[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3e2VpV9wIc?wmode=transparent]
Chris discovers some pea nitrogen nodules during our evening of weeding this week. A very geeky video capture at the end of a long day :)
Tag Archives: farming
an awesome farm weekend
This past weekend was a really fun and productive one here on the farm. My last post documented saturday’s activities and this one is all about sunday – with even more productivity and more people pitching in!
The weather this weekend was PERFECT for farm work. It was classic fall weather – a little chilly but absolutely lovely to be outside in. The cooler temperatures just made the coffee that Julie delivered and the piping hot, homemade soup that neighbour Shelly delivered even more satisfying.
In addition to involvement from the usual crew, brother Ben spent all day outside helping us and my sister Stephanie drove out to spend the day with us and pitch in. That’s her (left) in the photo above. I love that photo of us – thank you Julie for taking it!
So, in addition to just having lots of fun together outside, here’s what we accomplished:
CHICKEN COOP
Chris and I finished the interior of the chicken coop! Well, really it was mostly Chris. He took the measurements and cut all the wood (power saws scare me). I assisted by holding the wood and helping nail it in (not always that successfully). It looks great now (for a chicken coop) and we don’t have to worry any more about our chickens digging around in insulation. Yay! Oh – and we saw a HUGE spider in the coop while we were working. The biggest Chris has ever seen on the farm apparently. *shiver* Very appropriate for Halloween…
TREE PRUNING & CHOPPING
We did some major pruning to our big willow tree whose branches were pretty sickly. Hopefully it will grow back strong and healthy. The boys also pulled down some alders in the backyard which had an unstable root system and were threatening our neighbour’s fence. We’re going to use the cut alders to grow mushrooms in (apparently alder wood is ideal for growing mushrooms!).
RAKING & YARD TIDYING
Stephanie and Ben took on this job with gusto – dragging the cut willow branches to the firepit and raking up wheelbarrows-full of fallen leaves and delivering them to the compost pile.
POTTING PLANTS & BULBS
Julie, Stephanie and I got all of Julie’s herbs potted for indoors as well as potted some of her outdoor plants and tulip bulbs for her deck.
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And that, I think, completes the work we did on sunday. The list doesn’t look long, but things took time and we got a lot of visiting time in while outdoors too. The tree pruning and felling definitely drew an audience :)
Overall, it was just one of those really great days where it feels good to be alive, outside in the fresh air with great friends. Loved it!
Stephanie and I concluded the evening with some scrabble and gin & tonics in the trailer. Thanks for the visit Steph – come out again soon!
late october chores
After a week in Ontario working and visiting friends, I came home refreshed and ready to get back into farming life. Good thing because there’s SO MUCH to do! Yesterday was my first full day back and farm work was definitely the priority
. Chris and I got started early and Chantalle and Julie pitched in later in the day when Uncle Ben took over nephew duty.
What we did:
MULCH
We raked up the autumn leaves that covered our front lawn into big piles and ran them through a sweet little contraption that sucks them in and chews them up, creating perfectly shredded leaf mulch. After collecting a truck bed full, we emptied the mulch over our garlic beds. Our garlic is really eager – it’s already coming up and we’re pretty sure that’s way too soon. We’re hoping that some mulch, in addition to the colder, frostier mornings (c’mon frost – we could really use you now!), will temper the garlic growth a bit. If anyone who’s reading this has experience with early-sprouting garlic and has some advice, please leave it in the comment section – we want to do what we can to have a big garlic harvest next summer!
WEEDING
We weeded the cabbage and broad bean patches. Both are coming up – yay! It was a bit tough to tell the cabbage from the weeds, but I think I got it right and now we have little rows of tiny mini cabbage plants – cute! And our broad beans have broken the soil surface and are coming up hardy and strong. We put in some stakes and will add some string cross-ties to give them some good climbing frames.
TIDYING UP AROUND THE CHICKEN COOP
Chantalle did some tidying around the chicken coop. The area needed some weeding, plant transferring and reinforcement in places where it looked like little critters might be able to access the haven of the chicken run. She piled small/ medium boulders into the wheelbarrow and lined them up in the areas that needed reinforcement. For such a tiny little person, she’s a tough cookie! I wouldn’t have wanted to move that wheelbarrow.
PREPARING THE DEEP BEDS
We really want to get our deep beds built as soon as possible – so that we can get some winter crops planted as well as having lots of time over the winter to prepare the soil for our spring planting. The wood for the deep beds was delivered earlier this week while I was away and Chris is eager to get to the construction of them completed. Before we can do that though, we have to go through all the soil that was turned up by the excavator two weeks ago and get out as much grass, weeds and debris that we can. While I worked on that yesterday, Chris followed behind me, digging up two feet of soil and transferring it to his left and so on along the length of the deep bed area until the soil got reworked enough to become light and airy and high. It’s definitely slow going work, but it’s already looking fantastic and, if we do it right the first time around, the hope is that we won’t have to do this kind of intensive work on the deep beds again in the future.
We ended the evening with a Halloween/ Harvest Fest party with friends at the farm. Partiers dressed up as farmers and farm animals and we enjoyed good food and community time together. I completely forgot to take any photos of the party, but I blame that on my energy levels – a full day of labour while trying to readjust to the BC time zone turned me into a bit of a party zombie (a farmer zombie :).
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Today will be another day of work for us. We’re hoping to continue work on the deep beds and even get one of the deep beds completely built. We also really need to plant our flower bulbs for the spring, as well as complete the interior of the chicken coop which hasn’t really been touched since our last work party back in September. And speaking of work parties, another is in the works! Stay tuned for details and prepare to come and get your hands dirty with us – we need help preparing everything for winter :)