Girl Time

When we first moved here, Zoe and I were determined to take time to enjoy Nova Scotia and all it has to offer. We have done some exploring: We enjoy the farmers markets, the small businesses, the seafood. We have been to the bigger cities like Yarmouth New Minas and Halifax but usually for necessity not exploration. 

Two weeks ago we put our minds to trying this again. We are choosing one day a week and we have been exploring some beaches and incorporating some local food, whether it be a food truck, a scoop (or two) of ice cream, or a local owned restaurant
. 

It has been so delightful to spend this time with Zoe and to see more of what this beautiful province has to offer. We have stepped on rock beaches, white sand beaches, beaches known for sea glass collecting and loved the feel and mood of them all. 

There are three other reasons for these weekly jaunts. 

One: Zoe and I love crafting and are doing a lot collecting off these beaches which we are hoping to turn into local products for our marketplace. 

Two: I have wanted a better knowledge of local spots to take people to when they visit. 

Three: this spring has been stressful and digging my toes in the sand has a way of grounding me and calming me as I tip my head to the sun and smile. 

I love this part of the world I have chosen as Twogirls Headquarters!

Scout

Five months ago I was so happy to introduce you to my two new puppies who were the future of the farm. Tillie is to be my livestock guardian and protect all my barn animals from predators including the foxes who took so many of my chickens and ducks last year. And Scout was to be my shadow, my companion and help out around the farm, hopefully even learning to pull a cart.

Over the past five months they have grown physically and have learned many commands but I have not been able to get them to stop chewing everything and anything. 

Unbeknownst to me, Scout swallowed a cat toy. Over the course of 6 days it worked to completely block his small intestines until culminating in vomiting 13 times in 2 hours. After a vet visit we decided to do X-rays. These led to the discovery of the cat toy requiring surgery to remove it. The surgery was a success and a very lethargic Scout came home. 

Four hours later, he died, seizing, in front of Zoe and I. It is the vets opinion that he threw a post surgical blood clot and just like that, this amazing puppy that had healed my heart after losing Dixie and gained his own real estate in my heart, was gone. 

We are a sad, lost feeling family right now. And that includes our lovely Tillie who lost her best friend and is so confused and anxious. 

Zoe summed it up beautifully:

“You healed my heart in all ways possible. I have never seen a dog smile so much. Thank you for choosing me to be your best friend. I wish you could’ve been with us longer. You were my project pup for school because you were so well behaved🥺 You were the absolute best puppy I’ve ever had. Tillie misses you like you would never understand. Adjusting without you is going to be hard. Until we meet again my boy❤️ I love you eternally. I hope you’re running free with my Dixie💔”

The slide show is ridiculously long but I am not sorry. I want to share every moment of the too short five months that I had the joy of loving this incredible boy.

Mom

So many things have been happening at the farm which I will come back to in the next few blogs. Today let’s talk mom.

May 9th mom and dad arrived back at the homestead to oversee the set up of their cottage.
We have spend months talking about, and arranging, for them to set up a trailer on my property. They chose a quiet area with beautiful water views, deer trails all around them and the calming sound of a babbling brook off to the left.

When they arrived they were thrilled to see Darryl Jelfs already digging the septic bed. He and his guys were amazing going above and beyond including moving the trailer onto the site for us.

Then Thursday, Jason Levings showed up with his crew to drill the well. Again, an amazing group of people who went above and beyond even helping dad and I move 70 patio stones!

And the next day is Friday the 13th- written by a non-superstitious person.

Mom goes out to give the pigs some tasty dandelion treats and the next thing I know, she is laying on the ground with a broken leg and just for fun toss in a broken wrist acquired catching herself as she fell. Unfortunately this is not the first time. Mom has osteoporosis and has broken bones in Greece, Beamsville, England, and now Nova Scotia. Dad can now offer a great comparative study on medical care around the world.
A very talented surgeon inserted a plate in her wrist and a rod in her femur and she is recouping in the hospital (1.5 hours away) waiting to transfer to a rehab facility in Digby (10 minutes from our house).
Not quite the way we wanted to spend her time here, seeing each other during hospital visiting hours. But we are so happy that she will a least be rehabing closer to the homestead. Now dad can be comfortable here at the house and then enjoy the cottage, instead of hotel hopping, and I can see her daily (if she can put up with me everyday)!

In the meantime, their trailer now is in position, it has a septic bed and septic tank, it has a drilled well, and most recently, dad and I assembled a shed that will hold the wells pressure tank and electrical panel.

My brother has taken on the task of figuring out how to get power to the trailer and will be here in June to set them up in solar.

Some of mom’s first words to me after falling were “I am never coming back to Nova Scotia”. I truly hope those were words uttered in pain and frustration, because, after months of thought and planning and replanning, there is such a beautiful spot here now for her to relax, enjoy and take in some beautiful sights. Not to mention, I value every minute I get to spend with her here, and appreciate all her help and guidance on paint colours, with preserving my harvest and of course sharing the joy I have for all my farm babies.

I can't wait to have you back mom💖

COVID

Covid finally found our household. Zoe brought it home and was down for 7 days. Nasal and head congestion, loss of taste and smell, and exhausted. Then it hit me. Chest congestion, cough, body aches, chills, icky stomach, exhaustion. When I could find the energy to care, I found it fascinating that we could have such different symptoms in the same house at the same time. 

Unable to work for any length of time outside, I have been relegated to rest, read and putter inside. 

My parents gifted me with Mother Earth News magazine and it’s archives dating back to 1970 for my birthday. I have enjoyed reading through the archives, gathering great tips and realizing that although the world is a very different place than it was in 1970, the ideas of farming haven’t changed that much. Or maybe it’s that we are now looking back 50 years and realizing how right the methods were then and implementing them again?

I have almost all my seedlings started under the grow lights. I still have to plant the peppers but ran out of soil. And since no one wants my germ infected person in town, they will have to wait another week to get planted. I was very excited to peek in today and already see tiny brussel sprouts, cabbage and broccoli coming up!! 

I want to put out a huge thank you to the Troup’s❤️ I received an amazing package in the mail from Charissa and Dean containing some of their farms maple syrup which I am saving to enjoy with my father. He is the only person I know who loves maple syrup more than me! This package also contained some seeds Charissa saved from her garden. The seeds, the variety, the handmade paper labels, everything, was so amazing. I believe she just added another “farm goal” to my list! I really am so appreciative-thank you!

Here’s hoping for a healthier week ahead.

Baby Season

Baby season has successfully begun. 

The incubator is up and running with our first hatch completed. We had one duck egg which was fertilized but did not hatch and 13 chicken eggs. Of those, 12 were fertilized and 9 hatched. So what does this mean?? It means my roosters and drakes are doing their jobs, but I have to do mine better. I have the incubator temperature and timing down pat and am getting better success rates, but still struggle with keeping the humidity levels at an ideal percentage. 

We have 5 ducks eggs in right now (all fertilized yay) and 19 chicken eggs but I won’t know their fertility until Wednesday when I do the first candling. 

It’s wonderful to be hatching these tiny adorable babies but I do feel badly for the big girls. Between the fox that I still see regularly in the back yard and the avian flu which is wiping out flocks across North America, they remain locked up in the barn for their safety. That is not the life I want for my animals, so I am moving ahead with the fenced in area and Tillie is spending more and more time in the barn learning her guardian dog skills which will at least help with the predator problems. Unfortunately time is the only thing that will help with the avian flu problem.

The puppies are growing although not as fast as I had feared. They are gaining about 2 pounds a week putting them at 44 pounds right now. We are doing our best to expend their puppy energy by running in the back field a couple times a day. Scouts idea of running is chasing me to get a treat while Tillie runs circles around us🤦‍♀️ We are also ramping up the training and doing a lot of recall training as I learned the hard way with Dixie…for their own safety, the dogs need to be perfect at coming to me when I call them.

The cats have been the concern this week. Phoenix, our primary barn cat (who comes in the house a lot) had a tapeworm. Poor guy must have been so uncomfortable. But one trip to the vets, deworming pills for all our cats, one gross worm in the litter box and we are happy again.

Another slide show for you. Love all my babies💖

Grateful Happy Sad Proud

That’s a lot of feels for one week!

My 51st birthday happened last week. (WHAT??? Say it isn’t so- I don’t feel 51 anyway. Maybe a strong side of 49, but not 51!! Haha)

I am very GRATEFUL for all the thoughts and well wishes that came my way. It was a day I paused and reflected, ate good food and drank cheap wine. I worked all day and talked to many family members in the evening, played with the puppies and snuggled with the ducks. Overall a quiet but lovely day enjoying the gifts from the fam💖

I am HAPPY that I went to the airport and picked Zoe up after her week back in Ontario. It was only one week but it sure is quiet when she’s not around. 

I am SAD that my beautiful, fun, lovable Winnie went to the butchers. Winnie was purchased for meat. This was always the game plan. What I hadn’t counted on was how much I fell in love with him. But I have been concerned over the past few months with his aggression towards the other two pigs. I am also hoping Ellie is pregnant and felt she needed a safe conflict free space. 

I learned a lot through this process.

First: I have provided my pigs a great home. The butcher, Steve, loved the set up, shelter, forested area and size of their space.

Second: Winter is not the time to butcher an animal. Too much of his fat stores had been used to keep warm and foraging was reduced by the amount of snowfall we had this year leaving me with a pig on the small side. 

Third: I am PROUD to say that I am an excellent sausage maker. I made sausage pattie’s since neither Zoe or I like the casings for links and I made:

Greek with sundried tomatoes, black olives and feta cheese (yummiest of yums!)

Salt and pepper(tried and true delicious).

Maple breakfast pattie’s (with our own freshly boiled maple syrup.)

Hot Italian (not my favourite but a classic nonetheless.)

And sweet Italian which I made into meatballs. 

I enjoyed a sample plate for supper! (note the mushrooms on the side - I ate a lot of mushrooms while Zoe was away!)

I loved the experience of raising Winnie as a loved member of our family knowing we were giving him the best life we could, and in return he would give nourishment to us. 

Progress Feels So Good

I had a great week. I went back to basics and wrote a list. The past few weeks have been hard to find my rhythm so with a list in hand I got busy. 

Dad helped me lay the floor joists in the barn but I have not progressed any further. One of the things holding me back was the barn cats. They access the barn from underneath and come out in this dirt floor section. To ensure they still can get in and do their job I had to create a cat door. It could have been so simple, but I did not like the idea of cutting a hole in the wall so…After weeks of thought and contemplation (fancy words for procrastination) I built a “hut” and attached a cat flap. I then enlarged an already weakened part of the floor, screwed the hut on top and…voila. A cat only (no weasels or others allowed) entrance. 

I am closer still to reaching goal #5. I split the wood that I had cut from two apple trees, two spruce trees and one birch tree. I now have one quarter of the wood I’ll need for next winter haha!! A long ways to go but I have never had this much cut by the first week of March so I am really happy and positive I will meet this goal. 

Finally, I took advantage of our above zero temps today to tap the maple trees. If you recall from previous years, this is a “for fun” project that has never been very successful starting with the fact that I have only four maples that are large enough to tap and ending with me properly identifying maple trees. But I love doing it and this is the act that heralds in the season of growth and harvest for me.