Eggs and Seedy Saturday

I am excited to say that everyday this week I found at least one egg from our chickens. As of yet I have not eaten any yet though. I found one just now while feeding the animals, the chicken had laid it in the food container. I think that will be the first one I eat mostly because we usually find the eggs after they have been out for a while and they tend to be frozen and very dirty. This one is clean and not frozen. Which I say makes it an excellent candidate for my stomach.
I also wanted to mention that tomorrow is seedy Saturday. If you haven't heard of it, it is an excellent opportunity to brush up on gardening skills and pick up some terrific seeds for your summer gardens. I will post the information at the end of the blog.
Sunday (our lamb) is doing terrifically and feels that he should be allowed out and about even if it is a freezing cold evening. He is full of energy and always trying to eat hay and drink water. I would say he is also much more friendly than our lambs last year. He will come up to you and you can pet him. He seems to like attention!
Also this week we finalized our seed list and starting sending out our orders. I believe Ryan is very much looking forward to publishing our seed list so I will leave that up to him!
Here is the Seedy Saturday Info:

Jordan,

Ball's Falls Conservation Area
Saturday February 12, 2011 10-3

$2 Admission.

Events and Activities: „« Exhibitors „« Presenters „« Seed Retailers „« Door Prizes „« Free Coffee & Tea & Treats „« Light Lunch Available For Purchase Garden Give-away Table¡ a free exchange and/or giveaway of clean pots, trays, magazines, books, garden utensils...

Seedy Saturday agenda: Seed Swap & Retail all day 10:15 Welcome and Master Gardener John Renaud Growing with Myke 11 am Steven Biggs Growing Figs and Currants 12:15 Kate Green, USC Canada,film Saving the Seed and discussion. 1 pm Jen Heaton Vermi-composting 2 pm Master Gardener Wendy Dunnville Showing what you're growing

Contact: Linda Crago 905-386-7388 or treeandtwig@sympatico.ca

For other Seedy Saturday Locations Visit: http://www.seeds.ca/ev/events.php

The First Sign of Spring!

Well I know it is not even close to being spring yet (technically only half-way through the official part of winter), but we have had our first sign of spring today.

As we were out feeding the sheep before church, we noticed one of our ewes, whose udder had been getting bigger over the last couple of weeks, was acting rather strange. We had a makeshift shelter in place for the sheep, but after a small debate we realized we needed to improve it rapidly in case we were about to have a new lamb. So we quickly got to work fixing up a new A-frame house for the sheep, with a side lean-to for a lambing pen to keep the mother and lamb separate from the rest of the flock for some bonding time.


It looks kind of crazy in this picture, but it works really nice. The part on the right is the main A-frame pen and the part on the left is the lean-to.

As we were working quickly, Bess' water broke and we began to notice a head emerge. Needless to say we were compelled to work much faster. Eventually the lamb fully emerged and was quickly attended to by its mother. We didn't get the side pen up fast enough for Bess to have her lamb inside, but she did find a nice corner that was relatively warm. Once we were finished, and the lamb was cleaned up, Amanda carried the lamb into the pen with Bess quickly in tow.


Bess' first lamb was born on a Friday, so we saw it fitting to name this new lamb "Sunday". Needless to say, we ended up missing church.


Everyone is finally warm and happy. Our first success of the new season.

Summer 2011 CSA Has Arrived!

Well folks, it has arrived. Our 2011 Summer CSA brochure. If you are interested in eating delicious, local vegetables, then take a look here:

2011 Summer CSA

Let us know what you think, and if you are interested, sign up! We are hoping to have an amazing summer this year and we want you to be a part of it.

Look back soon for more awesome events and happenings around the farm.

Lazy Days

Well we are not snowed in here in Jordan but we are having a bit of lazy day. This morning we took care of the animals and then hung around get this and that done. Now we are working on our CSA brochure which should be all finished up by the end of the day. For our winter CSA we had a picture of a cornucopia which Ryan is insistent he loves and should remain part of our current information. I however believe we should put a more summer like picture on so I have been searching for ideas on the internet. From this may i suggest that you google organic vegetable cartoons under images. If you are having a bit of a lazy day this may brighten it a bit. There is a great selection of cartoons dealing with organic farming. The one below is my favorite of the bunch!

http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/o/organic_vegetables.asp

What does a farmer do when there is "nothing" to do?

I was just thinking to myself now that I often get a lot done in the winter and often it is not farm related but there is really always something that needs to be done on the farm. Of course there are the usual daily tasks that include feeding and watering all the animals. This morning this also include some repairs to the sheep's straw house. Apparently they feel that the nicely stacked bails are there for their person use. In this case it was that they created some new bedding for themselves. So I schlepped a new bale into the pen and replaced the one of course in the middle row that they had removed. The sheep also enjoyed some treats this morning including the rest of the apple I was eating and my granola bar (its just so hard to say no). Sheep really like fruit and they were climbing the fence to get at mine! Also this morning the ducks recieved some fresh straw for there floor (they are calling for lots of snow so i thought they would like to cozy up in their home).

Well then the required tasks for the day were "finished" oh but wait.... nope. I moved on the work on a flyer for our summer CSA. Although it is still snowing outside it is the time of year to get those veggie loving people interested in our farm. The flyer actually turned out rather nicely I think and I look forward to having it posted here on the blog shortly.

Ah time for a break.....ah well no we have our winter CSA pick up again next week so it was off to plant some shoots in the greenhouse. I really love shoots they are so tasty and are great used in all different ways. A personal favorite is in a sandwich. I did one thing differently on this round of shoots which was to soak them in water first. I am hoping that this will give us quicker results.

Then it was lunch time...nothing too exciting. I did eat an orange, I don't eat them to often because well we don't grow them here I tend to go for my good friend the apple instead (which is widely available still from local sources).

So by 1pm I had pretty much filled my morning with farm tasks so I took a break. This break resulted in a pound cake which is currently in the oven. I made it from Julia Childs recipe and it tasted like butter even before being cooked. Which personally I am not complaining about. I will get a few more things done this afternoon then off to a meeting at Community Care to see how our farm can better assist them over the coming months.

Sheep house and Sprouts

The weather has been telling us for a while now that it is winter and this means that there has been some construction going on around the farm. What is that construction you ask? Well of course a fresh straw house for the sheep. I as usual have failed to provide a photograph but I will post some later (perhaps tomorrow). The house is similar in design to last years but larger and outside the pen giving the sheep a lot more outside room than they had last year. This of course makes us happy because we want to give our animals as much room as possible.
Yesterday held a trip to the butcher, our last one for a while. We took our remaining meat chickens (11) and a few ducks (3) that missed the Christmas butcher run. Overall going to the butcher usually goes pretty smoothly but it does take a long time there. They always seem mildly disorganized which is a bit frustrating but they do a good job so I am not one to complain. After we pick them up from the butcher we package them into freezer bags and promptly freeze them to maintain freshness.
Today I picked up some new containers to plant sprouts in. We gave out sprouts two weeks ago in our CSA they sure tasted great but I have to say that I was not 100% satisfied with the containers we used. Last time we did sprouts they were planted in four packs and now they are going to be in 1.5 l containers. I believe this will be much nicer for everyone involved. This time we are also trying two new kinds of sprouts: broccoli and corn. I am excited to see how each of these turns out. A note to anyone interested in growing sprouts at home it is important to make sure you get seed that has not been treated with any kind of chemical! Always read the package.

What did happen to that wool?

Well last year i posted about the process of cleaning the sheep wool (see post What do you get form a sheep?) but i was not specific about where that wool was going. Well it went to a quilting project which was a gift for my cousin who is an avid reader so I could not post about it on the blog. The process of turning the wool into usable quilt batting was a lot of work but worth it all in the end. After the cleaning and drying process, which took a few days, the wool then needs to be carded to remove any left over debris. Carding is the process of pulling the wool between two "cards" which have metal teeth and cause the debris to fall out. After this is done the wool can be laid out to be used as quilt batting. Overall a lengthy process but I would do it again because there is nothing like quilting through wool.