Snow!

First proper snowstorm of the year has dumped a fair amount on us - and it's still snowing.

We weren't absolutely unprepared, but I hadn't put snowchains or the snow bucket on the tractor, so I spent most of the morning doing that before I could shovel any snow. These things are never as simple as they should be!



Because the ground isn't frozen yet, the drive is a bit of a mess. You can't go too close or else you dig up the gravel, but too high runs the risk of it leaving ridges which can freeze and then you're stuffed until spring. Hopefully though, the forecast is calling for it warming up by Tuesday, so we will maybe get another shot at it.

Autumn Frenzy (Get Set for Winter)

We have managed to tick off quite a number of items on the grand to-do list recently, which is encouraging. Most are related to getting ready for winter in one way or another.

That process started with the canning and preserving of a whole range of late summer produce, from cranberries to sauerkraut joining the array of tomatoes, pickled cukes and chutney. We bought half a cow and that went in the freezer with our table birds. We should have half a pig coming this week to round out our meat store. More of the pig when it happens!

The garden and greenhouse are just about cleared and prepared for winter, the strawberries and asparagus are pruned and mulched. We have some experimental greenery in the tunnel, it'll be interesting to see how it gets on, though with Jane's accident, we didn't really catch up on winter planting, so the experiment will have to wait for another year properly. The one and only apple tree still needs to be pruned, but presumably there isn't any rush to do that now. We still have plans to put in a bit of an orchard next spring. We really wanted to have a new propagation / transplant greenhouse up before next spring - maybe we've missed our chance now, but we might get to it yet.

Last winter's manure was tractored to join this year's cut grass in a large windrow compost heap, and we divided the stable into 2 separate loose boxes for the horses - hopefully they'll be easier to manage singly. I made a start brushcutting the rushes and weedy grass in the lower field, where I didn't mow this year - it's wet and boggy down there at the moment, and I thought I would end up with the tractor stuck, but the longer it lies uncut, the worse the tangle will become. I was hoping to cut it all by hand, so the new growth in the spring would be palatable for grazing. We still need drainage though.

When Neal was here, he managed to stack most of this year's firewood, and I have added to that and made an outdoor stack, covered, which may even do us for next year too. For the first time ever, we are actually ahead of ourselves in firewood. I even felled a couple of small trees to make up the cordage.

In the house, we got the insulation done - we have blown cellulose, recycled newsprint into the attic and coombe spaces, which will hopefully make it a little more bearable upstairs for the kids bedrooms. The upstairs bathroom renovation is coming along, albeit painfully slowly. I have stripped the 'den' behind the bathroom. We did the pre-winter chimney sweep, put away the trampoline and the volleyball net and gathered bags of birchbark and kindling for fire lighting.

After a mixed spell of weather, the temperature has announced winter with a vengeance. There are snow flurries today and it has been below freezing all day. We brought the horses in tonight for the first time, and shifted the new chickens into their winter quarters. The latter process involved a cardboard box and a pokey stick - good grief, are we professionals at this?!

So, are we ready for winter? No, it doesn't feel so, but we have managed to do a bunch of pre-winter tasks and that feels fairly good!

As the dust settles...

Well, it has been a time of it.

The last blog entry was anticipating visitors, and I'm sitting now just an hour after seeing Neal, Madeleine, Jessica and Robin off and contemplating an empty house for the first time in umpteen weeks.

It has been a blast and we have really enjoyed everyone's company, but my last blog couldn't anticipate the fact that in the forthcoming period Jane would spend a week in Intensive Care - just to add an extra level of excitement to an already hectic time.

As most of you probably know, we waved goodbye to Ian and Hilary as they set off to tour the province and left us to get ready for the Queens County Fair at which we were both due to be helping. We had stabled the horses along at the Exhibition Grounds and on that Monday evening, Jane saddled Mocha up to give her a bit of a spin around the riding ring - 5 seconds later she was seriously injured as the horse threw her and accidentally stood on her abdomen for good measure. She was taken 'lights and sirens' to Bridgewater where they scanned her and sent her through to Halifax for emergency surgery fearing that her pancreas, spleen and bowel were damaged.

Yoy, that was a scary night, but by the next morning it was clear that there wasn't any major organ damage at least, and that she wasn't about to peg it! We went through to visit - she had the full range of tubes in and was doped up with morphine, but, as we hoped, out of the woods. That was Tuesday.

My mother brought her flight forward a week and landed on Thursday night. Having her around was fantastic. I'm sure that I would have coped without, but having her here was such a help. The garden was in the midst of harvest and she got stuck right in! Joe flew in a week later and we got Jane home shortly after, albeit with a new 7 inch scar to add to the collection. We were apprehensive as to how my folks would find Nova Scotia and them having to find a new flight with Icelandair plus change plans in light of Jane's accident boded badly for their impression of our new life here. I needn't have worried...

Folks here in Caledonia were just superb. From the first responders on the evening of the accident, to all the people who brought food and cards and gifts, to everyone (some of whom I hadn't met before) who stopped me to ask after Jane and offer help - I thank you all from my heart. You made us feel like we were part of a very caring, inclusive community and after such a short period of time living here it was way more than I, or my folks, expected. You did Nova Scotia, and Canada, proud. All of our visitors have gone away amazed at how friendly and welcoming the people are here, and I'm bloody proud to say I live in Caledonia.

Woo, so Jane missed the Fair entirely, and I was really too busy to lend a hand, but we have managed to limp though harvest, Farmers' Markets and all the rest of it with the help of friends, family and community.

So, I'm sitting waiting for Jane to phone to say she has dropped Neal and Madeleine safely at the airport - she offered to do the driving tonight. I think it's fair to say that they've had a good vacation. Neal did a grand job of getting our winter firewood stacked ready, and we got a new chicken house built. It was great having them around, and they might even come back!

So, as the dust settles on an incredibly busy time, I look back at some of the scariest moments of my life as I honestly felt I might lose Jane, but my over-riding feeling about this period is joy. We have a big circle of friends from all over the place, near and far, family who were there when we needed them, neighbours who were above and beyond neighbourly, and we live on a beautiful farm in a special part of the world. Cool :-)

Stand-out moments: Georgie and Helen's Thanksgiving Dinner in the woods, Cam's 3rd place in the 4H Pro Show for his wooden truck, Breagh's school report at the parent-teacher meetings, getting Jane out of hospital and bringing her home to the farm.

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.