Sunday, 31 July 2016

Vegetable Delivery Week 12 2016



July 29, 2016
Week 12

Here are some of the items you may be receiving in your delivery this week:
Assorted Summer Squash, Green/Purple Peppers, Mesclun, Rainbow Swiss Chard, Cucumber- either Holland White or Green, Early Tomatoes, Dill, Mixed Color Beets

Here at the farm this week the garden continues to battle the drought. A water truck was brought in on the 24th as the incredible storm which hit Halifax on Saturday completely missed us. We did receive a beautiful rain shower Sunday afternoon. Your farmer was dancing up there getting absolutely soaked and smiling and thanking the heavens. As soul-touching as it was, it unfortunately only soaked in a little.
Tuesday morning brought light rain. 3 beautiful hours of light drizzle which when I put my fingers into the soil after it had soaked in… 1 inch. Unbelievable. The soil is so dry that any water that hits, immediately gets soaked up before it can trickle down lower.
The next disaster to hit the farm was the barn well pump died Tuesday. Choice words were coming out of my mouth that morning I’ll tell you. I did my best but ended up needing to wait for help. Rain was on the horizon for Friday. Prayers went up but no rain came down.
Saturday was spent with a friend troubleshooting the pump and finally we were able to get it working but couldn’t get it to hold pressure. Further depressing news was the well had lost over 8 feet of water due to the water table being so low. We got back at it on Sunday morning at 6am and finally by 9am we had pressure. The garden was then watered until 10 when it became too hot and then continued around 5pm.
I spent the rest of the day weed whacking the fence line. My back is now in agony after those 4 hours but it’s done. Whew.

This week’s share has many different items as the allotment continued to be low. This week has brought many heart breaking moments especially Saturday morning when I realized we had lost the newly planted lettuce. After getting water on the plants, I am so incredibly relieved to see the plants coming to life. Beans are even forming!!! There is hope for a bountiful second half of our season!

The Dill in this week’s share is gorgeous. Fragrant, tender and incredibly flavourful. The boys and I usually use it with our salmon on the BBQ with lemon juice. Sometimes we make a dill sauce.

A couple dollops of Plain yogurt
Chopped Dill fronds
Lemon Zest and Lemon juice to taste
Pepper to taste
Mix together. This can be made ahead of time for the flavors to blend and become even better.

Hope you all have a great long weekend.

Your Farmer,

Amber

Vegetable Delivery Week 11 2016


July 15, 2016
Week 11

Here are some of the items you may be receiving in your delivery this week:
Spinach, Assorted Summer Squash, Bok Choy, Purple Kale, Rainbow Swiss Chard, Purple and Genovese Basil, Cucumber- either Holland White or Green, Squash Blossoms, Green Onion, Early Tomatoes

This week has been hot! Days on the farm have usually hit 35 degrees Celcius in the shade with temperatures cooling off overnight. Where have the thunderstorms been? C’mon Thor we need the rain! The plants have been put through even more shock this week with the temperature fluctuations. We have been watering as best we can to compensate but the drought continues. It was very disheartening to be pulling green onions and seeing how dry the soil was even after a deep watering the night before. Let’s hope for the predicted showers to come this weekend.

A few additional annoyances to be hitting the farm is the incredible influx of Cucumber beatles that attack any plant in the cucurbit family. This includes all squash, pumpkins, melons and of course cucumbers. I’ve replanted a variety which does not require pollination so I can keep it under row cover but all our other plants have been infiltrated. The little buggers consume the leaves but most unfortunately the pollen out of the blossoms which hinders pollination. Dusting the plants with the organic method of hydrated lime seems to be keeping their numbers in check.
The one which is a surprise and very disappointing is our farm has felt the effects of a decreased been population. We grow many flowers around the farm and have the meadow. Hopefully our refuge will help them.

This week we have a large assortment of veggies as the numbers on each item continue to be low. I’m continuing to be positive and am encouraged to see improvement even with it being extremely slow.

The assorted summer squash includes green zucchini and yellow squash. The boys and I love them sautéed with onions and tomatoes. We are very enthused to see our first tomatoes ripening. Many more are on the horizon as well as squash hence the squash blossoms included this week. They are wonderful stuffed with a soft cheese like ricotta and herbs and then sautéed in a pan with or without being dipped in a batter before frying.

Hope you all have a great weekend.

Your Farmer,

Amber

Sunday, 17 July 2016

Vegetable Delivery Week 10 2016


July 15, 2016
Week 10

Here are some of the items you may be receiving in your delivery this week:
Garlic Scapes, Mesclen, Spinach, Yellow Patty Pan Squash, Danvers Carrots, Parsley

Thankfully we have continued to receive some more rain here at the farm, last Sunday and again on Thursday. It’s been shocking that we have only had rain three times in over 7 weeks and all in the past 10 days.

This week is still a rebuilding week. Our vegetables are starting to bounce back, new seedlings are sprouting and a bountiful fall harvest looks bright.

Another idea for the garlic scapes is Garlic Scape Pesto:
In a food processor place:
Chopped Garlic Scapes
Parmesan cheese
Squeeze of lemon
Pulse the mixture until it starts to blend and then slowly add some olive oil until the mixture combines. Season to taste with salt and pepper.


Your Farmer,

Amber

Wednesday, 13 July 2016

New Chicken Processor

This past Sunday it was time to take the first group of chickens to get processed. After I had done my best to recover from cutting down the tree in the back yard, it was time to ready the truck. I put a load of sawdust in the bed for padding and chicken wire was then stretched and secured across the top.

Dusk, when all the birds settle in and are most relaxed is the best time to move birds out of their coop. It’s the least stressful and then they will be ready for first thing in the morning. If I was able to get them processed here on the farm that would be ideal, however my only choice is to take them to a processor who cares about the birds, is very quick, and provides great service.

For the past few weeks I have been nervous as my regular processor was not returning my calls. Thankfully I was told by other farmers at the market about another one. He lives a little further away but has a great reputation and he was able to take the birds on Sunday.

Moving the birds is always an experience. I had Anthony man the coop door and Navarre helping out at the truck. Hopefully once the boys are older they will be grabbing the chickens with me. The worst part is when they flap their wings and it feels like they are breaking my knuckles. Painful. Our birds are 9 weeks old, one week younger then I usually get them done but due to heat and weights I thought this would be the best. My last batch had chickens of 10lbs dressed weight. Not as many buyers for the really big ones, they prefer a range of 5lbs to 7.5lbs.

After I got all the birds in the truck we moved it down to the house and secured a tarp over the truck bed to keep them warm for the night but more importantly to help protect from predators. All the birds settled in except for my Barred Rock rooster who continued to make escape attempts most of the night. This made a long night for me and I even went out to check on them around 4am. I made the decision to have him processed when he did not do his job in protecting his flock as a rooster’s supposed to. I did not want him to be wasted so we will keep him for us. He turned out to be the lightest of them all at 5.5lbs. He was all feathers.

As I’d said it was a longer trip than usual the next morning, about 30 minutes. Removing the tarp we found the birds had handled it nicely and were all settled down looking at us quizzically.

Our new processor has a wonderful set up. It’s all DIY and fantastic. He even built his own plucker which works perfectly. He did 6 birds at a time so I lowered the tailgate, untied and rolled up some chicken wire and sat at the back passing him the chickens. I’m sure I made quite the image, nice looking, young woman calming her flustered birds as she passes them out, all the while fine with sitting in dirty sawdust (you can all guess what made it dirty).

I was absolutely beaming when I received fabulous compliments regarding the birds. He was quite impressed with how clean and healthy they were. I take great pride in giving our birds a good life. There were a few others chickens waiting for processing after ours and I was saddened by their state. Very dirty, all the feathers stained with poop and quite nervous. They were the complete opposite of ours who were pristine white in comparison and relaxed.

It took about an hour to get them all done. As I talked with the men, Anthony and Navarre enjoyed playing soccer and having a great time.

Once we got the birds home we cooled them off for a few hours in ice water and then finished the minimal cleaning, bagged and weighed them. This new processor is more expensive but I’m very happy with his work.  I had set up a number of pre-orders and ended up selling and then delivering 22 out of 24 to Halifax the next afternoon.


Our next raft of chickens will be in a month. Until then they will be enjoying some sunshine, have a fan on them and cool water on hot days plus the occasional grasshopper or crickets from the kids and scrapes from the garden.

Sunday, 10 July 2016

The Quest For Internet Involves A Chainsaw.

I have been experiencing extremely slow or no internet connection for the past couple weeks. When I finally got the company to come out, the guy told me it was the Spruce tree off the back of the house blocking my signal. He said it's grown to a point that I have two options, remove the tree or get them to come back sometime in the future and they will move the antenna.

Frankly in my opinion there was only one option. Bonus was I don't like the tree anyway. However this brought me to the realization that I don't have anyone but me to cut it down. Um crap.

So on a day when my ex husband was visiting the kids, I had him be my adult supervision. First job cut off the mammoth branch on the bottom.
  

Then cut it up and clear the area for the tree to fall. I stacked the rounds near the fire pit for next year.


Now it's time to get ready for the main event. We first had the thought of climbing the tree to attach a safety line but I won out with the idea of a ladder. That tree is sticky!


We then attached the other end of the line to another tree tightening it with a trucker's hitch.


The trunk is over 2 feet in diameter near the base, way too much for my chainsaw to handle. So I realized I'd have to cut it higher up. Frankly by this point the chainsaw was feeling incredibly heavy and I could barely hold it up to get the cuts started. At least once I got the cut started the weight of the saw was mostly off me and on the tree. Reaching this point I fully admit I was scared. I was way out of my element, tired and wondering if I could do this. I kept repeating to myself that if I could be bowman on a sport boat during race week when I was 5 months pregnant, I could cut down this tree. 

I made a large wedge on the side facing away from the house. and then cut down at an angle from the back. Finally it started to go. I took out the saw quickly and moved back fast, listening to the cracking wood.


Thank god. It's down. At that point I was done. I sat down over on the grass and did my best to stop shaking. I told myself "It's over. It's done and no one and nothing got hurt. Good job."

A ton of work is now needed to be done in cutting it up and clearing away the branches but as I had to prep for taking the chickens to the butcher early the next morning, it will be a job for another day.

Time to enjoy a bonfire with the boys and have some s'more covered strawberries.

3am Attack

After the loss of my chickens a week before around 3 am I heard a noise coming from the barn. I to this point still did not know exactly what animal had attacked. I laid there listening to see if it was just a one time noise and after it came again I was out of bed like a shot. Quickly threw on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and ran downstairs. My ex was here visiting the boys so I told him quickly what was happening and that I was going up.

I have no gun here at the farm. It’s been realized that I need to take my fire arms safety course once it’s offered again in the fall. So only armed with my phone’s flashlight outside I went. Looking back on it, no, not the safest decision.
In the pitch black I quickly approached the closed doors of the barn, hearing occasional screeches from inside and threw open the barn door.

Inside was the biggest raccoon I’ve ever seen. It was as big as a medium sized dog! I was almost in shock. It looked at me and then amazingly went to the back of the barn scaled the back wall, crossed the hay loft, crawled out the little 3rd level window and down the side of the barn. Holy crap.

Going into the barn I saw it had killed another young layer, my green laying Americana hen and severely injured another adult layer. The darn rooster was still safe and fine. I’ll be getting him butchered with the meat birds. No good at all in protecting his flock.

Okay. Time to deal. I grabbed the axe and killed the injured chicken and disposed of the bodies. Then it was refortification time. Collecting the drill, screws, boards and wire about half an hour later the barn was as secured as I could make it until morning. The next day was spent with further work on the barn and thankfully all seems to be good.


I’m still wondering how the blasted raccoon even realized that top window was open to decide to scale the side of the barn.

What Is That Smell?

The other night after yet another long day I went upstairs to bed and at the top of the stairs going into my bedroom I smelled an unusual odor. It smelled kind of like pungent sour mixed with charred wet wood. Awful.

We had been able to enjoy a bonfire that night so I was hopeful it was just the wind blowing the smoke towards my bedroom window. However, when I went to the window there was no extra scent. That’s when I got concerned. I’ve been slowly renovating our century old farmhouse for the past few years. My room hasn’t been high on the list so… Omg! Is it an electrical issue? Down on my knees crawling around on the floor smelling the outlets, unplugging things I found nothing.

Standing up and looking around I felt very confused. I looked at the bed and under the covers saw… movement.  I pulled them back to find my cat Keisha. Oh my god the smell. There she was obviously feeling sick and rightly so as I realized she had been sprayed by a skunk... And she was in my bed!!! I moved the comforter to the floor and gently lifted her up and moved her down onto the bedding and changed the sheets. Opened the window wide and set up the fan infront of it to bring in fresh air. As soon as the bed was remade she made a beeline for it so I ushered her to the foot of the bed and made her comfortable. 

Thankfully the scent was tolerable with this set up. Goodness, the things we do for the ones we love. However there was no way I was going to cuddle or pet her unless it was through a pillow case.


The next morning the boys and I took her outside. I had no tomato juice but I did have baking soda and hydrogen peroxide which seemed to help a bit. The scent is gradually wearing off and she is now feeling better, back to her daily hunting routine. 

Another life experience. 

Horrible Lesson

A couple weeks ago I had quite the horrific experience here on the farm. We were and are unfortunately battling a drought and numerous extra hours are being put in to keep the plants alive and to also replant for the fall. This brought my body to a breaking point which pinched a nerve in my shoulder and due to pure exhaustion I made a huge tactical error.

I had gone up late after the boys were in bed to close up the greenhouse, hothouse and put all of the birds to bed and close the barn. The farm has shockingly had no experience with predators and we have endangered barn swallows nesting in the rafters, so when I saw the chickens were not interested in going into the barn yet, I said “Fine” and left the barn door open enough to let them get in so they could then fly up to their safe roosts. I’ve seen cats go in to the barn many times but the birds have always been fine. So when you are hurting to a point you’ve been crying most of the day, yes you screw up.

Pain medication has no effect on me so I tossed and turned most of the night. My bedroom window outlooks the front of the house and barn and it was a quiet night. However when I woke up I just knew something was wrong.

The boys were awake and playing and I grabbed my gear and went outside. In front of me was a massacre. How did I not hear anything?!?!

In front of me were bodies of our young chickens with their heads ripped up and strewn about the front yard. As I continued up to the barn the body count increased. The worst was the little one still alive slowly turning it’s head to look at me. Anthony came out of the house calling to see if I needed help opening up and I yelled at him to get back inside no questions asked.

I pulled myself together and I dealt with the situation. Grabbed the axe and killed the little one, cleaned up all of the bodies and got the boys to school on time. Then I called the Farmer’s Co-Op and ordered some adult layers which will arrive in August. After which I broke down, called my friends for support and balled my eyes out to my Mom in BC later that day. Thank you god, that my friends were already coming that night for a bonfire and they stayed over. Laughs and support were incredibly needed.


I’ve now opened a top hayloft window enough for the swallows to get in and out and absolutely make sure the barn doors are secure. 

Live and learn. What a horrible lesson.

Vegetable Delivery Week 9 2016


July 8, 2016
Week 9

Here are some of the items you may be receiving in your delivery this week:
Garlic Scapes, Mesclen, Arugula, Swiss Chard, Mint, Assorted Squash.

We finally had our first rain in over 6 weeks on Thursday. We have been battling this drought the best we can, watering the field every two days which takes over 3 hours at a time. The barn well had to be filled this past weekend to keep up. We’ve been using the house well to water the greenhouse and hot house. Unfortunately with the hot days this has been primarily to keep the plants alive they are by no means thriving. Farmers I’ve talked to in the area say right now it’s a disaster and we all agree it will be another 3 weeks until the gardens have fully recovered.

Here on the farm we are continuously planting daily either in the field or sow new seed trays. Work usually starts around 8:30 after breakfast, we take a break from 2-4 and then wrap things up at 7pm. With this rainfall I’m hoping for some forced relaxation around the firepit.

With this hard year it shows more than ever the benefit of Community Supported Agriculture. By having subscribers to the farm it allows the local small farmer to continue. I myself have taken this to another level and made it a vegetable subscription for 20-22 weeks. Due to the drought we will this year be now down to 21 weeks of delivery.
If any of my subscribers are to be away I give the option to receive a farm credit. That being said, I must have at least 3 days notice in writing before harvest day which is Thursdays.

Farming is a risky venture at times and by having the support of the local community we all share a bit of that risk but all enjoy the rewards. Thank you to all of you who sent messages of encouragement this past week it means a lot and helps me get through the day. It’s never a dull moment here on the farm and I will be posting some blogs regarding this past weeks occurances including ones about raccoons and a skunk. Yuck.

I hope all of you have a wonderful weekend and enjoy your salad greens. The garlic scapes make an excellent pesto for over pasta or fish. Also you can put them in an omelet. Due to the great feedback I received last night I will be expanding the garlic bed for next year.

Your Farmer,

Amber

Vegetable Delivery Week 8 2016

June 29, 2016
Week 8

With great disappointment, but hopeful determination I must announce that this week’s delivery is cancelled due to the drought conditions.

Here at the farm we received less than half the average amount of rainfall in May and now in June, only a third of the average amount. We have done our best to hand water the field nursing the plants through. They are slowly growing and the boys and I were extremely thankful today to see some flowers and shoots emerging. This means we should be back on track for next week.

Today brought intermittent showers and the forecast for this evening is rain. All the rain in the past week Halifax has been experiencing has unfortunately bypassed us. Keep your fingers crossed as the soil is so dry. Numerous other farmers in the area and in the Valley are also experiencing a very hard time. Let’s all hope for a wonderful soaking rainfall for the province.

I hope all of you have a wonderful Canada Day Weekend. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Your Farmer,

Amber