Finally!

Its been a while since I have posted!
In fact, I think you can watch the seasons change just over this blog post!



The farm is pretty quiet now. The veggies are all harvested and stored away for our winter enjoyment. The pigs have been raised and sold, the chickens are tucked into the greenhouse for the winter and the horses have begun to whicker for their daily hay. Snow has been lightly falling and the puddles have frozen smooth and hard. Still, we have still been humming along.

Almost everything on the winterizing list has been checked off, and yet we still find plenty to do!
We were looking forward to a quieter weekend when suddenly the laundry room started to puddle, and just like that, the weekend will be spent on an excavator re-digging the washing machine run off into the yard.

But before I go into anything else, I will share some farm pictures from a few weeks ago.



The greenhouse is pretty much done. Its pretty awesome! Matt ran power to it and installed some lights and its all closed in out of the wind. Once the sun hits in the morning, the whole things warms up!



We finished off our fall with a visit from my parents. Little farm girl had been looking forward to teaching them a riding lesson for a long time.

This was one of my favourite things of this year. Being able to ride with my daughter.
Playing in the pasture and follow the leader through the trees. I have a feeling she liked it just as much as I did!





She has come a long way as a rider over this summer!



Finishing up our garden. We rented a dump trailer and moved loads from the dirt pile in the pasture.



The area with rows is last years adventure. The area with the piles will be next years attempt!

We also picked out two farm kittens! This is Momma Huckleberry giving her babies one last nursing before they ventured out into the world.

Such a cute paw peeking out.

This is Pumpkin. He was the littlest of the litter and is purring machine.

And this is Rainbow, she does her own thing, all the time.

The kitties are super cute but Cola still holds her place as little farm girls favourite. She has been learning bird tricks and it starting to get picky about her rewards. Popcorn is the current favourite. I do think I need to find a more appropriate box for her though... (and yes, I know its actually a him...)



Here is Cola (in the wagon) going for a walk with Little Farm girl and Uncle Mikey.



These girls are doing well. As the temperature drops they are spending less time outside and more time building hay nests to disappear into. Popcorn still remembers to sit if a go in with a treat for her.



The snow has been holding off but I know any day it will come! I am actually looking forward to it because I am having a hard time riding with the ground frozen so hard and choppy.



And speaking of riding, I had the riding weekend of a lifetime last weekend!

Charlie and I attended a Jim Anderson Clinic and it was absolutely amazing! Jim Anderson is world renowned and is an extremely talented horseman. It was such a privilege to get to learn from him!

I often play with my horses and work them in fairly non traditional ways and once I get stuck on something, its hard to get past. Jim had so many insights and was able to shape up my cues and fill in the blanks I was missing in my training. I am quite excited to see where we can go from here!

We worked on so many things and I learned a ton. I have so so many things to work on and teach Charlie and I am just itching to work with him! Which is really hard just going into winter...


As awesome as this summer was, there are still some things I am really looking forward to more of this winter.



Some time spent with my back against this delightful thing, a stack of library books and some little minds thirsting to explore them.



And those cold winter nights: the chores done, little farmers tucked in and and a whole evening ahead with nothing to do but curl up somewhere warm with my favourite man and Hogan's Heroes.

Winter is not so bad after all...

Finishing Up

We are in finishing up mode on the farm, and so are the trees!

Our last selling harvest was last week. The cool weather did the garden very well. I was pretty happy with the last of our produce that went out.

The little farmers and I harvested the rest of the carrots and stored them for our own use. It was an interesting day. I spent the whole first part of it going crazy trying to sort and store carrots all while trying to keep little farm boy from undoing everything I was doing. I basically just followed him around resorting all the broken carrots that he industriously ferried into my good storage box, quickly trying to remove all the  carrots that were being thrown in with little farm boy's little rodent toothed bit mark out of the side and continually fishing the carrot tops out of my storage sand. I was getting no where and just about the call the whole thing off when the little guy just walked away. Little farm girl tootled after him to keep a eye on him and together they found a sled to pull and ride on. Suddenly it was just me working in the garden... and it was very lonely! 

I had no idea how much little farm girl helped! She had been there the whole time sprinkling sand between all the carrots and snatching up the very best to save for seed, both of which eliminated a big part of the job for me. Not to mention all the enthusiastic conversation and curious questions that come with their helping hands. I was very thankful when they came back with their bright little eyes and busy hands ready to help again. I can't imagine farming without my little sidekicks.

A new row of garlic put to bed for the winter

Here are some neat carrots that came up. One lesson I learned over this year is not to plant everything so close together!

These three are actually braided!

And our first group of pigs has gone off to the butcher. I have lots of thoughts on that but I will wait until we are finished pigs for the year before I summarize that.

And we had to get a little creative this week. We have been wanting to winter chickens in the greenhouse. Matt made the back of the green house removable so we could tow the camper in. We are hoping to improve the soil in here, keep the chickens warmer and hopefully prevent egg losses due to freezing.

Unfortunately we didn't measure really closely and when we removed the back wall we discovered that the camper was taller than we realized and couldn't fit under the curved roof. I was ready to make another plan for them entirely but Matt always has ideas. He loosened the camper off the axle and together we shuffled the whole thing towards the center of the greenhouse. After some playing around and wiggling, and using a wagon to move the tongue rather than the taller lawn tractor, we fit it in! Our eggs will be pastured a little big longer this year!

There has been lots to keep us busy getting ready for winter, including moving hay to convient locations for winter use. Which brings me to something that I have appreciated so much this week.

My farm truck.
I love this thing. It is my 4x4 low, hay on the floor, chicken on my lap, straight through the pasture, not afraid to get a dent, truck. I love what it helps me to do. It hauls hay, feed, lumber, is a ladder for us when we can't quite reach, and its great when I have too far to go for little farm boy to walk, and more than I can carry.
Sometimes though, I just use it because I like it...

I am not the only one who likes it.

And this morning I made a rule that put my mom's "No uni-cycling near the fish tank" rule to shame. The rule is "Chickens may only eat their cheesecake in the kitchen." As soon as I said it I felt rediculous.

Oh, the life of a farm wife!

Fall Update

Fall is well under way here! Its beautiful and has brought a bit of a change of activities for us.



We scrapped our summer To do lists and prioritized what we need/should get done before the snow flies. This week kept us busy with finishing the garden up and also working to get the greenhouse set for winter.



Also, I have been busy in the kitchen, which is not my favourite but it sure feels nice once you are done! We had a pumpkin pie and roasted seeds making day, lard making day and spent a day making soap with friends!

This pretty much sums up what is left in the garden now. Just beets and carrots, and a little bit of quinoa left as an experiment.

A braided garden snack while we work.

A gardening failure. A beet supposed to go to seed this year. It sure grew large, but that is about it! The pigs really enjoyed it anyway...



It feels very natural to have pigs next to the garden! As we pull things out they get tossed over our shoulder to their eager snouts. Here are Popcorn and River shaking their quinoa stalks like puppies. Pigs are never boring!



They all have favourite spots to be scratched. The magic spot for "the Biggie" is his forehead, and its sometimes the only way to get them to hold still for a picture! That is a very cute snout!

Here is my quinoa before I pulled most of it.

Here is where I put it to finish drying. I am quite excited to see what happens with it.

I was amazed at the variety of colours that we got.

Here is one little quinoa flower in my hand. It doesn't look much like quinoa does it?

But after a gently rubbing it with my finger, ta da! There is a quinoa seed there on the left. Not quite dry enough yet, but getting there!



We had a good few days work of harvesting potatoes. The little farmers really enjoyed it! I wasn't really happy with the quality or the yield of each of the varieties we planted, but they are so delicious and juicy. We will be eating potatoes for a very long time!



Here is what was keeping Matt busy this week. We had some logistics issues because we would really like to put the chicken camper in here for a chunk of the winter, but once the walls are on it complicates things. Where there is a will, there is a way! Just a more complicated way...

It looks awesome! I am so excited to start using this greenhouse!

And because I never get tired of horse picture, here is Mr. Charlie looking goofy.

And, I may have spent more time in the kitchen than I would have liked but I can't imagine a better view than this!
Things like this make my heart so full!