September already

O Tardy Loon, wherefore art thy scribings?

Yeh, well, it's bin busy like. But September? Already? Jings... I was berated by Neal about us not having blogged for a while, and time does, indeed, slip past. I started a deep, serious blog on the first anniversary of our landing in Nova Scotia last month, but haven't finished it yet.



What have we been up to? Lots.

The house is still in chaos and we have visitors arriving soon. I capitulated, and booked contractors to help move the work on. They put a Velux window in the landing and altered the stair line, so you don't bang your head going up stairs, they also stripped out the room which will become the upstairs bathroom. In doing so, we discovered that several room joists don't actually stretch to the outside wall! The only thing holding up the floor, was the floor... sigh. New bathroom bits are ordered and should be here next week.

Talking of visitors, it's a wonder we are having any, as Zoom airlines went bust and severed the link between Glasgow and Halifax. A royal pain for everyone involved, and a rude lesson that you should always pay for flights with a credit card!

The Queens County Farmers' Market has been doing well. Every other Saturday at the Exhibition Grounds in Caledonia, 8:30 - 12 noon. We pretty much sell out, though it doesn't quite provide a living wage, at least not this year. It does encourage us to plan for markets next year though. There are still a few outlets not plugged by Cindy and David's organic megalopolous.



Faced with umpteen cords of firewood to split, I capitulated (again) and hired a logsplitter. That's a wee fellow that comes along out of the backwoods, with his chopper slung over his shoulder. Nah, not really. I got a good deal, as it was a holiday weekend, they only charged me a day and a half rate, and we ploughed our way through the entire pile - woohoo. I've never managed to be so far ahead in firewood before. This thing is great - it's probably no quicker than a maul for easy bits, but for big, knotty logs, it's brilliant! It doesn't split them, so much as brutalise them into pieces. Our friendly local machine shop is going to build one for me, to fit on the BCS tiller...



I finally got a mower and rake for the tractor, though the grass had gone past good hay quality, so we mowed and gathered it into a long windrow where we will mix it with stable muck and woodash and compost it. O heart's dream! A BIG compost heap :-)

What else? Loads, but this is turning into an epic. LaHave Folk Festival was good fun. Cam's drum teacher Jamie Junger was great. Kids are back to school, finally, after a looong summer holiday, Breagh's now in High School, crivens. Meat birds need to go in the freezer before they eat us out of house and home. The buckwheat on the new plot needs turned under and winter rye sown, been waiting for a dry spell to go on it with the tractor - the weather has actually been a bit mixed lately.

Crikey, that'll do...

Farmers' Market

Yesterday was the first Queens County Farmers' Market in Caledonia.

Actually, there used to a regular farmers' market in in Caledonia about 20 years ago, before Farmers' Markets were generally fashionable. There were a few growers in the area at that time, and the market was a popular social event. Caledonia used to be an important growing area, in fact. If you look at historical records, this area was the main source of fruit and vegetables for the South Shore and further afield. Boats shipped produce out from Liverpool, which had been grown and carted from Caledonia and North/South Brookfield.

When we were scouting for a farm to buy several people 'in the know' told us that the micro-climate in Caledonia meant that we were out of the snow belt and probably had the best growing climate in Nova Scotia, after the Annapolis Valley. That, coupled with the fertile (if a little rocky) soil of a glacial drumlin on which the farm is situated and the south/south-east aspect, gave us high hopes.

We don't have a huge amount of produce yet, so we supplemented our offerings with some of Cindy and David's Pleasant Hill Farm Organics. They sell at the large Hubbards Market on a Saturday morning and it will be a while until Caledonia can rival the city for well-healed customers paying top dollar for organic produce!

The first market went really well. There were around a dozen vendors selling baked goods, garden produce, jewellery, stick furniture, raspberries - many vendors were sold out by 10am having underestimated the number of folk that would turn out to buy. All I spoke to were really pleased and said they would be back next time. The market is to run every other Saturday until end-October, so see y'all on August 2nd!

Bugs!

We can't let the spring pass by without pausing to contemplate the entomological paradise that Nova Scotia is at this time of year. In other words, there are so many different kinds of annoying bugs, it is unreal.
There are the plain old short-lived blackflies, that bite like hell whenever the sun is shining, and then three weeks later they are gone. Just like that. But alongside them are the sneaky wood ticks, much faster and more wily than the lumbering scoottish sheep tick. Oh yes, you'll find them in your hair, belly button, between your toes, and even, ouch, on your nipple. First hand knowledge. Thankfully, they too are short lived and have bid us goodbye till next year.
Then there are the enormous stump-lifters, a large elongated beetle with great long scary looking antennae; appropriately named as you certainly know when they arrive as you feel a thud on the back, or head. They take a little more killing than even a tick, and supposedly give you a hell of a bite, though so far I've managed to calmly remove them (run screaming and flapping and jumping up and down upon the beast) before they have done any harm. And now we have the mosquito, who saunter out at closing time to spoil an otherwise perfect evening, and by day the poor horses are driven demented by horseflies, moose flies and deer flies, all different but equally irritating in their own special way.
Supposedly the bug season will soon calm down, and despite various lumps and bumps it hasn't been too bad given that I've spent most of the spring outdoors, not used repellent at all, and only had a bug suit on for the worst of the blackflies. And there are lots of interesting nice bugs too. Well maybe nice is not the right word to use. But interesting. Like I said, an entemologist's heaven...

Chickens vs. Humans - Part #237

Hurrah! We have cleared the house of chicks!

First, there were the layer chicks in a home-made brooder (cardboard box) in the mud room. Once they were a few weeks old we put them out into a new hen house with run attached, in time to take delivery of the meat bird chicks into the same but different cardboard box brooder.

They have grown exponentially and needed to go out, so we have had to be inventive and build another hen house quickly. That's where building with straw bales has the edge. It looks horrible and dark in there, but it was quick and cheap to build.

At the same time, we took the run away from the layer chicks and after clipping their wings and surrounding them with an electric net, we let them free range. Not before we tested the fence. And how did we do that? We got Jane to take off her shoes and stick a finger on it...

Apparently, her brother and sister used to do this for fun when she was little, and as a form of entertainment, I can heartily recommend it. Laugh? I nearly did.

So the meat birds are in the run for a few days, and the layers are running around happily and peace descends, albeit briefly, on Kilbrannan Farm.

Yarr - welcome back to the world!!

We have HIGH SPEED internet! Yasss, 5mbps is the estimated speed and at current testing it just seems plenty fast enough. What do we do with it? We immediately sign back up for MSN streaming music, which gives us access to a vast music collection, including currently playing Eels 'Daisies of the Galaxy', checking that BBC Radio 3's 'Late Junction' is still online and playing the trailer for the coming move 'Control' - the tragic story of Ian Curtis and of Joy Division.

Actually, the very first thing we did was play an Avril Lavigne music vid from youtube.com for Breagh - times change, eh?

It's just too good, really. Even though we don't spend all that much time in front of the computer (outside my work hours), the internet was so entrenched with our little recreation - streaming music, online dvd rental, radio. It's bloody good to have it back, and a whole lot faster than it was before too.

Spring Fever...

A whole month has passed in a whirl of manuring, tilling, planting, swatting blackflies, finally getting the polytunnel finished and drinking lots of beer with visitors form the UK!
First things first. With much tweaking, the polytunnel cover is tight as a drum and even meets Richard's high standards. We now have tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, basil and salad planted up inside plus strawberries, raspberries, onions, peas and potatoes, plus a few other bits in the ground outside. Everything is still quite dinky, but despite the hot temperatures during the day, it still can get parky at night, so we're holding off with some of the more tender plants.
The kids have hectic after-school lives, between guides, music lessons, cross country, art club and 4H, and so consequently, Mum and Dad have hectic after school lives too!
Our mudroom is the new nursery - as well as Breagh's latest crop of baby gerbils, we have twelve two week old chicks in a brooder - the layers of the future we hope. Next week we hope to pick up two Berkshire weaners, but they will be housed out of doors!
Spring has taken it's time getting here, the trees bursting reluctantly into leaf within the last two weeks, but the birds are busy (we've had our first hummingbirds), and things are starting to look pretty lush. And the big question - are blackfly as bad as the scottish midge? Our verdict? No. Pretty bloody annoying, but no, and more short lived; they already seem to be waning. But they do come out when the sun is shining, which can be frustrating.
We had two lots of visitors this month; Claire (my sister), Nigel (her partner) and Alex (Nige's son), plus Donal & Nicola and Eleana, Ceile, & Osin (their kids)- old friends from Arran. Having them here has had a number of effects, not least the fabby new propane BBQ which was a gift from Donal and Nicola (we had our usual humming and hawing about buying a proper one), but also we have been inspired to root out the burgeoning music scene on the South Shore and pick up our instruments a bit more.
It's been just great to have them around, and feels a bit empty to see them all away, but back to planting onions I guess....

Loons and Peepers

What a racket! It's like living in the middle of a rainforest here, at night, at the moment.

The Spring Peepers are little tree frogs with big gobs and bobbly toes and there's thoosands of them all chirping at the same time. You can hear them from inside your car as you drive the highway!

On top of that, we have loons on the lake and they have such a distinctive call.

We were sat on the deck the other night with a glass of home brewed wine, under the stars, drinking it all in...