Trucking Cattle

Today is a busy day on the farm that brings relief and new expectations at the end of the day.  Today we will be shipping out most of the herd of cattle to pasture.  We have approximately 100 acres of land on our farm but with some being bush and other land being used for barnyard and buildings and of course my gardens it only leaves about 75 acres as usable land. 

Thus we ship out our cattle to another farm that they we live on for the next couple months.  Luckily we have a friend of a friend that in the last couple of years decided to sell his cattle but keep his farm.  So that is where our cattle are headed. 

I would take pictures but they are going about 40 minutes drive away and it is too hard with the wee ones and the already stressed out cattle.  Plus it is easier on the cattle the less people that are there to create confusion for them. 

We hook up a bunch of gates to go around the trailer.  We don't have a trailer so we hire someone who has one and then he also helps load and unload the cattle.  We even put the manure spreader up against it because sometimes cattle can get pretty stubborn and forceful. 

We have to make sure that the right cow goes on with the right calf as well because just like us, they don't want to lose their babies either.  There is a separate gate in the trailer that helps keep the cows on and separated while driving.

Here is one cow on the trailer and although she looks stressed and a little crazed, she is not.  She is a little stressed because she doesn't know what is going on but it is mostly because they have to stretch up to see out of the trailer. 

Once they get to the pasture with fresh grass they calm right down and are just concerned with filling their bellies!  It is just like when we get the first crop in from the garden and it tastes SO good and you can't seem to get enough, well it is the same with cattle and fresh grass after a winter of hay.  I should also mention that we still have to check them at pasture although the owner of the farm is really good at keeping his eye on them also.

We are keeping two cows on the farm here because we don't have enough room for them anywhere else.  They don't know it right now but later this summer they will reap the benefits of fresh apples off our tree. 

So that is what is going on around the farm today. 

Photo Friday... ummm....

It has been so busy around here these last few weeks.  So I will post "Photo Friday" here on Saturday because, well, I didn't get around to it on Friday! This is a photo of my wee one in the pumpkin patch of past.  My dad grows pumpkins in his barnyard for the kids and then they get to help harvest them and pick out what ones they want for their own jack-o-lantern.

Good pick son, good pick!

Lilacs

The lilac bush is blooming all over Ontario right now.  There is even a little town that has only a handful of houses in it that is the "lilac capital of Ontario" because everywhere you look there are lilac bushes. 

On my parents farm there are two HUGE lilac bushes in the yard.  They have been there as long as anyone can remember.  They are so big that when my brother and I were younger we used to build forts in them and play tag throughout them. 

I love the fragrant smell of the lilac and the beautiful purple colour.  My father graciously picked 2 beautiful bouquets for each of my children that are filling our house with their wonderful smell.  Today I am grateful for the beautiful lilac.

The First Harvest of the Year

The first harvest of the year is upon us here in Ontario.  Rhubarb is a very hardy plant that just keeps giving all summer long without fail.  Since it was a holiday this past weekend here, we had my parents over for a family dinner.  My dad loves rhubarb pie and asked if I could make him one, well of course I said yes!

So I started gathering stalks of rhubarb from the patch.

Just in case you don't know, don't eat the leaves, they are poisonous!

This is the recipe I use:
               4 cups of rhubarb ~ chopped and put in bottom of pie

In a bowl ~ beat 2 eggs
                    1 tbsp milk
                    1/3 cup flour
                    1 1/2 cup sugar

Mix in the bowl and then pour it over the rhubarb.  Dot with butter. 

Cover it up with your other pie shell and bake it at 425 F for approximately 40 -45 minutes.

Simple and easy.  Everyone really seemed to enjoy it and since my pie crust recipe makes 4 shells dad got to take one home with him. 

Found Treasure

As the wee ones get older they now go on "treasure hunts" in our yard.  I give them any piece of scrap paper with notes or ads on it and all of a sudden it is a treasure map and they are off on the hunt.  They bike through rough mountain trails, climb over steep rock cliffs and walk through the jungle floor looking for the treasure.  The other day they were on a treasure hunt and found their most prized treasure yet.

I don't know if you can see the treasure here or make it out very well.  He was very proud of this treasure.

The treasure was a frog that he found in the grass.  I think he needs to work on how to hold it but he was being very gentle.

The next treasure that they found was indeed a treasure for around our house.  I heard, "we found Franklin, we found Franklin!!!"  So I ran to see what they had found.

And it was Franklin!  The turtle from the children's show is name Franklin.  We let Franklin cool off in one of our puddles. 

The wee ones were being very gentle with him.  They watched him for awhile and then let him go back into the long grass in the field.  (the frog was also let go ;) )

What a great day for a treasure hunt with such good treasure to be found. 

Photo Friday

With all the hard work going on on the farm it is nice to take a moment and just be goofy!

Boating

Here is a quick and easy craft for the wee ones.  With so much rain and so many puddles I thought we should make some boats to play with.  So we made some super easy tug boats.

Materials: margarine container
                 string
                 scissors
                 construction paper
                 play dough
                 stick

I started by punching a hole at the top of the margarine container and put a string through it.  Then we made the sails out of construction paper and decorated them.  Glue the sails to the stick (we used an old paintbrush)  and then put it is a glob of play dough.  Put the sail in the margarine container and your boat is done. 

We tested them in the tub first.  We also put a little boat on the back for our big one too pull around. 

The sails didn't last too long before getting wet but the kids had a blast playing with them.

Happy Boating!

The Great Potato

The sky was overcast with all the weather reporters calling for rain, I thought there is no way it is NOT going to rain today....well I was wrong, it didn't rain.  Finally at 1pm I decided it was time to put fear to the side and start to tackle my vegetable garden.  It starts with potatoes.  With this Ontario spring being so cold and windy nothing that is above ground is ready to go into the ground. 

I got my wheelbarrow filled with everything I needed to start planting some potatoes.  I have approximately 120 pounds of seed potatoes, Kennebec and Pontiac Red.

I packed my potatoes, a hoe, string markers, stick markers, a knife and cutting board and a marker.  I have been renovating our living room and am using our old baseboard for garden markers. 

I recently purchased this basket at a local thrift store and thought it would be great for my garden.  It has worked great so far holding my potatoes!  I cut the potatoes if there are enough 'eyes' on them, just make sure there is at least one eye on each potato you plant. 

So I have official started my insanely large vegetable garden.  I have 6 rows of my potatoes planted and it has hardly even dented my stash, I'll let you know how many rows it will take.  Right now I am listening to the sweet sound of the rain falling and am thinking it may be an indoor day tomorrow...we'll have to wait and see.

Garden Ready

Today was a great day.  A friend of ours actually let us borrow his tiller that attaches to the tractor!  Yeah!  That meant that we wouldn't have to hand-till our HUGE vegetable garden.  As of right now this garden is for our own personal use and is probably WAY TOO BIG for our tiny family.  The pasture has been plowed up so today we started with some good old cow manure to be spread on the garden.

Loading up the manure spreader.  Make sure you get the good dark stuff.

Mmmm, look at that good stuff fly!

The wee ones were excited about the manure too.

This is the tiller that we borrowed, isn't it beautiful?  I love it!

Of course we had to take a break and pick some beautiful dandelions, which I personally think are pretty this time of year when not much else is blooming.

AHHHHH!! There it is in all it's glory, working away, I've never been so excited about machinery before.  I am going to put a special section away for a 'no till' experiment to see how that goes.  Now to start planning out my garden.

I wanted to take a picture of me in the middle of it but we had to rush off to do my mom and dad's gardens as well.  Maybe soon I'll be able to post it.  What have you planted so far in your garden?

Turkey Time

Warning:  The photo below is a bit graphic for some people, proceed with caution if you are a bit queasy about animals. 

Well here in Ontario it has been turkey hunting season for a couple weeks now.  I am not a hunter, I killed a groundhog once when I was younger and the guilt took over.  I kept thinking what if it had babies or a partner that was now sad.  I vowed never to kill anything again unless necessary or for food purposes.  I am from a hunting family however so luckily they do all the killing and I do the eating.  My brother absolutely loves hunting and going into the bush to track or sit and wait.  So he went turkey hunting last week and got one!  The meat is absolutely delicious, mostly dark, and we eat every last piece.  I don't agree with people that hunt just for fun and then never use what they eat, our family is not one of them.  Here is my brother with his latest prize.

Good Job Brother!



Spring Surprise

Life on the farm is peaceful, inspiring, hard-working, and the other day surprising.  The other day Seth and I were doing our daily chores while Sadie was at school when we walked along the strawberry patch and saw something exciting.  Well it was exciting a 3 and 4 year old and exciting that I could look like the super cool, super smart momma when I could actually tell them what it was and where they came from and what was inside them.  Wondering what it is yet? 

Three beautifully shaped and coloured birds eggs.  Now I at first was excited and saddened because I thought they were Robins eggs and sad because they were not going to hatch.  On closer inspection I realized that they were Starling eggs and so I wasn't too disappointed.

You see, Starlings are an annoying and vicious bird around here.  They make messes everywhere, in the barn, in our new porch (that isn't quite finished yet), even had straw and such in our BBQ last year - repeatedly!  They also steal eggs from other birds, so ya, I didn't feel especially guilty over the birds eggs falling out of the nest....ok I did feel bad for the momma bird losing her babies, I'm not a monster!

I love this photo of Sadie's hands.  Such a true farm girl photo - pink nail polish chipped off with lots of dirt under the finger nails!  That's the way mine look now (but without the nail polish, what's the point?)  So we decided that the eggs needed a nest and then needed to be taken to her class the next day so all the wee ones there could see a little nature.

This bird nest has been on my garden shed for about 3 years now so we took it down and put the eggs in.  I was a little sad to see it go but now another bird can build a new nest there.  The class absolutely loved seeing the eggs and Seth loved seeing the class, poor guy doesn't go to school for another whole year :(
Wow I can't believe I talked so much about 3 eggs we found, thanks for sticking with me through it all!  What has surprised you this spring?

Farm Day

Today was a typical farm day here, meaning we worked all day and got a few things stroked off our list of things to do. It was really warm here which has been a nice change from cold, windy and rainy. So outside Seth and I went to see what could be done on such a glorious day. 

We decided that transplanting my flowers from one flower bed to another would be a good thing too do so that Seth could play on his bike while I worked.  He only last about 2 minutes before he was deep into the soil!  Notice my 'water can'?  Good thing Seth lent me his bucket or else the Holly Hocks would have been pretty dry. 

I was so happy to see that my garlic chives are coming up this year too.  I got them last fall from a neighbour and didn't think they survived my turkeys trampling and eating them last fall but here they are.

Most of my strawberry plants survived the winter also in a nice warm and cozy bed of straw.  Some didn't make it but I am going to switch some around and you won't even notice that the others are missing.  My dad also wants some of these Everberry plants for his garden.

Unfortunately we also had to put Semi in the barn.  Part of being a farmer is knowing when to get rid of certain livestock as much as it troubles you.  Semi has been a good cow but is being shipped off tomorrow to the sale barn. 

At least the wee ones gave her a good going away meal of fresh cut grass.  She will be missed.



AND THEN....

We finally got started on my new vegetable garden!  Yeah!  I am so excited for it this year.  It is the biggest one I have ever planted.  Here is my darling plowing up the old pasture to loosen the soil.  That is our front yard that you see in the foreground.

The good old farm dog is always keeping an eye on things.  We love you Katie!

Here goes the plow.  In our field directly behind the tractor (in this picture)  You can see two Canadian Geese that have decided to make that field their home.  I hope they don't have a nest when we are trying to work the field but we will just work around them.

Good job!  One more thing off our list of things to do.  Now it just has to be tilled a couple times and then ready for planting.  I seriously can't wait, I am so excited for what this garden is to bring.



Mother's Day

Today we celebrated Mother's Day.  The wee ones were so excited to make it a special day for myself.  I recieved a couple 'special' projects from the wee ones.

Mommy, I Love You

Mommy, I know you love me

By the way you show you care.

You hug me and talk to me softly;

When I need you, you're always there.

Mommy, I'll love you always

From my heart, I want to say

I'm so glad you are my mommy;

Happy Mother's Day

This is all this Momma needs!

Photo Friday

Spring!



Spare Moments

If you are anything like me, you often wonder what happened to the day.  Then you start to wonder what you did during the day.   How can you be busy all day but not have anything concrete to show for it.  Then your partner comes home from work, looks around and asks, what did you do all day?

AHHHH!  

I got the wee ones up, dressed, breakfast and off to school (without yelling to hurry up and without rushing for the bus)  I kissed a sore finger, snuggled on the couch while watching Franklin, got snacks and drinks, hung out in the bathroom while someone was trying to 'poop' and needed someone there and I read books, lots and lots of books.  

So sure I actually have nothing to show for what I did today and the house looks messier then when we got up but I did do something worthwhile and meaningful today.  Not everything that is important can be seen. 

So tonight I had a few spare moments and thought that I would do something that can be seen and that will  show "what I did". 

Sadie had a little ceramic donkey that she was playing with, it's not pretty or even finished but she really likes it.  Seth was jealous because he didn't have something like it.  I had a few little ceramic pieces and let him pick one.  I know it is a Christmas penguin but that is ok. 

I just used acrylic paints for this and used a spray varnish for over top.  Now he will have something to play with when Sadie gets out her donkey and I can say, "look, this is what I did!"

Road Hazards

I work out of my house one day a week.  It is a nice little break from being at home everyday with only a 3 year old to talk too.  Although Seth does offer some pretty entertaining conversations some days!  The drive is about 15 minutes from my house and right now there are a number of hazards you have to watch out for.

1) The Deer - you never know when these little

guys are going to hop out in front of you.



This little guy was beside the road enjoying

some leftover crops from the farmer. 

2) Canadian Geese - of course we still have the extremely

large amount of Canadian Geese invading every one's

fields and hanging out along the side of the road.



3) Maple Syrup - I'm not really sure if you would

call this a hazard exactly but I just thought it was extremely interesting to

see on the road.  I met these folks on the road a couple weeks ago.

They were gathering sap from their bush to

 make the great tasting maple syrup.

You never know what you might see driving around these Ontario roads.  I always have my camera with me now because you never know what you might see near or on the road.  There are many road hazards everywhere!