involved Farmer Luke letting them out to run, frolic, and catch bugs all over our lawn....seemed innocent enough.....um...YA NO! Within moments 30 chickens were running all over the lawn, in my flower gardens (which is a BIG no no), in the veggie gardens...everywhere....it was chicken hysteria....and quickly this mama let it be known that chickens weren't going to ruin her gardens!!! So now Farmer Luke had to catch 30 hysterical chickens and put them back into the chicken tractors....ya, easier said than done......I didn't assist because I would have simply been no help whatsoever...I'm by no means a girlie girl however, I am somewhat reluctant with the birds.....no idea why....I'm sure it will pass.. Back to Farmer Luke, 30 chickens, 2 chicken tractors and 1 mama kinda freaking out about her flowers...beyond the sheer enormity of the endeavor and the subsequent successful execution of herding 30 chickens back into the tractors, the lessons continued.....once they were finally re-contained...we sat back and realized we had screwed up their pecking order!! So now instead of happier chickens (refer back to original point about this story...i.e. improving these ladies' dispositions..) we now had REALLY pissed off chicks who may or may not know each other ~ we stood helpless on the outside of the tractor as the chickens worked it out amongst themselves..peck...peck...peck...peck... peck....at that point..'chicken whisperer'.. Farmer Luke was not. sigh.
4.....400 tomato seedlings WILL produce approximately 4000 tomatoes.....just contemplate that.
5. NEVER deny yourself or your family the bounty of your harvest. The first season we caught ourselves restricting what we'd eat from the garden...or our freezer...or the hen house...in order to have 'product' to sell. It wasn't long that the absurdity of this notion quickly became evident and we imposed the 'US FIRST' condition on our farming and the bounty. We're not trying to be greedy...or unthoughtful...we just figure....if your farmer isn't fed and healthy then how is ANYONE going to be fed and healthy?? ...just sayin'..
6....actually....I'm going to restrict this 'LESSONS LEARNED' section to 5...because....well because it's now 5 a.m. and the romance of the silence has given way to the reality that I only have 2 hours before my day starts and I should probably get some sleep.....
This blog has been brought to you by early morning musings, decadent silence and a good ol' cuppa tea!!
...and a BIG EGG
why?...cuz....well....cuz.. THAT'S. A. BIG. EGG.
Till next time...
don't forget to hug a farmer.
That is indeed a BIG egg!
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