Goodbye!

Dear Friends,
I am excited to announce the launch of our website this past week, www.mirellarosefarm.ca. As a result, I am ending this blog and starting a new one on the website - it's hard to miss, it's the page at the top of the website that says "Farm Blog". I hope you'll join me over there, to keep up with our farm adventures.

A City Girl Becomes a Farmer holds a special place in my heart, as it journals the first steps we took as farmers, here in the lovely province of Nova Scotia. But now that it's been 2 1/2 years since we moved onto our property, I really am not a city girl any longer. I have butchered chickens, helped harvest 450 lbs of potatoes in 2012 and over 200 lbs of winter squash in both of the past 2 years, cooked down sap into maple syrup, pressed apples into juice, picked several pounds of salad greens in one day (among other vegetables), learned to can, dehydrate and freeze large quantities of a variety of vegetables and fruit, helped build a 1000 sq ft greenhouse, petted cows and pigs (Seriously! I'd never even been near cows or pigs before moving here), watched animals giving birth, experienced animals die, and pick and prepare food for our members each week. And by experiencing all of these things and more, I feel more connected to the earth and the cycle of the seasons than I ever have before. Farmers are a dying breed on this continent, and I am proud that we have increased the numbers even slightly, by taking on this role. It's hard work, but so rewarding. I can't imagine anywhere else I'd rather be.

So I hope you'll continue to follow along with us on our website, and maybe you'll even have the chance to try some of our food. We'd love to share it with you!

Itching for Spring

The new cows are integrating well with the existing ones. They're all together in the same paddock, and are now eating from the same pile of hay. Everyone seems fine with the new arrangement.

The pigs are getting big; less than a week to go until we take them to the butcher. Ginger, the sow, is due to farrow (have babies) in the next week or two. Orrin built her a house of her own (separate from the one she was sharing with Buxley), to have her babies in. He put a bunch of hay in the paddock, and she will use that to build a nest in her house for the piglets.

We've got someone coming to stay with us next weekend, for an indefinite period of time, as kind of a work-share situation. He won't pay rent, in exchange for helping us out on the farm. So that's prompted us to get the suite finished as much as possible in the other building, so that he can stay there. He may be in our house at the start, but hopefully not for long. So far, we've gotten drywall up in the bedroom and half-bath (walls and ceiling), and insulation in both those rooms, as well as insulation in part of the living room. Having enclosed walls makes it feel like we're really getting something done over there. Today we swept out the bedroom, and put a bed, dresser and night stands in there. It'll be rather “cabin-like”, but it's looking pretty good. We still have to finish the plumbing and electrical, although both are fairly far along. We've got appliances in the kitchen and bathroom that are ready to go, once we get the plumbing and electrical finished up.

There are lots of salad greens in the greenhouse now. I picked 3 times this week, picking for our CSA members as well as for friends and family that wanted to buy a bag of greens from us. The kale in the greenhouse is looking good, and there's more available of that now, too.

None of the onions we planted a couple of weeks ago have come up, except for the green onions. Orrin did a little research and learned that onion seed has a pretty low germination rate if it's older than one year, which ours is. So we'll be planting a whole bunch more this week, with the newest seed we have.

I'm looking forward to getting into the garden and starting to prep beds, but that'll have to wait until the snow is gone. It's been a long winter, and I'm looking forward to spring.

I'm back!

I'm going to attempt to resurrect my blog. It's been awhile, but I hope to write once a week, updating interested folks on what's happening at Mirella Rose Farm.

With the time change behind us, it's really starting to feel like spring, with light later in the evening. We've got big growth in the greenhouse. We've been able to offer our CSA members lettuce all winter, except for a couple of the coldest weeks in February. And as the days grow longer, the growth is much faster now, so we can pick more. We've also been enjoying carrots in the greenhouse that Orrin had planted back in July. New lettuce that he planted in January and February is up and starting to get bigger. We planted turnips and radishes in there this weekend, for the third time. We're planting every few weeks to ensure a longer period of availability, once they're ready to eat.

Last weekend, Orrin planted approximately 800 onion seeds in soil blocks. He planted both green onions and storage onions. Within a few days, the green onions had already sprouted, and are looking healthy and strong.

Yesterday we transplanted all of the lettuce out of Bed #6 in the greenhouse (there are 6 beds total), moving them into empty spaces in other beds. Then Orrin planted Bed #6 with potatoes. These will be our early potatoes, ready sometime in June.

Saturday was also the arrival of our 2 newest additions to the farm, a cow and bull, which are Milking Devons. The cow is bred, due to calve in early summer. These will be dual-purpose meat and dairy animals. I look forward to making our own grass-fed butter with the milk. The milk will mostly go towards fattening pigs.

Red leaf lettuce - our big champion of winter. It never seemed to stop growing, even in the coldest part of winter.

Greens in the greenhouse, prepping the far left bed for potato planting this past weekend.

From left to right: Nils, our new bull; Delilah, the new cow; Gigi and Elgie.

Delilah.