Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Odds & Ends


Ben laying down on the job

Here are a few pictures of Ben & Jake helping me plant garlic in the garden yesterday. They mostly chased the kittens around and played in the nice soft straw but it's nice to be able to take them outside and actually be able to get some work done while they are there. My boys are growing up.


Getting ready to plant the garlic, the soil was cold


My favourite trowel


Garlic all ready for planting, over 600 cloves put in the ground yesterday


The strawberries are all mulched and ready for a winter's sleep


Ben


Sprout


Jake


My two favourite helpers


The barn is looking great. We just need some doors

Thursday, December 2, 2010

More Progress & Public Speeking



It has been very mild the last few days and all our snow is now gone. We have gotten most of our farm clean up finished but there still a few projects still on the go. I still have not gotten the rest of my garlic planted but this mild weather should help to get that completed. I'm hoping to get my soil samples taken today and submitted to the lab by the end of the week. I will be curious to see if the pH levels have increaced since we started in 2007. I have a big round bale of straw waiting to be spread over the strawberries and the garlic whenever it gets finished. Other than that the fall to do list is pretty much completed.

Last Saturday was another great weather day so we made the most of it by working on getting the ends of the new barn closed in. My uncle Ronald and my brother Andrew, along with my Dad and Derek spent the day measuring and cutting steel to complete both ends of the barn as well as the back wall. Now when you drive by it looks like the barn is finished. When you get a bit closer you can see that there are still quite a few odds and ends left but the main work is done. We still do not have doors on the barn but Derek will hopefully get started on those this weekend.


Dad checking on Derek and Andrew's progress, he had the noisy job of cutting the steel


Andrew and Derek fitting the steel


Almost finished


The back wall all finished, just needs the corner piece


The first end wall all completed

The boys were not too happy with all the noise being generated by the saw so we spent most of our time admiring the work for a distance. Here are a few pics from our day while the guys were working.


Ben & Jake enjoying their apples


Ben laughing, who knew I was so funny


Mr Smiley Pants

On another note.....
This past Wednesday evening I was asked to speak to the North River 4H club about our CSA farm. I had not done a public speak in a long time so I was very nervous. The room was packed full of 4H members, leaders and parents. After a few technical difficulties in which my computer decided to not connect to the projector (luckily Kelly Hughes had brought her laptop as a backup) I was able to proceed. I was pleased with the talk but when I was over I realised I forgot a few very important points that I wanted to cover but oh well, maybe next time. The North River 4H club owns their own clubhouse in the community of Kingston, what a lovely building. I can't wait till the boys are old enough to join.