This past month seems like a blur. I am working lots at the tea shop, 4 to 5 days a week; that level of busy-ness will last probably until Christmas. Doing that, I'm not home as much, which means Orrin has a harder time getting things done on the farm, as he is also taking care of Oliver. Oliver has his days when he can be more independent, but much of the time he needs to be in the backpack on Orrin. And now that it's getting colder, he doesn't want to be out as much as he did. But still, Orrin is getting things done, bit by bit.
In the last month or so, he has put a lot of time and energy into fixing up the cow shed for winter, improving it from last years make-shift state. He created better walls to protect the animals from the weather, and he also added a protected area for the sheep as well as a protected alleyway that allows access for getting the hay into the two feeders. He's got the sheep enclosed in their side of the shed now, with an outdoor fenced area. He's put additional posts in the ground to expand the cows outside fenced area, as there are three cows this year instead of two, but he's still working on setting the railings in the place. The cows are using their side of it, but are contained by electric fence for the moment, except that Daisy the calf can still duck under it. She wanders around the house and greenhouse still looking for grass to eat, as she doesn't seem quite ready to settle on hay. Gigi doesn't seem to mind too much that Daisy wanders off, but every once in a while she calls out to her to remind her to come home once in a while.
We'd put a bunch of apples down in the basement hoping to store them for a couple of months, but with the warm fall the apples have continued to ripen and are no longer crisp. So we've made more apple butter and dried lots and lots more in the dehydrator. We will probably dry more, as we haven't used up all the apples yet from the bunch that are overripe. There is another bag of apples that we put down in the basement more recently, which have not gotten overly ripe yet, so we hope the average daytime temperatures have dropped enough to allow us to keep one bag of apples. It's so nice to munch on a good, crisp apple!
We have eggs! About two weeks ago, our laying hens started laying. These chickens were born around mid-May, and we had heard that it usually takes 5 to 7 months for chickens to start laying. We have 10 laying hens, but I think only one or two have started laying as we are just getting one new egg a day, sometimes two. The eggs are so cute – they are about half the size of a regular egg that you'd buy at the store. We find that these new eggs have stronger shells than the eggs that we occasionally get from our two old hens (who may be around 3 years old). We'd been wondering if the weak shells were a sign of not enough high-quality food in their diet (we feed them organic grain specifically for chickens, but they aren't getting any greens right now), but now that we are getting eggs from the younger chickens, it seems to be just because they are from old hens. Interestingly, the yolks in the baby eggs are just about the same size as the yolks from the larger eggs.
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| A wee egg next to a regular-sized one. |
I'm starting to realize that my dear husband is a collector. When we lived in Sacramento, Orrin collected English roses. When we lived in BC and he was landscape gardening, he collected plants that he found unusual or interesting (not to mention that they were generally deer-resistant, as that is what was called for in Nanaimo). Now, on our farm in Nova Scotia, he is collecting livestock. Today, for instance, he brought home a Saanen dairy goat. We now have three cows, three sheep, two pigs, twelve chickens and a rooster, a dog, two cats, and now a goat! The nice thing about adding a goat is that this is one particular type of animal that Orrin has first-hand knowledge in raising, as he raised show goats in California when he first moved down there years ago.
We recently stumbled across a website that led us to realize that the reason our pigs weren't fattening up very quickly was because we were giving them all carbohydrates (apples and grain) and not enough protein. A great protein source for pigs is milk or whey. At first we thought we needed to run out and buy a milk cow, but that would be pretty expensive as well as giving us way more milk than we are prepared to deal with. We thought that maybe a goat would be a better choice to start - we could get comfortable with milking, it would be less expensive than a cow, and it would produce a small enough amount of milk that it could all go to the pigs. So that's why we now have a goat! I definitely want a dairy cow at some point, so we can learn how to make our own butter and cheese, but that will require much more time and energy than we have right now.
We found a new home for Charlie the black lab, and Orrin took him there today. His presence here seemed to keep the deer away from the garden over the summer, but when he slept right through a weasel attacking and killing four of our chickens, we realized he wasn't quite the guard dog we needed. That's when we got Zoe the maremma, who has shown already that she is very bright and alert to animals moving around nearby. We were a bit torn about it, but the reality is that we can't afford to feed two dogs if they aren't both working dogs, so decided we'd try to find a new place for Charlie. Sounds like his new place will be a better fit for him, as Orrin said his new owner let him right into the house (he was an outside dog at our place), and immediately gave him some treats (we gave him bones from our food, but didn't buy special treats for him). So long, Charlie!
And last but not least, I have started teaching a second weekly yoga class in Mahone Bay. I've only been doing it for a couple of weeks, so I will see if I get enough interest to continue, but I decided I was ready for a second class. I really look forward to having my own studio here someday, hopefully in the coming year, but for now I am glad to teach in town and continue to build up a base of students who enjoy my classes.
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| One of the other many things we have been doing - collecting firewood. Here Oliver and I are hard at work, he with his very own brand new wheelbarrow. |
