I haven’t been writing all that much about the vegetable field so far this season…because it has definitely not been growing as I would have liked. The field is severely lacking in organic matter, which is no real surprise since all that’s been happening on this land for years has been the harvesting of hay, […]

Monty is like a stereotypical rock star. He’s demanding, pissy and randy. He’s picky about his food, always wanting what’s just out of reach, even if it’s the same as what’s in front of him, and is very vocal when he’s in any sort of trouble, usually when he has shortened his leash because he’s

Barring any last minute developments, my condo will be officially someone else’s at 6 pm today. Alan and Bettina helped me with late night minivan loading last night, with us racing to beat the end of the ColdPlay concert at SkyDome to avoid the traffic jams of all those fans leaving the concert. I drove

Finally, after weeks and weeks of waiting, I actually have harvestable amounts of sugar snap peas! I germinated my first planting of seeds on May 1…planted painstakingly as little sprouts on May 4 (hey, it was the first thing I planted on my farm so doing things the inefficient way seemed justified ;P). Since this

I know the picture isn’t great, but it’s the view from my office window today. I’ve been grazing my goat and lambs on leashes for a few days each week and am moving them about my back yard. You can’t really see Monty in this picture because he’s above and to the right of the

The day after the farm warming, my first farm volunteer, Minh, arrived for a 10 day stay. She’s working on a research project that requires interviewing new farmers, so in exchange for being interviewed and seeing how the farm works, she helps out! She helped me with mulching the tomato plants, rock picking in the

A week or so before the farm warming, I brought home my last set of animals for the farm, two 3-month old Dorset lambs from a farmer friend of my farmer friend. These are also male culls. Their mothers turned out to have no mothering instinct and rejected them at birth, so they’re bottle fed

The day of the Farm Warming dawned very wet. But the weather up here changes very quickly and by lunch time, the sun was out and the weather was perfect for an outdoor party! People started arriving before 1 pm and kept coming and going for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I rented

Last week, animals came to the farm. First, I bought a set of 4 bantam chickens at the Keady livestock auction. For the past couple markets, I had tried bidding on some hen and chick sets and had lost as I wasn’t willing to bid past my cut off amount. But last week, I got

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve decided to sell regularly at the Keady market, which is just a 10 minute drive north of the farm. Since I don’t actually have any organic vegetables to sell yet, I’ve been selling my neighbour Marianne’s baking (pies, bread, tarts and cinnamon buns so far), some of my