18 New Farm Members

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We welcomed some new members to our farm posse a couple days ago in the form of 18 yellow, fluffy, chirping chicks. ADORABLE. Our current small handful of egg-laying hens don’t produce enough eggs to keep us from relying on grocery store runs, so we decided to expand.

These new little puffballs are of the Delaware and Buff Orpington varieties. Originating from the USA and England, they add an even more multi-cultural flare to the Russian, Chinese and Polish breeds that currently run our henhouse. Delaware chickens are an endangered species (like our Russian Orloff), so hopefully we can give them a long, happy life here and maybe even increase their numbers.

Between these little guys and our recent addition of ducks, activity levels on the farm have received a big boost in the last week. As usual. never a dull moment around here. It’s a nice way to bring in the recent arrival of fall weather. Another season on the farm, here we come!

One year later… now what?

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Photo taken by Maria Rantanen, Maple Ridge Times.

Where do I begin with this blog post? More importantly, how could I ever sum up what the last year has meant to me in a single entry like this? I don’t think I can, but what I will do is answer a very important and relevant question:

It’s been a year. Now what?

When I sold most of my belongings, bought an old motorhome and moved out here a year ago to start this experimental farming project with Chris, Julie, Matt & Chantalle, the plan was fairly simple: to try my hand at farming for a year on the 2.5 acres owned and inhabited by my very dear friends. I set up this blog, Farm for a Year, to document our experience.

Throughout the year I was often asked, ‘What happens when the year is up?’ and more recently I’ve been getting the question, ‘So, are you going to make it Farm for Two Years?’.

The answer to the first question was always, ‘We’ll reassess when the year is up.’ and the simple and easy answer to the second question is, ‘I love it and the living arrangement is still working, so let’s keep having fun with this!’. 

What led to that simple and easy answer is of course more detailed and thoughtful – but not really complicated at all.

I love life on the farm. I am surrounded by and in constant contact with a very intentional and healthy community. I spend most of my free time outside being active and creative. I am growing my own food and helping raise a variety of animals. I am building relationships with the broader community of Maple Ridge – people who care about where they live and are actively engaged in making it a healthier and better place to be. I am living out my long-time goals of experiencing farming first-hand, living simply and pursuing the things in life that money can’t buy. And I’m able to do all of this while keeping my income-generating work at ideal part-time hours. It’s almost too good to be true….but it’s not. This kind of life IS possible. I’m incredibly blessed, count those blessings every day, and plan on hanging on to them for as long as I can.

So, as year one ends and year two begins, I’m happy to announce that activity on the farm continues to buzz. We’ve got new animals, are building more gardening beds, planting more trees, constructing more creative spaces… all of which will be blogged about soon. I’m also happy to announce that we have learned A LOT this year – about gardening and raising animals and pursuing this kind of life  – and we’re acknowledging our lessons learned and expanding our goals. We have yet to have an official ‘goal setting’ farm meeting for ‘Year 2’, but unofficial conversation tidbits include a lot of ‘farmers market & increased community involvement’ talk. I have a feeling it’s going to be (another) adventurous year.

To my family and friends for their ongoing support and encouragement, thank you so much. And to everyone at the farm, this experience and more importantly YOU, mean the world to me. Thanks for inviting me to continue on in this journey with you for awhile. xo

The Kindness of Strangers

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“You don’t have a slug problem. . . you have duck deficiency”

This year, partially because of the long wet spring I’m sure, we had a lot of slugs and mosquitos around here. The slugs wreaked havoc on our seedlings and the mosquito’s drove us crazy when when we weeded in the evenings. Part of the Permaculture ethos is controlling ‘pests’ by natural means so, ducks being predators of both slugs and mosquitos, we decided to get a few ducks. 

After a quick craigslist search I found some week old ducklings here in Maple Ridge for $5. I thought that seemed like a good deal and $30 would get us more ducks than we need as long as we can protect them from coyote’s, hawks, etc. Matt, Kai and I threw the cat carrier in the back of the truck and headed down to Mike’s place to pick them up.

Mike and and his son Vick were very generous and gave us 7 older more expensive ducklings for the price of 6 new ones. They even sent us off with a red wagon Kai had found and started playing with. They really took a liking to Kai and told us to bring him back for a visit sometime. We left grateful for the kindness and generosity of strangers.

A couple days later Julie, Kai and I left for a week long vacation and when we got back I had an email from Vick saying to call him because his dad had something for us. I called him and he invited me back to their place. This time I brought Kai and Jocelyn. When we got there they gave us a tour of their farm, brought us juice and ice cream for Kai and then said they wanted to give us some full grown ducks so we wouldn’t have to wait for our young ones to start laying eggs. They packed our little cat carrier full of 5 full grown drakes and told me to come back that evening for some hens. They gave us 8 more. So in addition to the good deal on the original 7 ducklings Mike and Vick gave us 13 full grown ducks that they would normally have sold for $30 each. 

So thank you Mike and Vick… We are blown away at your kindness and generosity to us strangers who are now your friends. You are an inspiration to us and I hope I am able to see the opportunities to do the same for strangers who walk into our life.

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