Summer days

Summer is rolling along. We have noticed that the days are starting to get a bit shorter and the horses are starting to shed their summer coats but I am sure there is still plenty of summer left for us to enjoy!



I have not blogged for a couple weeks, partially because we were haying and after that because the little Farmers and I headed down south for a few days to attend a wedding!

It looks like we are done our haying for the year! We cut a second field right at the peak of our heat wave. Its was 34C in the shade with a breeze and we were pretty surprised how quickly it dried. We cut on a Monday morning and baled Tuesday afternoon. That seemed crazy quick and is for sure a new record for us!





When we bought our bunch of haying equipment it came with this hay elevator. We considered selling it because we don't really have a loft that we trust to hold hay. I am very glad we held onto it though! This is the first time we have actually used it and what a time and energy saver it was!

We stacked nice and high with no additional effort on our part.

Haying break: You are never too young to enjoy watching pigs in the mud!

Catching a rest on the way out to the field on a hot, haying evening.

Just before we went down south we were blessed to have 19 chicks hatch!

 So crazy cute! Welcome to the farm!

Matt got our field expansion plot disked, harrowed and seeded with Peas and Rye. We will till them in to improve our soil this fall. This is a new thing for us and we are excited so see what happens! Matt got it seeded just after the heat wave and caught the rain that followed. They are sprouting but still dryer than I would like. I was happy to wake up to rain this morning. 



Little farm girl has been doing lots of riding. Here she is practicing a Cowboy Challenge obstacle. I am so thankful to have a patient old gelding who looks after her.



Some experimenting with seed saving. Here are some turnip seeds for next year. I am getting a little seed saving crazy! Grass, clover, veggies, I want to save it all!

Little Filly on a lazy sunny day.

Here are some garden pictures. I was amazed at how much growth happened while I was away!

Quinoa starting to bloom!

Delicious lettuce! You can see the second planting coming up before the Kale.

Beautiful! But I think I will plant it differently next year. A lot of my veggies are a little too close together!

A purple carrot. They are certainly growing down there!

All my transplanted broccoli went straight to flowering. I am still waiting to see about the direct seeded plants. The flowers are delicious and sure make a salad look fancy!

The purple top turnip foliage is huge! They are covering the plants around them. Next year I will do it differently. Live and learn I guess!

Beets are getting bigger too!

I thought the pumpkins wouldn't actually need 10 feet of room. Ha ha!

Potato flowers! So beautiful!

And here are some current pictures of these little Cheepers.

So fluffy! I just want to hold them all the time!

Turning Dirt

Another week has passed and we have managed to get caught up on all the things we neglected when we spent our weekend haying!
I have lots of more important things I could be doing so I will just post a bunch of pictures!



Look at what we are doing to our best hay field! Matt has not plowed before so it has been a bit of a learning curve to get the implement attached and adjusted properly to match our tractor.

There was lots of plowing, evaluating, making changes and repeat...

And here is why we are plowing. We are investing in our future garden plot. We are plowing and planting some green manures, which is not as gross as it sounds...
We are planting our plot with crops specifically to improve the soil and then we will turn them down into the dirt. As we expand our production we hope to have the soil ready and at its best.



I found the plow so captivating to watch, like watching a fire or running water. The sharp circular wheel cuts the sod like a pizza cutter and the angled blade turns it all upside down. It was pretty mesmerizing to walk on the turned over sod. As you walked along, the plow would be turning the path over and it would be unrolling in front of your feet like a red carpet. It was pretty fun, but maybe you had to be there...



Once we got all the settings right, the whole tractor sat on an angle as Matt plowed.

Dirt turned over

To make way for more of this goodness!

And the pigs are in what we call the pig jungle now. Its one of my favourite things of the year. Its actually like a jungle, with thick grass and little meadows, a log pile, rock pile, trees and a muddy wallow. They are so happy in there and I makes me smile every time I look out my window.



We had a friend who's family owned a pig farm. The stories he told us about how pigs were kept were sickening. We felt so strongly that if we ever got some land of our own we would raise meat for ourselves that had the best lives possible. It makes my heart sing to see these guys playing and rooting in the sunshine.



We were out playing with them all morning yesterday. The grass in this spot is well over my head and we were sneaking through trying to hide from the pigs. It was like Jurassic park watching the tops of the grass shaking closer and closer until finally a tiny snout would appear by our boots. Then off we would tramp with piglets hot on our tail until we could lose them again and hide. They would charge around bucking like little bulls together until it got too hot and they all settled to snooze.



When they were little we would ask them to sit. They still remember and sometimes rush to be the first to sit and get goodies or rump scratches. Its kind of endearing...



And little farm girl has learned to trot on Tex all by herself. She is quite assertive with him and it able to actually get him working. You should have seen her smile!

When the sun shines

What a crazy and busy long weekend we had!



Over this Canada Day, because of how Matt's shift landed, we ended up having 4 days off! We started our weekend the usual way: by making a To Do List far longer than we could ever hope to accomplish! We tried to prioritize what we thought was most urgent and scheduled those things into the days we had ahead of us.

Of course its never that simple! Sunday morning dawned cloudy and warm and Matt said to me, totally out of the blue, that he thought we should cut hay. I was very doubtful as we already had more than a full weekend ahead and it hadn't even crossed my mind to cut yet.
Matt has been playing a game for as long as we have been married. During the summer months he would one day get up and say "If I was farming, this would be the day I would cut hay." Then a few days later he would pat himself on the back for a good choice.
Even thought this will be just our second time making hay ourselves, I knew we could trust his farming intuition, so Sunday afternoon we cut hay.


 

 

 


I can think of some pretty intense haying moments in our past. The time the hay wagon tipped on the road while fully loaded and Matt fell from the height of the power lines into a ditch. Or there was the time he got his leg run over by the tractor, or even the time the round baler kept malfunctioning as the thunder rumbled overhead. Despite those adventures, it think this weeks haying wins for most intense. 





The weather continued to get hotter and hotter with a nice drying breeze. Perfect haying weather!

When we bought this farm two years ago we also purchased a set up of haying equipment. It was totally in disrepair and some equipment, like the mower, had been damaged to the point where the gears had worked themselves into a tangled lump of metal. Matt worked hard on each piece, and last year we hayed for the first time and it felt like quite the victory! We had once piece left in our fleet to get field ready: the tedder. It was given to us by a friend Matt hayed for when he was young. Sunday afternoon our wonderful welder friend came and did some serious welding on one of the arms and with a little more work it was good to go! This was our first time tedding the crop, which basically means, it spreads and fluffs up the hay to dry it more quickly.



With some tedding and good sun we were surprised to be able to bale the lighter crop on Tuesday evening. The heavier stuff seemed like it could benefit by having just a tiny bit more sun so we decided to leave it until the next day. A friend from church called and offered to help us bring the hay in, which was wonderful! That is one of the neatest things about haying. Neighbors and friends come together and we have been so blessed by the help we receive every year. We don't even have to ask and people have come and pitched in and shared our load. We have been so blessed by it!





We hayed so spontaneously that we didn't get time to borrow our neighbours hay wagon. We used the pick up truck which made for a much more labour intensive night. There wasn't too much baled though, so it wasn't too bad.

The next morning we woke up to grey, oppressive clouds and a warm, heavy feel to the air. The forcast called for evening thunderstorms so the clock was ticking. Hours started to pass by and the dew was still moist on the hay and the whole sky blanketed with low clouds. Finally we resigned ourselves to the fact that the majority of this fields crop would have to go the compost. Matt went out to rake it and round bale it to be used for composting. Just as he was finishing the raking, a sliver of blue appeared on the horizon. As he put the rake away the blue was starting to grow into a patch of sky. With nothing to loose we decided to wait. It was already very humid day and when the sun made its way over, it was a scorcher! We got a good two hours of hot sun and the dew very quickly dried and the hay became a crunchy green. And then, right where the sliver of blue had appeared, we could see a dark pillar of grey clouds building. Unmistakably a thunderstorm on the horizon.



We leaped into action. It was right at little farm boy's afternoon nap time so as he went down, Matt readied the tractor, baler and hitched the pick up to the stock trailer. The plan was for Matt to bale while I picked up with the trailer. Once at maximum capacity we would park it safely under the cover of the hay barn and just use the pick up to get as much as we could into the barn before the rain came.



So off we went at a dead run. Matt baling as fast as he could and me and little farm girl driving and parking every 40 feet and running to fit as much as we could into the trailer. The dark clouds were creeping closer and closer with every bale. I was covered in sweat and hay and hauling as fast as I could. Our friend from church came just at the right moment and I was so thankful! I was really having trouble trying the wedge bales into the spots against the ceiling of the trailer. Once the bale was over my head, I didn't have the strength to be accurate enough to manipulate them into a tight, high spot. Bale by bale we filled the trailer. The air had a sticky ominous feel that urged us to go as fast as we could push ourselves. The trailer was full just as Matt finished baling. We parked it as quickly as we could and raced out to get more bales, noticing how the clouds looked like they were streaking to the ground.



With the three of us we filled the pick up as quickly as we could. Matt's usual neat stacking job was forgotten as we raced to clean up the last of the bales. As we neared the end of the field a few big drops started to splatter down.



 We threw the last few bales in. Then with my heart pounding and lungs heaving, I raced off to get the hay barn open while Matt kicked the truck into third gear across the hay field. The thunder was ringing and we got the truck into the barn just seconds before the skies let loose.

We didn't even have time to celebrate our little farming win. The skies let go with an intensity that I have never seen before! I hardly even had time to pull the hay barn gate closed behind me. The rain pounded on the roof causing a cloud of spray to envelope us. It quickly turned into the largest hail I have ever seen. It was deafening on the tin roof of the old barn and reached such a fury that I feared for our safety. It was hard to see through the torrential rain and hail swirling outside but I could make out branches being ripped from the trees in the pasture.




 


I know around the world they have all sorts of intensive weather, but this is the first I have seen of this sort of fury. With the adrenalin and sweat of getting the hay in, it made for quite the memorable haying!  It amazed me that we had just enough. Just enough sun to get everything dry, just enough baby nap time for me to be able to fully help, just enough time, pretty much right to the minute, to get the harvest in.
And we were so thankful for willing and helping hands! God is good!

The garden is showing some signs of the pelting it took. The lettuce and pumpkins look like they withstood a firing squad and the broccoli and cabbage is leaning at odd angles. It could have been much worse!



Today I am doing some of the lesser celebrated haying tasks. You probably won't find a 1000 piece puzzle  featuring a painting of the farm wife struggling through a pile of itchy, hay-covered laundry. None the less, its part of the haying fun, so off I go...