Friday, February 26, 2010

Daily Events

Well i'm sure Ryan will have plenty to say about today but I just thought that I would make a few comments first. Well today our tomato seeds came which is great. One kind was unavailable because they ran out of stock but we ordered so many that it will not really affect our crops.
Today's main venture however was the creation of a germination table. This is used so that when the seeds are first planted they can be put in a very warm environment. Again i'm sure Ryan will have a much more scientific and technical explanation. It took a lot of the day as we needed lots of supplies and visited a number of different stores. We had to get lumber, PVC pipe, sand (lots! 17 66lb bags), soil, and many other incidentals such as screws. It was extra fun picking up all of these items as we have been experiencing a large amount of snowfall over the past two days. But our new van is on the road and its a beast so the snow doesn't stop it.
There are lots of pictures to come on how the germination table looks so far.
Monday is scheduled as the first planting day which should be exciting. We got some plug trays today from Thiessen Farms (not related) who are always giving us helpful tips and have lots of know how about different farming practices. I had better skedaddle for now as we are headed out to supper. Hope everyone is enjoying the snow!!

Amanda

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Snowballs!

Well we have a had a little dumb of snow this week and are expecting some more today possibly. Yes snowball the lamb is doing terrific. She bounds around as happy as a lamb! She get bigger by the day and i guess its about time for another picture of her. All of the other sheep seem to be doing well too. They are all very hungry these days and yesterday Ryan gave them a little extra hay as they were acting like they were starving. I also gave them some apple bits which they always seem to enjoy. As of yet there are no signs of another lamb but you never know as these things seem to sneak up on us.
This week is the farm show here at Brock University and I have been attending that. It makes for a very busy day but they have interesting sessions and a good lunch! Today I will be going to some sessions on organic vegetables which will hopefully be interesting. I am looking forward to hearing all about different methods of farming vegetables.
Our seed orders have been pouring in over the last couple of days. West Coasts seeds as well as Stokes (two packages of back order) have sent us our seeds. Its always exciting to open up the seed boxes and see everything so nicely packaged ready for you. On Monday we are going to start planting which will be a lot of work. Leeks and Celery are first on the list to get underway.
Tomorrow Ryan and I are going to build a germination table (to start the seeds) and do some other work around here. It is a holiday at Brock so he has the day off which is pretty handy.

Oh and the title is referring to a little snowball fight we had with the neighbours which was fun after all the snowfall.

Amanda

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

All Seems Well

We are now into and through the second day of our lamb's life and all seems well. I could hardly contain my excitement yesterday when I learned that we had a new lamb (although a very unexpected one) and was able to leave work a bit early to pick up some much needed supplies and to attend to the lamb who had been appearing not to be eating. By the time I got home she (that's right, we have a female) was feeding alright, but needed to get checked up, her umbilical cord needed to be cleaned with iodine and she also needed a shot of selenium. We gave mum a quick check and cleaned away some of the wool from near her udder and left them alone in the straw barn separated from the others.

I have been getting a lot of suggestions for names from people, and seeing as how we will likely keep her because she will most likely be able to breed this coming fall/winter I have finally settled on a name. Snowball. I figured that since it is cold and snowy out, and since she has a round and white face this name is appropriate. Case closed.
In other news we had the biggest of our seed orders, from Stokes, arrive in the mail today. It was quite exciting going through the box and seeing all the seeds we ordered and thinking of all the goodies that would grow from what is in there. Everything seems to be in there (I checked off the list twice!) although there are a few things on backorder that I will have to check with the company to see when they might arrive.

For starting the seeds my uncle is allowing us to use the leanto portion of his greenhouse which is slightly separated from the rest of the greenhouse and which has it's own boiler. Amanda and I spent some time cleaning it up on Monday and now it is ready to go for plants once the heat gets turned on. I still have to build the germination table before anything can get started and with March 1st quickly approaching (when some seeds should start) it will be a busy couple of weeks.
Keep looking back for some updates on Snowball and maybe some more pictures, and who knows, we could be seeing some more lambs sometime soon!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010


Surprise at Creek Shore Farms

So this will just be a quick little not as this morning has turned out to be a fair bit more busy than expected. So Ryan having driven my Dad to the airport this morning left me to feed the sheep. Which was absolutely fine as it is a lovely job. So i went outside with a few apple slices as treats and filled there water bucket. Nothing out of the ordinary per say. Well as I (Amanda) am dumping in the water I hear this sad little bahhh. And to my shock there is a baby lamb in the pen. That's right the first lamb of the season has arrived. Much earlier than expected. More to come soon with photo's etc...

Amanda

Friday, February 12, 2010

Things Coming Together

Well in our classic, seat of the pants, last minute style we are finally getting things pulled together for starting our seeds once they come. We still have to work out planting patterns, but we now have greenhouse space to start the plants as well as some heating cable to build a germination table. There is still a fair bit of work to do to actually get the seeds going (ie. the germination table needs to be built, the seeds need to come, we need to find plug trays, etc) but it is all coming together. With any luck we will be having our first pictures of our 2010 crop sometime in March.

Sheep are still going strong. Just got another load of hay for them yesterday and it is always fun to see how excited they get when I walk over to the hay mound. The one ewe in particular can jump really high when she gets excited and does this all over the pen. Really interesting.
Ducks are...well...messy. Got another dry bale of straw yesterday as well to cover the bottom of the pen to keep it fresh. Hopefully we will get the egg boxes built soon and then we can see what happens from there. Looking forward to a whole bunch of little ducklings running around and since Muscovys are extremely prolific (generally at least a dozen if not more eggs) we should have quite a few.
Lots of exciting things happening in the next couple of weeks. Should finally get the van on the road and the seeds will start coming in, so keep checking back and see what we are up to.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The Order Is In!

Well after several hours of Amanda and I working together to decide on seed varieties and then me staying up until 1am deciding (guessing) on quantities and actually ordering the seed we finally have all of our orders in. Picking seeds this year was mostly about educated Guesses (with a capital G). Not really knowing how much this acre will yield and not knowing how various products will do at market we strolled through the catalogs and picked things that were interesting (as well as some staples). I think we are both quite happy with the order and are very excited to see the seeds come in so without further ado (and with the disclaimer that we have no idea what we are doing) here is our 2010 vegetable list (87 different varieties):

Beans:
Dragon Tongue
Black Calypso
Valentino
Bush Blue Lake 274
Dusky
Rodcor
Gold Rush
French Horticultural Bush
Royal Burgandy

Beans (Lima):
Eastland
Fordhook Bush 242

Beets:
Albino
Early Blood Turnip
Mona Lisa
Burpee's Golden Beet

Broccoli:
Eureka
Everest
Romanesco
Purple Sprouting Broccoli

Cabbage:
Blue Vintage
Quisor
Red Dynasty
Providence Savoy

Carrots:
Paris Market
Cosmic Purple
Red Atomic
Cream de Lite
Minicor
Coreless Amsterdam
Evora

Cauliflower:
Snow Crown
Accent
Violet Queen
Cheddar
Verdi

Celery:
Utah 57-70R
Monterey

Corn (Popping):
Strawberry Popcorn

Eggplant:
Bride
Birgah
Black Bell II
PS1893 (what a great name)

Kale:
Winterbore
Redbore
Westland Winter
Red Russian

Leeks:
Bleu de Solaise
Tadorna

Onion (Green):
White Gem
Green Banner

Peas:
Cascadia
Paladio
Sugar Ann
Sugar Daddy
Sugar Lace II
Winged Peas

Radishes:
White Icicle
Round Black Spanish
Minowase Summer Cross #3
Sparkler
Red Velvet
FireBall

Squash (Summer):
Ronde de Nice
Woods Prolific Bush Scalop

Squash (Winter):
Grey Ghost
Sunshine
Vegetable Spagetti
Honey Boat

Tomatoes:
Burgess Stuffing
Brandywine Red
Black Prince
Zapotec Pink Ribbed
Copia
Mule Team
Cherokee Purple
Arkansas Traveller
Stupice
Plum Lemon
Kellogg's Breakfast
Green Zebra
Yellow Pear
Sun Gold Hybrid
Black Cherry
Green Grape
Isis Candy
Snow White
Sweet Baby Girl Hybrid

Monday, February 8, 2010

Our Current Projects

From Darkness:


Into Light:


Besides starting and finishing our seed order (which is really hard when it is the first year we are doing it), our (my) other project is fixing up a 93' GMC Safari that we have been given. It is in reasonable shape, with only minimal body work required, although the rims (as seen above) were in very bad shape and needed a complete cleaning. We will be using this van for all of our summer farm and market needs and will be the perfect vehicle for what we need it for.
We are beginning to realize that spring is approaching very quickly and there is so much that we have to do before it arrives. We are optimistic about this year, although we realize there will be plenty we have to learn. Luckily we have a good support network in place so we shouldn't mess things up too much.
Should be able to post our seed orders on here in the next few days so keep looking back to see what we have ordered.

Friday, February 5, 2010

And We're Back...At Least I Think

Well after spending a fair bit of time working with tech support over some DNS issues (technical lingo for the servers that tell computers where to look for web pages) I think we have finally made the transition. I still cannot get it to show up on my main computer, but I have had another computer look it up successfully and it should be fully integrated to work on all systems in the next couple of days.
Our new address has been moved permanently to blog.creekshorefarms.ca so be sure to update your address books and watch for more frequent updates in the near future as well as a real website to come in the next several weeks.
On a farming note, we should be ordering our seeds in the next couple of days and we are both really excited to see what we will get.
Till then...

Thursday, February 4, 2010

We're Going Down!

I realize we haven't posted in a while, and that will change. Blogger is making some changes to how we are able to post our content on our own website and unfortunately we may be up and down a bit over the next couple of days. In all likely-hood our new blog address will be:

blog.creekshorefarms.ca

but don't change quite yet. Just giving a heads up.