Friday, October 25, 2013

Growth and Loss

It’s been a while since my last post, sorry about that but things have been quite busy around here.  Ian and I have had to assume the roles of farmers, builders, animal rescuers and undertakers, and social butterflies.  We’ve also finally had a well-deserved break, taking 4 days in Whistler.  The theme ‘growth and loss’ runs through the elements that I want to talk about…farm, animals and people.

Let’s start with farm.  Growth has come in the form of the fruit cage and the barn.  When Ian proposed his plans for a fruit cage, I envisaged something about twice the size of the average garden greenhouse.  Once again I underestimated the scale of Ian’s plans.  The frame of the fruit cage is now up, painted and concreted into the ground – what a day of hard work concreting was.  We drafted in our good friend Kyle to help, I’d like to say he volunteered but it was more like he was voluntold to get up here.  We wouldn’t have managed without him.  Thanks Kyle.  All that’s left to do to the fruit cage structure is netting the sides and top.  We’ve managed to acquire some netting from a construction yard for $300.  The frame interconnects with the chicken coop so the chickens can roam free in the cage, foraging and fertilizing as they go.  This should keep them busy for a while as the finished size of the cage is 160ft long x 100ft wide x 16ft tall!

The ‘loss’ is in our schedule.  The building of the cage has taken so much time and resource that we have missed our window of opportunity to plant a winter cover crop.  We’re just not ready to do this and, once again, are running out of money to plant this huge area.  We’ve been back to the drawing board.  We’ve found someone who wants rid of horse manure so we will use that and maple leaves from one of our big trees to create a natural compost that can be tilled into the ground.  Everything will be ready for planting in the spring.  Although, I found four apple trees on the sale table at a local nursery that can be planted fairly soon.  The weather here is surprisingly mild at the moment so we’ll get them in soon and then use wood chips from the tree we cut down last week to cover the roots and protect them from frost.  Although this veers away from our original plans, I am pleased with how it meets our values to reuse as much as we can and reduce waste.

The other farm achievement is the barn.  This is a very literal growth with a big extension on the side.  This fully insulated addition will serve as Ian’s workshop.  He has done a fabulous job of removing the original bevel cladding from the inside of the original barn and reusing it to clad the new addition.  It blends in perfectly; we’re really pleased with how it’s turned out.

The original barn has a new career!  When we moved here, it was very dilapidated and neglected.  It had been built as a cattle shed but had not been functional for a number of years.  Much to Ian’s annoyance, I had arranged a thanksgiving dinner in the barn…for 25 people!  In my mind this entailed cleaning out the junk and sweeping the floors in preparation.  Once again I underestimated the vision that Ian harboured.  On the Friday before thanksgiving, we started work.  The barn was emptied, striped of all internal walls and cattle feeders,cleaned, insulated and internal walls re-installed.  By thanksgiving on the Monday, 25 people sat down to an epic feast in a beautifully decorated barn that was warm and light.  It was a real success that we felt really proud of.

Moving onto animals, I nearly lost a chicken.  Although they have a sizable coop, the objective is to have them free-range.  Until the cage is netted, it’s not safe to let them roam free; I was reminded of this 2 weeks ago.  When I’m out on the farm, I let them out and they generally follow me around.  I was painting fence posts (again) and they were foraging about 10ft away.  All of a sudden I heard a frantic flapping; I looked up in time to see a red tailed hawk swooping down.  I jumped to their rescue but unfortunately was wedged between fence posts causing a complete wipe out.  Thankfully this commotion was enough to get the hawk to retreat to the top of a fence post of the fruit cage and give me time to herd the chickens back into the coop.  But there was another loss.  The skin from the front of my shin and my dignity from face planting into the dirt during my rescue attempt.  If hawks can laugh, that bird was laughing at me.  He did not see my fumbling, clumsy, bloodied self as a threat and so he waited there looking down at me with disdain as I shouted at him and waved my arms in a fruitless attempt to frighten him away.  In fact, he totally ignored me until I walked away, at which point he saw fit to try and take the dog.  More by luck than judgment he failed and Baxter lay quivering on the floor.  As I consoled the poor dog and wondered aloud if canines can suffer from PTSD, the hawk landed on the guinea pigs outdoor cage and started pecking at the mesh to get in!  This bird was relentless.  It’s a jungle out there!

The final animal loss came yesterday.  We had just returned from Whistler and had put the pigs into their outside run as the weather was glorious.  I looked at the g-pigs and stupidly thought Enzo was sleeping.  They do sometimes lie on their sides and snore, but Enzo was twitching.  Stupid me, I thought he was dreaming, kind of like a dog does!  To be fair, even Ian looked at him and we laughed at how he was sleeping.  Of course, when we went to get them in that evening, Enzo was cold and stiff and Elmo was crouching in the corner shedding little guinea pig tears.  Ok, that last bit about Elmo crying is not true, he was grazing around his dead buddy, but that sounds so cold.  So here we are, faced with coping with an animal death.  We decided not to tell Jessica until this morning and I spent all night worrying about how she would take it and questioning whether we were really tough enough to send animals off to slaughter in the future.  When Jess awoke this morning, we gently broke the news.  Before I started talking to her, I looked into her little face and I welled up.  Here I was, about to break my little girls heart.  But apparently I have raised cold-hearted children because all she said is “Yes! Now I only have to look after one of the little buggers”.  I overlooked the use of choice words in this circumstance and all of a sudden, as Jess and I hugged, I realized that I was not consoling her, she was consoling me.  She rubbed my back and hugged me and reassured me that we would be ok.  Guess it’s just me that has to toughen up!
RIP Enzo

And so onto people.  Mainly Lauren.  Ian and I have been musing on how she has blossomed.  Lauren has a calmness and air of contentment about her that we haven’t seen before.  She’s obviously still wearing her teenage stropiness like a badge of honour, but she’s mucking in and helping on the farm.  She’s looking after Jess when we’re super busy, she’s bringing us tea and cakes while we work and she’s showing her true colours again of being a kind, helpful, considerate and funny young person.  Whatever we grow on the farm, nothing will be as rewarding as that growth.


As I read this post back to myself, it makes me surprised that we have any time to farm as we’re are far too busy building fire pits and renovating barns into dining rooms.  It also has made Ian and I talk about the future.  Obviously the plan is to farm but there’s also a social element that I don’t want to overlook.  We are good at bringing people together, even if I do say so myself.  We enjoy it and work well under pressure and we're finding that people want to be here.  It would be a shame not to utilize that.  It has brought forward a plethora of ideas about hosting wedding, buying yurts as accommodation, providing education farming holidays, building a farm kitchen and cafĂ©……  The list goes on.  But what I really love is that the ideas are happening organically.  Like everything on this farm.  Whatever happens will evolve because it feels right.  Having no set plans worried me at first, but now I find it liberating.  It feels like our plans ebb and flow with the land and with our own personal growth.  I can’t tell you what the next project will be, but I’m damn sure you’ll enjoy it when you visit.