Another Spring Day

It turns out we are having another drizzly morning here in Jordan. Its not raining but there is wet mist occasionally which really is not too much of a bother. The first job of the morning was feeding all of the animals. They always seem to be starving as soon as you walk out the front door. The sheep start bahing and the chickens start flapping there wings.

This is one of our chickens that live with the sheep.
We sprinkle the food outside the fence so the sheep
cannot reach it.

We are very excited to have gotten new feed for our chickens as well. Our old feed was fine but we are getting fresh locally made food now that had whole grains, flax, and all kinds of great stuff. It also is not in pellet form and smells great. The whole drive home on Saturday I wanted to try some as a little snack. The food is made at Comfort Farms which is just a short drive away from us. One thing that we really like about the food is that it is GMO free, which is not an easy thing to find especially if you purchase commercially made feed. So far there have been no complaints from the animals about the change!

Old Feed

New Feed

This morning the chickens and ducks also received some fresh hay. They really enjoy eating green matter and I think they are getting a little stir crazy. Every morning the chickens in particular try to make a getaway into the field. It won’t be too long until they are out on pasture as Ryan and I started to put up our fencing on Saturday.

Chickens eating hay and new feed

My second job this morning was to go and pick some leeks for our CSA drop off tomorrow at the food co-op. Due to the lovely weather we have been experiencing it was not a tough job. Post pick I washed them to get all the mud off and later this morning I will trim the roots and tall leaves so that they look presentable.

Bleu de Solaise Leeks

After I picked the leeks I went for a little jaunt in the field to see what was going on. Well apparently there has been a lot going on in the past few days. As you will see in the picture below our garlic is starting to sprout out of the ground! This is the first new outdoor growth of the season and it was a great delight to my morning. We also have a survivor from the winter. What is it you ask well spinach. The current growth does have some frost burn on it but I am hopeful that with a few warm days some more new growth will appear. I was very tempted to start eating it off the plant but there was a considerable amount of dirt on the leaves and my better judgement told me that I may not want to have dirt in my mouth.

The Spinach

Signs of Growth

Well, as Amanda mentioned in the last post we were busy a week ago planting some early crops inside a greenhouse. As of Saturday we have seen the first signs of growth in the greenhouse with some seedlings just starting to grow.

If you look closely in the middle of the picture you can just make out a tiny radish seedling coming out of the ground.

In this picture you can see a couple of pea seeds that have floated to the surface. Again, if you look closely you can see that one of them has a tiny little white shoot, just reaching out of it.

As with growing vegetables in the field, our arch nemesis has made its appearance as well. Let the battle begin!

Much of the planting this year will be done with our new Jang Clean Seeder. Larger seeds such as corn, peas and beans will be done with the EarthWay, but we find that with smaller seeds it tends to get jammed up so we needed to look for a different option. The Jang is quite a bit more expensive than the EarthWay, but it has a whole range of adjust-ability and can handle seeds as small as carrots or as big as peas with gracefulness. So far we are quite happy with it, but will see what happens once more seedlings pop up so we can get an idea on the quality of spacing.

Amanda hard at work planting lettuce.

The Jang Clean Seeder. It weighs 10kgs so it has enough weight to feel tough and push-able in the soil.

Our new water station. If found these tanks for sale on Kijiji for $50, and bought 3 because they were an awesome deal. Since the water is turned off in the greenhouse we needed a way of efficiently filling the watering cans and this has worked great.

A Planting We Will Go

It was a beautiful day today, and there are sure signs of spring such as blue jays, and the green grass on our lawn. The past few days have been pretty full. On Saturday Ryan and I had the opportunity to start some early crops at Whitty Farms in there green house. We planted, peas, lettuce, radishes, and spinach. We hope that these crops will be ready in time for our first markets in May. This early planting also allowed us to try out our new Jang seeder. I'm sure Ryan has a load he would like to say about the seeder but we were very happy with it performance. Much better than our Earthy Way seeder.
I started writing this two days ago and have lost my train of though a little bit but I will carry on.
This week has also been filled with a lot more planting. Our germination bench is pretty much full but tomorrow we will be moving some of the sprouted items off to make room for more planting. Our seed order arrived yesterday from West Coast seeds which means a lot of planting is about to happen. We still have a few small items that have not arrived yet but I'm sure they will be here soon.

The Small Business BIG Impact Challenge

It appears that we are in for another rainy day here in Niagara. I have just been sloshing about in the mud feeding all the animals who are still in need of food and water (not as much water) as they are if it is a beautiful sunny morning. So the animals are done and the eggs are collected although there will be more this afternoon and preparation for this afternoons CSA is already underway. Overall it will probably end up being a pretty quiet day.
Yesterday we planted more items in the greenhouse. Our leek, onion and shallot seeds finely came so we planted those. Overall we planted 11 trays yesterday which is not really very many considering that we probably plant hundreds of trays over the season.
We have also entered our farm into the The Small Business BIG Impact Challenge. There are a load of entrants and in order for us to be considered as finalists we need people to vote for us. So if you have a few moments you can check out our write up at http://www.scotiachallenge.projects.fm/entry/4086203-Creek%20Shore%20Farms?offset=0 .
And if you go and take a look don't forget to vote for us. There is a cash prize for three winners in just under two months.

Tastey toilet brush?

Well Jeff has only been getting better over the past few days and is show lots of interest in the world around him. He currently likes to sniff everything insight. He also will munch on a little hay now and also will drink small amounts of water from a bowl. We are pleased with his progress thus far. Among Jeff's funny antics is a strange interest in trying to eat the handle of our toilet brush cleaner, as well as trying to eat the box our mailbox came in. Needless to say we don't let him actually eat anything strange but if he finds a moment to escape he is after some strange and wonderful new thing he thinks might fill his belly.
We also had another lamb born today. Muncher is the mother and we named him Robin after the great fairly tale legend Robin Hood. This was to carry on the theme of Marion who was born a couple of weeks ago. We are not sure when he was born just sometime during the day today. He is big and looks very healthy. I look forward to posting some pictures once his mom relaxes and lets visitors in!

Its warm in the greenhouse

On a cool morning or afternoon this early in the season it is a wonderful experience to go to the greenhouse and do a little planting. It feels like a warm summer day inside with a temperature usually around 30 C. This week I have been in the greenhouse twice and enjoyed the nice tropical temperatures inside. On Tuesday I planted sprouts for our winter CSA. I tired a few new kinds including, beans, radishes and beets. Already on Wednesday you could see the shoots starting to pop out. I love bean shoots and am hoping they turn out really well.
On Wednesday I took a trip to the greenhouse with my dad and we planted our first trays for summer. It feels a bit wierd starting seeds when there is still snow outside but it has to be done and I enjoy the job most of the time. So on Wednesday we planted Leeks (ours have not arrived yet but we had some leftover from last year that will hopefully give us some earlier leeks in the fall), we also planted basil and tomatoes. The tomatoes we are going to grow in the greenhouse in one gallon pots for early sale at the farmers market. Last year this worked out well for us so we are hoping for a repeat on the success.
This week we also found little Jeff (one of the twins) outside just shivering and seeming to be ill. He was very thin and not looking at all well, so we brought him inside and have been bottle feeding him. He came in on Sunday and over the past two days we have seen him improve slowly. He would not even get up on Monday but now is happy to take a little walk and is eating a lot more. We are hopeful that he will fully recover and be able to go back outside with his sister.
I also cleaned up the tractor mower this week. It was all covered in grass and muck and just needed a good wipe down. I threw a before and after picture in above.

Five lambs and a frosty morning

We know have five wonderful little lambs wondering here at the farm. Three are new additions as of Saturday. Wendy who did not have a lamb last year had twins (Mutt and Jeff) and Rosie had little Gail. The twins are both small Mutt the female is the smallest of the two. They seem to be doing well now after a bit of a worry that they possibly were not getting any milk. Ryan and I actually missed all the excitement as we were away for the weekend! Thanks to our neighbour at Thiessen farm`s and Randi the sheep were left in good care throughout our absence.
Yesterday we received our second seed order in the mail which was tomatoes. It is very exciting to open all the parcels that come in the mail at this time of year and so far we have received everything that we ordered which is fantastic. We will likely start planting next week. Not tomatoes but leeks, onions, and anything that is a slow grower.
The chickens have also been gearing up their egg production with almost a dozen eggs a day. Yesterday I actually found an egg outside of the chicken enclosure. A chicken had laid an egg in the outdoor section and the egg had rolled under the fence (there is small gap after the snow melted last week).