Rest

Well, this will be the opposite of my summer blog posts!



During the summer the farm is a flurry of sweat, dirt and ever changing To Do Lists. At the moment now, the farm is a flurry of....well, flurries I guess!
There is still the usual livestock care, feeding, and evenings spent in the shop, but there is now time for some more leisurely activities as well.


This has been a pretty strange winter weather wise. The photo above was taken after a winter thunderstorm, complete with a winter rainbow. I have never seen that before.

We have had some crazy warm days, even up to +10C! Last night it didn't even get to freezing and the flurries coming down now are definitely mixed with rain. It has frozen to be quite the slippery mess in areas, which has created some difficulties for us, but mostly fun!

Our pond in the back pasture has frozen over and we have been thoroughly enjoying it! Everyday this week we have been out skating, sometimes twice in the same day even. The little farmers and I are loving every second of it! Little farm girl is mastering her skates quickly and little farm boy loves to ride in the sled that I tie around my waist. Its excellent exercise and we all come in pretty tired!

The weather has made for some neat ice crystals too!







So beautiful!
Sometimes I forget to come in after doing chores, its little things like these that get me sidetracked. That, and horses, and kittens, and tracks in the snow, and stars, and itchy pigs. Maybe I am just highly distract-able, but I like to think anyone would be distracted by those...



We also have been getting ready for Christmas! We usually wait until pretty close to Christmas to pick a tree but the little farmers just couldn't wait. We found just the right one but somehow it seemed to grow as we got closer to home. What looked like a pretty reasonable tree in the field got a lot bigger once we got it inside!



Little farm boy helps decorate it after we had trimmed a few feet off the top and bottom of it.



And I will leave you with a picture of this smiling pig enjoying the warm temperatures.

I am in the thick of a book I am itching to get back to. Its called Gaining Ground and its the story of a farm start up. It does such a good job of capturing the dream and passion of farming and the ups and downs of trying to get a farm off the ground. As I read it I feel the swell of excitement as the farm grows, the bitter disappointments of failures and the sickening doubt of whether the farm will ever able to support itself. I could hardly tear myself away to write this so I am going to curl right back up with it and read until little farm boy is awake. Its a nice way to spend a break from actual farming...

Snow Pigs

There are two things that I am feeling quite thankful for today. Actually, there are many more, but two of them are on my mind at the moment, and they also pertain to this wonderful but challenging season of winter.



Firstly, we had our first cold snap.
Not an intense cold snap, but it was pretty chilly just the same. I think the coldest we saw on the farm was -29.7C, which is not unusual and was still warmer than some of our neighbours reported. I think though it was the windchill that made if feel so cold. It was cold enough though to cause skin to sting and the pigs to disappear under their hay pile. But, the best thing it did was acclimatize us (or maybe just me) to winter.
Before the cold snap I was so cold all the time, even in many layers with constant slipper wearing. I think I had forgot what actual cold felt like. That feeling when you step outside and the air refuses to enter your lungs, or you slip off a mit to open a clip on the gate and your fingers immediately freeze to the metal.  Now that I have remembered what it is truly like to be cold, the average winter temperatures are no problem! I feel like winter and I have a bit of a truce now.

The main thing I am thankful for today is our wonderful weather, which I may not have appreciated if not for our delightful and perspective-giving cold snap. Today is a deliciously sunny, throw off your mittens and play -6C. It feels amazing and we are all taking advantage of it!
Here are some pictures from around the farm.



Yesterday I was extremely spoiled when Matt gave me a Mom's morning off! I hauled Charlie down to our local indoor riding arena and got to spend a bit of very refreshing horse time.
When we are home we have been pulling them into an open space in the hay barn to play. Here is little farm girl and Tex working on their side pass.



The pigs even had some play time in the snow. We have two gilts we are hoping to breed for next spring. The close one is Popcorn, and the one behind her and leaving a face print is is Lady.

I thought Lady looked particularly elegant in this picture.

The pigs were charging about in the snow and having a great time. I always enjoy their expressions when they run. Its like their faces defy gravity for a split second.



Well, I have about 2000lbs of feed to move, so the little farmers and I are going to head out to enjoy the sunshine some more! I hope you get to soak it in as well!

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!