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 café…… 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.
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