Balance

I remembered balance this week. I had some work, some play, some friendship, some beauty, some relaxing, some animal joy.

Zoe and I have started working on her closet finally. When we started to redo that room, there were two very small closets which we took out. We are now replacing them with one big one. I am really nervous doing this job myself. I am most nervous about putting a light in it, and creating a (working) doorway. But...I finally got up the nerve because if I don't try I will never know if I can do it. We started the frame work  and next week, hopefully will see walls go up. 

I also finally (this appears to be my favourite word lately!) got the last piece of wood out of the ditch this week. Two months after we moved in, a tree fell from our property across the road. When the road crew had finished cutting and moving all the wood off of the road we had a good supply of fire wood. However, there was this one piece that we couldn't move. It was so big and so heavy. It has now sat in the ditch for two years...until this week. With some wonderful help, we got it up into the back the truck and offloaded by the barn. Phew! Thank goodness for good friends. 

Speaking of good friends...Zoe and I were invited to Nadine's house today. We enjoyed a cup of tea, were speechless at her gorgeous beach access and ohhh'd and ahhh'd at her daughters most adorable new puppy Win. He is just the cutest, softest, put a smile on your face fluff ball I have ever seen! 

I also took the time to stop and enjoy the beautiful sky. This phenomenal rainbow came and went all Wednesday afternoon.

Finally Finished

This week I have been, finally, finishing storing the last of the harvest.

I have emptied the sunflower heads and collected the seeds for the chickens. I also dried oregano and thyme to add to their food this winter. It’s like vitamins, helping to keep them healthy! Or so I have read. 

I also finally finished processing all the tomatoes. I still had an entire table of them upstairs. I sorted red, green, rotten, and never gonna ripen. I cut, seeded and dried all the good ones and now have 4 jars of “sun “ dried tomatoes in oil, in the fridge. I have also already made a sun dried tomato and almond pesto to go with Brie...yummy!!

And finally I tried rosehip jam. I found a recipe at Christmas last year in a Nova Scotian cookbook my parents friends gave me. Unfortunately, I could not pick enough rosehips at that time of year to successfully try the  recipe. But this year...lots of rosehips! It took three days to prepare them. Between the picking and cutting I thought I would never get to the cooking! I even skipped the de-seeding and removing of the little hairs (which will cause digestive upset) as I found a recipe that shows how to remove them after cooking them down. The finished product is beautiful and tasty, but it did not set. I may take them out of the jars and reboil them. I’m still debating that or using it as is for ice cream topping and in my salad dressings. 

The last thing I have done this week is harvest seeds to replant next year. I have three kinds of squash, basil and sunflower so far. 

Thanksgiving

 This weekend is filled with my favourite F’s: farm, family, food and friends. It is such a perfect combination I couldn’t be more thankful. 

Today Zoe, her boyfriend Navy, and I were farmers! The day started with clean chicken and rabbit coops, followed by cutting hay for the rabbits, and picking the very few apples left on our trees for cider. We then moved into the heavy lifting portion of the day. Navy and I grabbed the chainsaws (Sorry Betty) and Zoe took control of the sled. We headed over to the spruce forest and cut and hauled firewood. 

Two of my favourite parts of the day were breakfast and supper. Zoe and Navy cooked breakfast wraps for us and then chicken parmigiana for supper!! Talk about a lucky farmer!

I could get used to having all this help inside and out. 

To top this great weekend off, we have been invited out for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow at Bruce and Bettys (who also happen to be Navy’s grandparents-that’s a story for another day.)

I hope you all enjoy your own F’s this weekend💕

Prepping for Winter

The farm has moved into its next season. We are now preparing for winter.

The chickens and I have rototilled the garden. We will be planting winter rye, both as food for the chickens, but also to help enrich the soil and reduce next years weeds. The garlic will also go in this week, and hopefully a lovely layer of compost. I am thinking this year it will be a combination of pond goo (as I am still working on clearing that out) and chicken poo. 

I was so excited to find a blue egg in the nesting box this week. Our new little white sapphire chickens are laying a full month earlier than I had expected!

And finally, if you recall, we had 10 babies this year between the white sapphire and our born here. Of these 10, 4 were girls, and the born here rooster I am keeping. That left 5 roosters that would not have a place on our farm...but they would fit nicely into our freezer. Our wonderful friends Jennifer and Mark, raised meat king chickens this year and had created a chicken processing unit. Yesterday I took these roosters to their house and over a period of 2.5 hours we prepared my 5 roosters and their 22 chickens. It took me the same length of time to process my one bird last time lol!! We had a great assembly line set up, a fantastic chicken plucker that saved hours of hand plucking time and great company to enjoy while we worked! Guess what’s for supper tonight!