Radio Show and Flowers

One of The Flower Factory's arrangements.

This past weekend I was invited onto The Flower Factory's radio show, Flowers and Dirt, on Valley Heritage Radio.  Christina thought it would be a good idea, as she had been getting some gardening (ie veggie) questions, to have me on the show.  Christina is a friend of mine from high school and last year she opened a flower shop in town, which features a lot of unique flowers and arrangements.  She has some beautiful things in her shop!  Now getting back to the show...this was quite the experience as I had never done a whole show before and I am not the most outspoken person out there, this made me quite nervous.  I got some good feed back from some listeners, thank you by the way, so I don't think I did that bad. Phew!  I haven't figure out how to post Mp3's on here but here's a link to her web where you can listen to the show http://www.theflowerfactory.ca/2012/04/radio-show-april-14-2012/ .  Thanks again to Christina at the Flower Factory and Brian from Valley Heritage Radio !

Did I Jinx It??

A panoramic of the new garden area....not all will be garden the front half will be a crop.

What a beautiful weekend and I got out in the garden!! Yea!!  I even started some more lettuce and bunching onions, weeded the garlic and found a patch of garlic I thought I'd lost last summer. Hope I didn't jinx the weather!

Garlics planted in their new home.

As I was planting the lettuce and kneeling on this little patch, I noticed something different amongst the dandilions that had taken over this patch...sure enough there was garlic sprouting.  I tried weeding this patch but found this difficult to do so, as some of the dandylion plants had intertwined with the garlic.  So I up rooted the garlic and moved them to a better spot free of weeds, gave them a good watering and crossed my fingers!

Chickens looking for spring bugs in the newly disced field.

The Massey taking a break.

My DH started discing up the new area for the garden and on the new hiller as I think I will be planting very early this year.  We are still debating on a new tiller for the tractor as it makes our clay soil so beautiful to plant in!

The calves are doing well and are frolicing in the yard and butting heads.  However, their mom's are bawling crazy as they want to get out on the pasture...however, no pasture for them yet.  I let Melodie (my horse) out on the lawn today to mow some of the grass for me....boy was she happy with me!!  I had to put her back in her pen as I had to go to work and as I drove out the drive I could see her thinking on how she could get back there!!  She doesn't like the electric fence so I have no worries...the next nice day I will have to put her back there...until the pasture is ready.

New News!!

It's about time for an update, as I have been pretty lax on keeping the blog current over the winter !  We had a pretty uneventfully winter up until the heifers calved.

Woodpecker that comes around once and a while.

At the end of January, Whisper and Willow calved.  Both of them had little bull calves! It's so nice to have babies on the farm and what an experience for the kids and for us. I have seen many a cow birth but for my husband and kids, this was their first. We don't have names yet and I will have to get on that soon!

Pretty foggy morning,

Whisper had hers first. We knew she was going soon and I had to work at 4pm, but I figured she would go in the middle of the night so I wasn't so worried as I knew I'd be home.  Well we had gone in for lunch and a bit of a rest after working outside most of the morning.  We finally decided to get back to work but I was delayed in getting out there, so my DH went out and thought he would go check the girls for me.  I'm about to come downstairs when I hear the door crash open and DH yelling, "Where's the camera...she's having her calf, I see feet!!".  I rush to get out there to check on her....this is my first calf on my own as I hadn't done this since I was a teen, and I was just praying that the feet are the right way!!  Luckily they were, so now it was to wait and pray everything else went right.  DH got the kids and they came and went, as they are kids, and nothing was happening, but they came back in time to see it all happen!!  Everything went fine and she was an awesome mama!  Started licking him vigorously right away to get him clean and moving.  He was a little slow in standing but in about 1/2 hour in he was licked clean and standing trying to suck.  She was a little unsure and wasn't standing to let him suck but by this time I had to get ready to go to work.  I figured I'd let them get use to each other and left them alone.  After work I headed out to the barn and gave her a little grain as she still wasn't standing still for him, but it seemed to do the trick and I was able to see him suck! 

Whisper's calf.  He is 2 months old.

When it was Willow's turn.  She calved a couple of days later and I knew she was going to calve that day, so I kept checking every couple of hours...and nothing.  My last check was when I went to get the kids off the bus and to have supper.  I went in to check at around 6pm and heading out to the barn one of them was bawling and bawling....I get in there and it's Whisper and there was a calf in Willow pen...so I thought her calf got in with Willow.  Looked in Whisper's pen and her calf is sucking away!!!  Well sneaky Willow had her calf when I wasn't looking.  It took him a little longer and was a little disorientated at first...ie trying to milk mom's neck... but we got him sorted out and he's doing well!!

Willow's calf.  He is about 2 months old here.

We are also waiting on our Charolais heifer to calve.  We didn't think our Dexter bull did anything but apparently he managed to breed her!!  So one more calf to go and we will be done for this year!  I am thinking in the next couple of weeks as she is just starting to show signs.

We also took on a bottle calf to feed.  This is a new experience for us and it is going really well, so we will probably pick up a couple more!!

The little starter greenhouse I have in the house is now full of little sprouts and new seeds.  Hopefully the nights get a little warmer as I need to move some out to it so I can get more started!!  This year we are going to try and do 3 Farmers' Markets.  Renfrew, Eganville and Deep River.  I am still unsure of Deep River as I still have to work out the logistics of it. But I am sure we will get everything figured out.

This is Baby....I am sure he won't be that for long.  He is
our bottle calf.

Taste of the Valley

It doesn't take long for our short summers to blow right past us!  It's already the end of September and soon we will be packing up the garden and utilities for yet another year.  We had a busy summer with ups and downs.  One of the ups being that I didn't have to pick in the rain like last year but the lack of rain over the summer really played havoc with the growing.  We invested in irrigation this year and at the beginning was really  wondering if we would use it! Well good thing we did!!  Next year is row covers!!  But I am digressing.

Cherry and Roma Tomatoes 

My highlights of the year were doing the Taste of the Valley in Renfrew and the morning show with CTV.  I didn't think we were going to get individual air time but they did a whole segment on our market and we were interviewed!!  I think I did ok considering I don't so well in public speaking!  You can catch me on the YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/user/CTVOttawaMorningLive#p/u/9/dSiLIzgaQsU .  This has made for a very busy September but good for getting my product out there. 

Andria (left) and I at the Taste of the Valley in Renfrew

At the Taste of the Valley we had approx 70 vendor displaying and selling crafts, baking, chocolate, meats, produce and more.  There are about 5 of these in various towns in the valley starting mid summer and ending in the fall.  There were a lot of people but I think the threat of rain kept a lot of people away.  A friend of mine came down for the weekend and we had a great time selling produce and catching up!  I think next year I will try and do a couple more of them!

Hill Billy Tomatoes....brain food!

This week I am going to the Eganville 100 Mile Market and then will be back at the Renfrew Market on Saturday!  Having had a heavy first frost a couple weeks ago I am hoping that I will have enough produce for this weekend and hopefully the next couple of weeks!!  

Carrots and Beets and a gourd for decoration!!

Fresh Home Grown Chickens!!

Well it is that time of year again!! We will have free range chicken available Thurs Sept 1st ranging 3 - 8 lbs.  It will be $3.50/lbs.  They are naturally raised with no antibiotics or growth hormones.  If you would like them fresh please let me know in advance as most will be going into the freezer.

Beer Can Chicken

Flower Miracles

The most blooms I've had in years!

Very hardy ground cover. I was told what it was a couple
 years ago by the nursery owner but it has slipped my
mind as to what it is called.

Going in a different direction today.  I do lots of vegetable gardening and when I have time, I try to keep some flowers about.  My grandmother died when I was 5 so I don't have too much to remember her by.  I have a couple memories of her, like her making donuts and making the centers for my brother and I, shelling peas in front of the house and washing my mouth out with Ivory soap when I said 'damn'...that was a bad word in her books.  So when we moved back here and started cleaning up the place...as it had become overgrown something terrible...I actually found some snipits of her gardening.  This in itself is quite a miracle as there was no gardening being done here since 1980.  Between this and my grandfather mowing everything or the cows running amok when they got out, I was quite surprised to find these.  This also gives me something to remember how hard she tried to make the property nicer even if my grandfather kept mowing it down for more space! I found a Begonia plant in amongst the Lilacs still trying to grow, I found 2 Iris tubers laying on the ground by the old fence, and some ground cover growing under the trees.  So I transplanted these flowers/ground cover to see what would happened.  I got some purple Irises and they have been mulitpling ever since.  The Begonia has been desperately trying to grow but every year a kid, dog, chicken, ants or something or other knocks it down or eats it.  However, this year by some miracle I have quite a few flowers blooming...it was quite surprising! The ground cover is growing so well I am pulling it and weed wacking it!!  Just a little more heritage to add to the farm !

The bush on the left is Lilac and the other on the right is a purple
leaved bush which turns green as the summer progresses.

Chatting Up Dexters

This past Monday I had a visit by some nice people from Barry's Bay.  They said they have passed by numerous times on the way to Ottawa and saw someone home (I was feeding the chicks out front) so they stopped in.  They had seen the 'little cows' in the field and wanted to know more.  So we had a nice little chat about Dexters!!  I find I like talking about them, which is odd as I never before liked talking about cattle.  I have definitely fallen for the breed that's for sure.  We have 3 Registered Dexters, Whisper, Willow and Xander.  I hope they learned something new that day!

Xander in new pasture this in May

I got to chat more about my Dexters and the breed the next day too!  I had a local farmer stop by and asked if my bull was forsale or if he could lease him.  I know there are not many Dexter owners around these parts and thought it was kind of odd for a local beef farmer asking about my bull.  I must of had a bit of a confused look and he ask if I was all right.  At this point I had to ask him if he realized that my bull was not a black angus but a Dexter.  Well was he kind of surprised and said he thought he was just a small angus bull as he was looking for something that would give low birth weight calves but have good growth.  Well Xander would definitely give low birth weight calves!  We had a good chat about the breed though.  I think he was just being nice.