Tag Archives: october

October farm to-do-list

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This blog post is a little late now that there’s only one week left before November begins, but the group of us met earlier in the month to discuss our goals for October. We haven’t been very good at meeting regularly to discuss farm matters, create goals and divvy up the managing of projects, so our October meeting was intented to kick-start regular monthly meetings and to inspire us to make lists and get stuff done.

October projects:

  • plant spring bulbs (around the property, including the guilds)
  • plant perennial seeds (if we want some?)
  • plant garlic, radishes, broad beans and spinach
  • cut back raspberry canes
  • transplant new trees & shrubs ($150 allocated to new food trees)
  • dig up an offered cherry tree waiting in a friend’s yard & relocate it to our farm
  • do dump & recycling runs with trash on the property
  • set up rain barrels
  • create a ‘potting’ table
  • complete duck paddock
  • get hay (for animal bedding & for mulching)
  • research free compost & bread (for chickens) options
  • build rabbit tractor

Longer-term goals discussed:

  • expand fencing 
  • expand guilds into a food forest 
  • fix house roof 
  • expand chicken run & produce more eggs 
  • be more intentional about harvesting 
  • prepare to join farmers market 
  • expand food growing areas 
  • create food storage systems – cold storage & greenhouse 

Looking at this list now, it’s clear that we have a busy week ahead of us to get everything done that we wanted to complete in October. It’s good to make lists, but even better to review them. Time to get cracking!

late october chores

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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.

HARVEST FEST PARTY
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 :)