New Customers!

We had a new customer checking out our gate sign this week one day at lunch. He was too shy to come in, but I got a good look at him through the camera lens. I'm sure I heard him grumble as he turned his fluffy red tail, "Grrr...no chicken left. Should have come earlier in the year."
Our chickens continue to produce like the egg machines they are bred to be and although the yolks are a little lighter yellow this time of year, they are just as delicious as always. We had one customer tell us a story of how she had made the point of buying 'farm fresh eggs' from a local egg farm, but that she didn't think they were much different than store bought, but once she had ours, she couldn't believe the difference. The only store-bought eggs I've eaten have been in restaurants for breakfast and those always seem fine since, a)I don't have to cook them and b)all the butter and salt that comes with diner breakfasts makes everything slip down pretty nicely. I feel confident in the quality of our eggs though and that they are indeed superior to store-bought ones in flavour as well as nutrients. There have been numerous studies showing the health benefits of free-range eggs and it only makes sense. An egg is only as good as the feed that the chicken eats. It's so nice to have confidence in ones food.
Anyway, as you can see on the counter in front of Lucy in the photo above (my happy sous chef), there are a few dozen freshly washed eggs waiting for homes. For some reason some of our pre-Christmas customers have taken a bit of an egg break, so this last week we've had an extra overabundance. I had been talking to a chef of a restaurant in downtown Charlottetown called The Merchantman Pub who said that they can ALWAYS use good quality eggs and to drop them off anytime. This morning, since I was in Charlottetown anyway, I took 15 dozen down at $3.00/dozen. As I dropped them off, I explained that they are certified organic, trying to justify the price, which is what we normally charge, but I thought maybe she would expect a deal since they were taking 15 dozen at once. I was prepared to lower the price should she suggest so. She walked towards the cash, looking at the invoice I had given her and turned back towards me. I expected a rebuff on the price. Instead she smiled and said, "Next time, charge me $3.50."
I am continually amazed at what food is worth to some people (thank goodness!). At one of my trips to the farmers market this summer, I was selling our eggs and it is a tricky business in the microcosm of a market like that, where your competition is literally 6 feet over at the next booth. There were all variety of eggs for sale; conventional eggs selling at quota price, 'free range' eggs, 'cage-free eggs', 'blue and speckled eggs', organic eggs, etc. Ours were certified and the only other organic eggs there were selling for $5/dozen, and that vendor wasn't happy with my $3/dozen price, so I raised it to be polite, thinking how annoyed I would be to be going home with eggs that would never sell at that price. Within half an hour I was sold out and continually had people coming, asking for more. A lesson in market confidence that I obviously didn't learn, evidenced by this morning's experience.
Anyway, all is well here in Freetown these days. The sheep are happy and slowly expanding, Wilson is sleeping through most nights and Lucy is on the potty train! Whoo whoo! It's been about a week now and very few accidents, so as my mom said, "life is worth living!"

Hope this finds you well!

Sally

Sign of the times!

I'll soon be done bragging about the new sheep barn, but I'm still enjoying all the little details that we're slowly adding, I can't help but show them off. Like the little ledge we've added in the alley to keep grain within reach of the sheep (see below). If you've ever seen sheep go crazy for grain (which we've just started feeding this week in preparation for lambing), I think it must be agonizing to be able to smell it and see it, but not be able to reach it. So, now they can reach every little kernel, as long as I can pour it in a straight line down the row.
My favorite new detail however, is the sign I got for Christmas. My creative little niece, Ellie Wilson, with the help of her equally creative Dad, Bruce, made the Baa Baa Ln. sign for me. Decorated with little hand drawn sheep and some fantastic colouring skills, it pretty clearly marks the sheep zone. As soon as you step into the barn, the sign can easily be spotted, glimmering away in the back, obviously indicating the presence of some fine wooly creatures. Thanks Trafalgarians!

We've had the problem every year of the weather getting too cold and the chickens quitting laying eggs. It usually happens around the end of January, early February, when our good Maritime winters really kick it into gear. So we get a nice list of customers relying on our eggs, and then Kazaam, we have none at all. It's also a shock to the system of the Bernard household, since we eat four dozen eggs a week (that's without any baking!). Anyway, so we considered all of our options and wondered about the feasibilty of insulating the whole chicken barn (we only use a corner of it for the layers, the rest is for the meat chicks brooder house) and decided that was silly and only creating a rat habitat. My father has always been a firm advocate against (is that an oxymoron-advocate against?) heat lamps in barns, and I see his point, but we're trying something new this year. We always have a light on a timer for the chickens in the winter, to increase thier daylight (enhance egg laying), so we thought, since it's only on for a couple hours, and the couple hours before bed, maybe a heat lamp would keep them warm enough and also not be on long enough to be a hazard? Anyway, everytime I go in there to get the eggs at night I feel like I'm entering the red light district and find myself singing, "Roxanne".

Wilson slept through the night last night and has started eating like the little man that his is, so all is well here today! This is a shot of early morning in the kitchen, while we 'hatch', the kids have cereal (an appetizer before our main course of 6 eggs!).
Hope all is well in your corner of the world!

-Sally

A New Year!!!

Lucy, galloping into the new year on her new steed, Trigger.

Wilson and Lucy decorated the bottom two feet of the tree (which finally dried out very nicely) and Lucy is bragging up the branch she declared as hers.

There are those who think that resolutions are a crazy, outdated, overdone, boring and useless things, but I am not one of them. I think that a new year is like a new diary, a journal with a fresh start that can be filled with anything! Before I went to university (and subsequently felt I had something to say, evidently) I had stacks of empty journals that I just thought were too nice and too clean and perfect to mess up with mere words and sketches, etc. Anyway, January first seems like a great time to me to make promises to yourself to better who you are! Despite popular belief, I think there are actually things I could improve on. (haha)
So, I've decided, after careful consideration to post one here, in real life, in a tangible form I can refer back to when I need to remind myself what it is I thought would be beneficial to me.

- Learn to love lamb. I've kept a secret from my customers (but not from my family!) that I do not like lamb. I've actually outright lied to some customers and am quoted in one of the newpaper articles about the farm as raving over my 'favorite lamb dish' which is apparently bbq'd leg of lamb (which I've never had, but have seen on the Food Network).
-Apparently New Years is also a time to reveal terrible confessions about yourself....

Anyway, I've decided that I have to teach myself to like it more, if I'm really going to try to expand my market. I need to convince my own generation (and the generation before me...ahem brothers and sisters...) that lamb is good. So, first I need to convince myself. And I figure it might be an acquired taste, so I'm going to try to cook (and eat) more lamb. I haven't told Mark this yet (until he reads this) and he will be ecstatic, as he loves lamb. As will Lucy, who also seems to have a real taste for it. So January 1st, 2010 we ate our first lamb dish of the year, Lamb Sausage Penne with Tomato Sauce.

I'm no food stylist, but here it is, in all it's lamb glory. Also, please note, this is Mark's serving size, not mine...That would not be good for obligatory 'lose weight' resolution.

I threw some cottage cheese on the side because it is one of my favorite foods and I thought if I combined a favorite with a least favorite they might counteract and be ok. And they did, it was ok. Lucy's face proves how much she liked it.

Another resolution is to do more blog entries. I think I'm better off, for readership sake, posting short ones more often, than long ones infrequently. This is only a matter of self-discipline (as in not letting myself crash on the couch, and crash in front of the computer instead) and not teaching, or learning to love something, so surely this one I can handle.
Christmas was really great this year and I can tell it is only going to get better with each year as the kids grow. I'll leave you with a shot of the two them, enjoying their new sled from "Ho Ho" after our second snow of the season. As I write this we are getting our third, and biggest yet. Combined with all the rain we got overnight we have a very wet looking yard (but DRY BASEMENT!!! So far...).Hope this finds you well and warm.

-Sally

...and a mint for your pillow madam.

It's December 21 and the Barnyard Organics sheep are in their new palace. And what a palace it is!!!
Here's what it looked like, first thing this morning;

Then, with a layer of sawdust from Mark's friend, Jason Gaudet, who runs a business, cutting firewood just down the road.

Finally, the layer of (mint scented*) straw.

And TA DA! Tonite, as the sheep ate their supper!

I wish I could say that moving them from one barn to the next was as easy as posting these pictures, but, not surprisingly, that is not the case. They just didn't like the door we wanted them to use, but after much chasing, tussling, fighting, coaxing and cursing, we managed to drag them all where they needed to go.

Check out my proud carpenters/farmers. Even Wilson, who normally hates the sheep, sheep barn and all things sheep related, didn't scream his face off while we fed them tonight. That has got to be a sign!

*My favorite part of the day (and 'real farmers' will roll their eyes at me here) was when we were bedding out the straw. We had a bad infestation of field mint in our oat crop last year and thus, the straw made from the oats was FULL of mint. As we were fluffing it around, the barn filled up with the scent of mint and I felt for a minute like I worked on housekeeping for the Waldorf, or the Royal York or somewhere that actually still leaves fancy mints on fancy pillows. Only organic sheep get THAT kind of treatment!

Anyway, so that is the big excitement around here lately. The barn is pretty much complete. Just a few little extras to tidy up sometime in the future, but for now, it is so much more than I expected and exactly what I wanted! I can house like 80 ewes in there if I want!!! Time to get on the lamb marketing train! Wooot woot!
I took this last shot as I was leaving the barn tonight and I'm pretty sure that ewe is smiling at me. Like a little, subtle sheep thanks. hahaha!
On a side note, we finally cut our Christmas tree today (the top 8 feet of a 50 foot wonder, and it's PERFECT!), which would have been fine had Mark not decided that the best method to get it home was to tow it behind the four wheeler. If it was 50lbs when we cut it, then it was 300 by the time we got it home. It was completely coated in slush and wet when we landed back in the yard. So it spent most of the day outside, standing up against the house, dripping off, but I'd like to get it up before New Years, so it's laying out in the basement by the cast iron rad doing it's best impression of a tree that might possibly dry off within the next 48 hours. I've got a spot cleared in the living room and a little girl who has been promised a "Chreesmeees tree", so even if I have to use towels as a tree skirt, it's going up!!! (I should mention here, that no matter how wet this tree is, it is a step up from the one last year that we had to pressure wash after it got wrapped up in the tire of the four wheeler when we got stuck in the mud...)

If I don't write again before Christmas, have a good one, enjoy the spirit of the season and take some time to relax and take it all in.
Hope things in your corner of the world are merry and bright!

-Sally

CBC News Story

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/prince-edward-island/story/2009/12/17/pei-loblaw-farmers-appalled-584.html#socialcomments

I'm posting the website of a news story which has grown in the past couple days regarding a donation made to a local food bank by the Weston's of Loblaws (Superstore here in the Maritimes) fame. The story itself is interesting, but it's the pages of comments which really shook me. I am astounded at how many are anti-farmers. I could only read a few pages worth before I had to shut it down in disgust. Galen Weston Sr. finally articulated exactly the attitude that farmers have been dealing with when it comes to large corporations for generations, which is basically, "Too bad, so sad."
Agh, oh I have so much to say about this. I wish I could be as articulate as one of the local farmers here, Ranald MacFarlane, well known for his outspoken opinions. He's also a representative of our region for the Nation Farmers Union, and I think is one of the best educated on the realities of the farming crisis in the area (and doesn't mind sharing it). I would love to know his first reaction upon reading this article. I know that he already refers to The Superstore as "The Satanstore". Since I don't deal with big stores with my products, and don't ever intend to I am a bit disconnected from how it exactly works, but I DO have friends whose farms have shut down in the past couple years, after generations of working as hard as the rest of them. Agriculture is a dismal place sometimes, and the attitude expressed by Weston, and most of the commenters of the article doesn't show a bright light at the end of the tunnel. Does the food crisis concern no one? I guess it's probably like the Copenhagen mentality right now. Let's worry about our current problems and hope that the future figures itself out.

Sorry for the downer dump in my usually light hearted blog. I just cannot believe that there are that many naive people who sincerely believe that a farmer who goes out of business is getting what he deserves for not being able to compete. While Loblaws made $186 million in profits this last quarter.
Hmm..sounds about fair to me!

Ok, ok, soapbox is tired out for the night.

I hope this finds you in better spirits than me!

-Sally

Christmas Came Early in Freetown This Year!

I must have been a very good shepherd this year because Santa has come early and built me a beautiful feed alley for my new sheep barn. I've started with a shot of the old sheep barn and the evidence that I need a bigger barn. All my feed slots are filled and the lambs are eating off the floor. Not a tragedy, but since I'm not quite done building my flock yet, it's only going to get worse, so I put on my best cute face and TA-DA! a new barn for me and my ladies!

Here's my little glow worm showing off the alley mid-build.
The diva never misses an opportunity to pose.



So here is the nearly complete alley. It's high enough off the ground that the sheep don't have to bend down to eat, I'm above them to feed them, but just low enough that Mark doesn't hit his head on the low ceiling. It's going to take some skilled tractor driving to be able to clean out, but according to calculations, is doable. So we'll see! I'm ecstatic! Especially since the estimate was given that the sheep may be in the new barn as early as this week!! Whoohoo!!
We are hoping to be able to finish up this year's tattooing (a job I infamously put off EVERY year until the last possible minute) and do one last garlic juice deworming before moving them. Most of the ewes look really good, but the lambs are not doing as well as they should. The last two that were born were..er...svelte when they were born and never really caught up, so they will be getting a good dose to help them out. I don't remember telling you about the garlic juice when we did it the first time, but I can honestly tell you that it is one of the smelliest jobs I have ever endeavored. We drench (which just means to force feed) a good shot of pure garlic juice and grapeseed oil for each animal and while they get most of it, it is inevitable that some is going to end up on hands, clothes, faces, boots, etc. And we all know how garlic likes to stick around. Ugh. So gotta suck up that job sometime this week!
I shipped my last three ram lambs last week and we decided, for the first time, to keep one for ourselves. I don't tell my customers this as a rule, but I'm not much of a lamb fan really. So we just kept the legs, the loin chops and then got the rest made into sausage. It should be arriving any day now and we will have sausage for sale! I'm hesitant to call it organic however, since I suspect the spices are probably not organic and our last inspector indicated some questions over meat grinders and how they can be thoroughly cleaned between conventional and organic meat and whether they actually are, in a busy butcher shop. So, we have sausage made with certified organic lamb for sale! (It's all about the spin! Good thing I have a degree in Spin Doctoring, care of Mount Allison University!)
For Mark's side of things, he has the tractor and blower in prime condition for the year and had no major incidents on his first snowfall this year. Let's hope that holds out all season. He also just turned 30 on the 11th and we had a little get together to celebrate with some of this friends. It was a great time and I think we relived enough of our youthful past to keep the big round number from getting to him. Carol, Wendell and Martha were nice enough to keep the kids for us that night too, so we had the luxury of sleeping in (although a 7 am wake up probably doesn't count as a sleep in for most people it was like gold for us!)

Christmas preparations continue and now that the bitter cold winds have left us for at least a couple days, the kids can get back outside and help with chores again and the such. It's pretty pathetic when we drive over to the farm to do chores because it's too cold for the kids. The next project is heading to the woods to find a tree. We found a little grove of firs last year, so we'll be going back to that, but it's kind of slim pickin's, so we can't be too picky. I think every tree is the best one every year, so it won't matter. I just like the hunt!
I reminded Mark that we should go when it's mild and he in turn reminded me of last year when we went when it was 'mild' and got bogged down in the mud with the four wheeler and our tree got wrapped up in the tire and we had to pressure wash it when we got back to the barn. I've never washed a tree before and to be honest would like to avoid it again if possible. Although, evidently it made for a good story! And the tree was fine in the end! That's why you put trees in corners of houses, to hide the muddy side, right?

Whew, lots of bad grammar and poor punctuation in this entry. My spin doctor profs would be upset with me. That's what happens when you've got one kid crawling up your back and the other waking in thier crib as you type in a flurry!

Hope this finds you well!

-Sally

Winter Prep...

Since this is technically a 'farm blog', I'll start by posting a picture of some chickens, but for the most part, the first half of this entry is once again mostly for the benefit of my family in WB, NB, who are keeping up with our water trials in the basement each spring and our ensuing attempts to fix the problem. This week we tackled it once and for all and dug a few holes.
This is the first one, about 15-20 ft deep. It started out as a trial hole to find the old dry well, and Mark and the backhoe driver thought they were lucky enough to have hit it first try. We sent the backhoe guy away while we had the plan to simply re-fill the hole with new rock and be done with it. After chatting with Wendell that day, he told us that actually what we had found was the pipe that used to be his old septic tile field, from way back when he and Carol had their trailer down on this lot.
Hmph.
So, back comes the backhoe.
This time, we started at the corner the house and traced the pipe out to the actual dry well. It was about the same distance as the original guess, just a slightly different angle (towards my garden..which was once again decimated in the process). The picture above shows Mark tracking the pipe as the backhoe did the heavy digging. Once we finally reached the end, there was much more evidence of what we expected an old dry well to look like. The pipe job was pretty shabby and for a while I was sure that I was on an unsexy episode of Holmes on Homes. Mark sounded just like him, ripping apart the previous job, proving all the ways he was going to do a much better job, etc. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute.
Anyway, the final decision was to fill that trench back in and dig a new one, out to the first hole we had dug. So that's what we did.
When we had first dug at the corner of the house we also found an extra pipe. A narrower, simple, black pipe that had been connected to the weeping tile at the corner. While the general consensus from the peanut gallery was just to reconnect it and not worry about where it was coming from, Mark wasn't going to let it go. So he dug it up and traced it back to our washing machine. Apparently, it was common to pipe the water from the washing machine to somewhere other than the septic because it was believed that the soap from the machine could kill the bacteria in the septic that is needed to break down...things. SO, this time, there are two pipes running to the dry well. One for the weeping tile and one for the washer.


Thankfully we live on a farm and tend to have lots of...excess...stuff/garbage around that urban dwellers don't have the luxury of keeping around, so we were able to fill that first giant hole with old cinder blocks. (If you are from the Dept. of Environment, and this in some way violates some kind of PEI law, disregard that photo and commentary please. Thank you.) We also put that big green pipe down into the well too, so that if need be, we can at least look in and see how much water is in there, or pump it out...or something. It might prove to be completely useless, but it feels better to be able to access the dry well, for some reason. So here's the final product before it was filled in. Take that snow and rain! Not only do I have a big muddy ditch that runs around half the house, and a big muddy lawn, I now have a big green pipe sticking three feet above the ground in the front yard which Lucy keeps affectionately insisting is a "gaubige can!!!" Don't misunderstand however, I am in no way complaining! If I have dry feet come April, I don't care if I never have grass again. So here's hoping!

In other news, and believe it or not, there is other news, the sheep barn is coming along! As you can see, the woman door got put in this week and as you may also be able to see, has a very complicated security system in place. Baler twine! (I am slowly bringing my Wilson/West Branch/Hillbilly ways into the Bernard mentality!!!!!)
As Mark was cutting out the door (with a chainsaw..haha) he found a board that had been signed by Doug Profitt, Wendell's business partner quite a few years ago. The date is July 12, 1987, which would have been when they remodeled this barn the first time, to switch it from dairy to potatoes.
The next two shots show the progress from the outside, and Mark's meticulous insistence that it look good, not just do the job. I think he succeeded.

The hay in the back sheep barn is starting to get low, so hopefully we'll be able to move soon! (I'll let you know what kind of comment that generates once Mark reads this.)

Hope this finds you well!

Sally