Farm Tour Follies

The dogs barked, the ducks quacked and we were out of bed in a flash. It was only 4:00am but we were wide awake and down to the barn to check on our baby ducks and meat birds. We found them all safely tucked in for the night in their chicken tractors, but we had to check on them, just in case, as their electric fence hasn't been hooked up yet and we have had a roaming fox, phew!

We have been sooooo busy since our last past getting the farmlet ready for the "Manure Tour" we haven't stopped. The real name for the tour is the "Farm and Food" tour, or something like that, where you can drive around the region looking at local food providers, ranging from CSA's, compost manufacturers, small family farms, and people like us that just farm and garden because we like to know where our food comes from. Anyway, we have had three months to get ready for this tour, and it seems like every waking moment we have been getting ready. It also has been crazy because we had been away for a year, so we had a lot of catching up to do anyway. Wish us luck on Saturday please, hopefully we will have lots of people coming thru that will make all the extra hard work worthwhile.

We now have added our baby Dwarf Nigerian goats Jack and Truffle to the farm and they seem to be quite happy living down in the lower paddock with Fred and Ginger. Fred and said he's boss and that is that, but all are doing well.

The raspberries are coming into season as are the red and black currants. It looks as though my blueberries are going to be a bust, from the lack of rain last year? Oh well, I will look forward to next years fruit now.

Rainy Saturday wishing we were "home" in Australia

Spring so far has been just wild with the weather flip flopping between cold and wet to hot and dry. Spring has been taking its sweet time, everything seems to be coming on a bit later than normal and when you think that the lilacs are going to bloom for a good long time, the heat blast them all off, now that the peonies are blooming we are getting lots of rain. Go figure. Today it is 52F or 11C and pouring rain, so I have a batch of bread ready to go into the oven to warm up the house. Lucky for us summer will officially be here in the 21 of June and maybe the weather then will settle down and not be so crazy.

I have planted the vegetable garden, replanting the radishes more than once because I haven't marked when I planted them the first time, so I either weed them or plant something else on top. Everything seems to be growing well, the compost has been spread and mulch added to the garden paths. I looks like the salad box's in the kitchen garden are deficient on many things this year, but it has been awhile since anything was done to them, so when this last crop of salad goes, compost will be added to the box's. At the end of the season, compost will be added to the entire garden.

I was worried about the pollination of the fruit trees because just when the trees were flowering we had some mighty cold and wet weather, not great for bee flying, but it looks as though I have some good peach and apple set. The currents are loaded with fruit although the blueberry bushes look healthy, I can't say as much for amount of fruit, but maybe I should look with my glasses on.

On the farm side, we are down to three guinea fowl. I don't know whether our missing was picked off by wildlife or if it is sitting on a clutch of eggs. Last night they were kicking up quite a ruckus so my guess is she is gone. Our replacement keets had a problem at the hatchery so who knows what is up with that. Our cornish cross meat birds rock in next Friday along with two baby Turkeys to grow on. To top it all off, for some reason we are getting two new baby pygmy goats in two weeks which will take our goat number up to 10. We must be crazy!