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Admittedly, after what seems like weeks of not posting, this post is probably not what most of you want to read, since it's basically just an advertisement for our chicken and lamb that is available within days.  BUT for those of you looking for DELICIOUS meat, read on!!!

CHICKEN
Our chickens are raised on lush pasture from four weeks of age onward.  They also get a menu of our own certified organic grains, but I think this year's chickens are eating more grass and pasture critters than ever before.  The reaction we have had to these birds from our customers has been unbelievable.  In fact, it has been so good that we are willing to guarantee that these are the best chickens you've ever eaten.  They are have lots of white meat, but have a distinct chicken flavour that is lost by birds raised indoors on feed only.  The most common comment we hear is, "It tastes like chicken USED to taste like!  You can actually really TASTE chicken!" 
I continue to come back to my strong belief that a happy, healthy bird makes for a much healthier end product and if you could see our chickens on pasture, you would have no doubts that they are happy and healthy.

We are holding our price at $3.50/lb which is laughable to our organic colleagues in other areas of the Maritimes, but because we grow and mix our own grain and have the pasture, we are able to offer a quality product to more people at a more reasonable price.  I dare you to go to a Farmer's Market anywhere else and find certified organic, pasture raised chicken for less.  Our first batch will be ready Thursday afternoon and I suggest you call or email to place an order, but you can always just stop by the farm as well.
Our next two batches will be ready in September and October, respectively.

LAMB
My lambs are looking amazing this year and I am so excited to be able to offer them earlier than ever. From this first batch I have three whole ones left, or 6 sides, however they sell.   They are also out on pasture, but are getting a little treat of grain each day to keep them happy (and round).  The sides should probably weigh out at about 20-25lbs and the price is sticking at $7/lb.  I usually do custom cut and wrap to your preferences, but if you're worried about what to get, I can help you decide.  I have also worked in the past with a meat cutter who can make sausages with the cuts you aren't sure about.  Mark LOVES lamb sausage and recommends it to everyone who ever buys a side or whole.  It costs a little bit more, but is well worth it to most people.

On the crop side, it has been and continues to be an outstanding growing year. I am still overwhelmed when I look out on our wheat fields at how perfect they look.  Let's pray that this carries through to harvest.

Hope this finds you reveling in the quickly-fleeting summer,

-Sally

Cream of the Crops!

Since I spent so much of last entry proclaiming that we're a grain farm first, it seemed only fitting that I should include some pictures of what we actually make money at (most of the time anyway). 
Things are pretty smug around here right now.  This has been a fantastic growing season thus far and the crops are looking amazing.  As you can see from these freshly cultivated beans, the growth is green and lush, and the weeds are few and far between; just like we like it.  That's the fruit of Mark's well planned and diligent, long-term management labour.

  Here's a couple shots of our wheat fields, which are really outstanding right now. I like to say they're like conventional only better, because we don't have any lodging.  Lodging often occurs this time of year with heavy rains or strong winds and is basically large sections of the grain breaking and falling over.  Research has shown (and common sense says) that too much fertilizer can cause the plants to grow too tall too fast and the stems cannot support the heavy head of grain.  Now that I've put it in black and white, you can be sure that the rain forecasted for tonight will flatten entire fields by morning.  haha.  That's the fruit of Sally's home made smugness at work.

I tried to get a shot of the patterns in this wheat field, but I think I need a plane rather than a large mini-van.  On the edge of this field of AC Helena variety wheat, we have a strip of Acadia, a rare, heritage variety grown for flour.  Speerville Mills, in NB works with organic wheat and is always interested in heritage varieties.  They had about 20kg of Acadia in their freezer and we thought it would be an interesting opportunity to grow it out.  So far it looks good, we'll see what the rest of the season brings.
Another colour of wheat is a strip beside the Acadia called Red Fife, which is growing in popularity, but is also a heritage variety for flour.  Speerville really loves working with Red Fife and we thought we have had a couple years of experience with growing wheat, we could try it out.  The thing with heritage varieties and Red Fife in particular is that it takes a few growing seasons for it to adapt perfectly to our climate, soil, etc.  It's so amazing that certain, old varieties have the ability to adapt like that, where new varieties have been bred to do the exact opposite and be exactly the same in every field no matter what the conditions.  Consistency has it's place, don't get me wrong, but there is something more to be said for staying power. 

In other field crop news, we're done hay!!! The loft is full, the back sheep barn is full and we've got 36 round bales for back up.  Rosie is an unknown element in predicting our needs this year, but that's more than we've ever had before. So when it comes to rain forecasts now we can sit back and say, "Let 'er come!"

Anyway, in other news, my garden is getting ahead of me, both in terms of harvest and in weeds.  I had a few bare sections that I intended to see out with oats or buckwheat, but as usual didn't get around to.  Those are now producing a beautiful crop of lamb's quarters and red root pigweed.  It's hard to get motivated to weed those sections as there is nothing in the undergrowth to save, but I know I will regret it if I don't get rid of them soon, before they set seed.
We had a great supper of Three Pillar Farms pork, todays home made bread and FRESH green beans from the garden. Last night we had our first potatoes and I don't know what it is, but it doesn't matter how many store bought new potatoes I have, there is NOTHING like those first new potatoes from your own garden.  Biting through that thin skin, while the butter melts down your fork and down your wrist and the whole thing just melts in your mouth.  New potatoes are my absolute favorite food.  Even more than chocolate.  Because I can have chocolate any old time of the year. At least some things are still sacred.  We can buy asparagus in February and strawberries at Christmas, but the new potato...now THAT is a treat.

Once again, I'm off to hit the sack as they say.  So much to fill these beautiful July days.

Hope this finds you happily exhausted and sun kissed as well.

-Sally

Crop Circles...Failure.

We are a grain farm first.  Before there were sheep or chickens or babies or me, there was grain.  Despite the arrival of those aforementioned things, and despite the preference to focus on livestock in this blog, this is a grain farm first.  So each year as my flock expands, I worry about losing valuable crop land in favor of pasture, but recognize the importance of having enough pasture to do sufficient rotations, organically.  And while the sheep are not necessarily a money-losing venture, they are not necessarily a HUGE money generator and they require a lot of work.
I often find myself pondering the existence of my flock because despite my love of sheep and despite the importance of having livestock on a farm, they do take up a lot of space, time and resources that could otherwise be dedicated to what we actually do; GRAIN.  The thing that keeps me coming back is that I loved growing up with sheep and I want to give my kids that same opportunity.  I also think that it is infinitely important that kids understand the concept of life and death from a very young age, and there's no better way than to see a lamb being born and the odd one die.  Puts the small things into perspective pretty quickly and is something I feel like a lot of kids are missing out on.

ANYway, the point of this entry is to talk about my attempt at working the sheep into our crop land, rather than removing crop land into pasture.  Half of the ladies are out with the ram right now and the lambs are separated, on a feeding schedule to encourage the last bit of growth (although Mark weighed them today and already many are at or past market weight! That's a record for us!)  So I just had half of my old ewes to contend with and I didn't want to risk the ram breeding them (however unlikely since they just lambed in Feb.) and wanted them separated.
The plan was to put our old dilapidated cattle trailer out in the field, run some electranet and let the sheep graze the hay land that had first cut silage taken off of it (or whatever field was looking best.)  I thought that it would be great to capitalize on all the acreage we have post harvest, and the acres of legumes we plant for our 5 year rotation.
Great in theory.
Three major problems ( from my perspective) 'cropped' up right away.
1) mosquitos.  This sounds trivial, but one of the first nights we went back to shut them in the trailer for the night, when I reached into the trailer to shut off the fencer, I thought I was reaching through a curtain of some kind, but when I looked it was just mosquitos.  They sounded like a 737 coming in for landing.  It was the craziest thing I've ever seen.  And shutting 12 sheep into a trailer with that many mosquitos seems like the ultimate torture to me.
2) bedding.  We didn't anticipate as much manure in the trailer as there is. They're only in there overnight, but wowzers...they require fresh straw almost daily, which is just more man hours ticked off on their value.
3) and this is the biggest problem of all; sheep eat a lot.  We had anticipated moving the trailer every few days, but it turns out that 12 sheep can eat a LOT of clover in a very short amount of time.  In half a day in fact.  So much so that if you don't move the fence halfway through the day, they will get out when you try to move it that night.  Then you have loose sheep, manure AND mosquitos to deal with.  Oh, and a tangled fence.  And it's dark.  And did I mention mosquitos?

So needless to say, after about a week of it, we've agreed that it isn't working like we hoped and we're onto new ideas.  Perhaps Rosie needs some company in her lush pasture?  At this point what we have to show for our 'big idea' is an un-road worthy cattle trailer and a bunch of  sheep-created crop circles in our field and some dirty looking ewes who are eager to explore their horizons once the grass runs out.  We're open to suggestions.

In other news, our third batch of chickens has arrived and the second batch (above) is almost ready to go out into the pasture.  The first batch is looking great and our first ship date is August 4th.  So at least some of the livestock are going as planned.  Whew.

Speaking of the arrival of third batches, we have some exciting personal news to share, which is that we're growing the work crew here at Barnyard Organics by another wee one come mid-January.  Can't wait!

Whew, bed calls.  Having a full time off-farm job makes for late nights on the full-time on-farm job.

 Hope this finds you celebrating the arrival of sun (and heat), but enjoying the days of rain as well.

-Sally

Early Summer Days

TA DA!  Our first harvest from the garden!   I managed to scavenge together enough leaf lettuce, spinach and baby beet greens to make a salad, while Lucy pulled a few radishes and a green onion for me.  Made for a pretty delicious little treat.  Too bad, it's gotten so warm that all the spinach has bolted and the greens have come to a bit of a stop. I think I remember now that my plan was to plant some lettuce every week at the beginning, but I can see now, that I forgot that plan.  Too bad. :( It was good while it lasted!!! haha  Also those are my first peonies in the foreground.  I planted a peony root when I moved here and finally, this year I had some big beautiful blooms.  One of my favorite flowers for sure.

I got these little Carhartt overalls in the mail from a friend when I was pregnant with Lucy and at the time, they seemed so huge, but they're making their way through the second kid at this point and it seems like not very long ago I remember unwrapping them!

Everyday I think Wilson looks more and more like his Dad.  Here's the two of them carting around on the 4-wheeler, on their way to go feed the pastured chickens.

Here's the crew arriving at the chicken tractors, ready to move, feed and water the happy little birds.

When we chat with our conventional farmer friends about the chickens, I get the impression that they think having chickens out on pasture is more of a marketing ploy than anything legitimate to do with the quality of life for the birds.  When we tell them how much they love to eat the clover and the grass they say, "oh yeah...", in a sort of polite 'yeah right' kind of way.  It's hard to show in a picture, but these chickens have just been moved and you can really hear and see them picking the grass as fast as they can.  They go for the clover first and then pick away at the rest.  It's really amazing to see what kind of diet chickens would have, given the opportunity.

Mark likes numbers and records.  That's part of why he's such a good organic farmer.  He's attached these tags to each of the chicken tractors now indicating what date they went out, the tractor number, how many birds, etc. etc.  We keep track of deaths or illnesses on our computer, but he took it a step further with these fancy tags  this year.

  Although we've got the chicken tractors down to a bit of a science at this point, they do still have their faults.  One of them is accessibility of the waterers.  If the float isn't set right, then the water runs over and they run out of water.  To get to it, Mark has to crawl in, work in a very confined space and hope that the chickens don't leave too slick of a poopy trail for him to get back out.  It doesn't seem to matter if he crawls in RIGHT after we move them, they manage to poop exactly in the spots he crawls within seconds. This is a shot of the two helpers, assisting the big chicken in the pen.  How much he appreciates me and my photo taking in moments like this, he keeps to himself.  :)

Here's our latest addition; well temporary addition.  I've borrowed Duncan the North Country Cheviot Ram from my mom to breed the ewes who didn't catch last season. He is friendly and big and the kids LOVE him.

Rosie continues to flourish and is doing well.  Here's Wilson, foreman of the operation, checking her out.

Another new addition, we recently picked up this old cattle trailer to act as our new barn.  We need more pasture and have been considering a way to put the sheep out on some of our cropped fields later in the season, but keep them safe from coyotes.  The plan is to put temporary fencing out from this trailer and move it every few days to new ground, but be able to shut the sheep in at night.  We'll see. I'm nervous about coyotes during the day and am considering a llama.  Again, we'll see.

If Lucy takes you on a tour of the farm, I can guarantee it will go like this:
1.Go see the 'beebee chicks'.  Pet one and scare the rest to pieces while you corner them.
2.Go see the "big FAT chickies". These are the ones in the pasture and apparently this is how they are distinguished from the hens and the new 'beebee' chicks. Emphasize and repeat the word 'fat' until spit flies out your mouth.
3.Since they're in the pasture, it's inevitable that you will also see the sheep.  No big deal at this point.
4.DUNCAN!!!! Let him lick your fingers and giggle a lot.
5. Rosie! Get UP and come see us!!  Scratch her ears and say yuck when her wet nose gets on your arm.
6. Walk by the dump truck and stick your head up inside near the front driver's side tire. Avoid the poop on the tire, the mud on the surrounding parts of the truck,  and ignore the smell of rotten seafood and you will notice a nest tucked into the corner.  Inside you will find...  

...four bright blue robin's eggs!!  We have no idea when the robin decided to build the nest, but she must have been fast, because with the mussel shells, Mark was taking the truck for drives at least once a week for the past months.  He noticed the nest about a month ago and it's sat there as snug as can be for a number of rough trips ever since.  Clearly, that bird knew what she was doing...in the sense of a secure nest.  Not so much in the "great place to raise kids" sense.

Thanks for coming along on that little tour!  Things continue to truck along nicely here at the farm.  Mark has begun to cultivate the soybeans- the slowest and most painstaking job on the farm by far.  Watching the weather forecast carefully, it seemed all clear to cut hay this week, but alas, this morning the forecast did a 360 and is now calling for shower tonight and potentially more over the next few days.  So it's tedded (sp?) out and we're hoping for the best.  It's almost a guarantee around here that if we cut hay, it will rain in the next couple of days.  Like when all the cows are laying down in the fields at once, or when the lawn is covered with dew-laden spider webs in the morning.  It's just a given, a sign.  So if you're wondering, you can rest assured that over the next couple of weeks, we will be getting showers every three days or so.  Not a lot. Just enough to put a damper on quality hay making.

Hope this finds you celebrating a patriotic Canada Day and doing a sun dance to keep the rain away...for a few days at least!

-Sally     

When it rains, it pours

I grew up in a big old farm house which has managed to withstand the upbringing of my eight siblings and a generation (or two) of others before me.  By the time I came along I had my pick of bedrooms and of course I chose the smallest one.  It's at the front of the house, so gets the best breeze, and Mark will confirm (with frustration) that I do indeed love a good breeze on my face when I sleep, year round.
Anyway, since there was only me and my parents, we had a few extra bedrooms and from time to time, there were some interesting visitors who filled one or two of them.  My mom has been heavily involved with the mission side of the Presbyterian church so we often had missionaries who were travelling around telling about their missions, staying for a day or two. Or we hosted youth from time to time, who were travelling around through the church or school exchanges.  Then, annually, we hosted the shearer.
I never realized, until I had my own house, that an over-night house guest is not as easy as my mother made it look.  I guess to her, at that point, it was just another body in the house, after putting up with 8 'jeezers' at once, no big deal.  Anyway, he would land in, from PEI, spend two or three days, using our house as the hub to finish shearing the sheep in the area, then off he'd go again.
I vaguely remember before there was a 'shearer' and Dad would 'go at it' and then be in fine form for days after, while his back recovered.  He LOVES to quote Stompin' Toms song about the tobacco picking, except he fills in shearing sheep, "my back still aches when I hear that word."  Anyway, since I've never had to do it, I think I've always taken the shearing of the sheep for granted.
And then every year, the hot weather comes and my heavy laden ladies are laid out in the breeziest shade they can find, panting for all they are worth and the guilt strikes me that I haven't called the shearer yet.  At this point, I'm sort of 'on his list', and I don't really need to call, but I always get nervous that he'll forget or pass me over.
So when I started my annual track-down calling, I was shocked to get him on my second try.  That's never happened before!  And his chatty way he said that his shearing partner, Pauline (who did my sheep the last two years) had just arrived from out west and they were heading up 'our way' this week.  Whew! But when it comes to Val, I've learned that 'next week' can pretty quickly turn to two weeks, or next month, pretty quickly.  So when he wouldn't nail down a day, I was relieved to hear I was on the list, but hoping the hot days would hold off a bit longer, for the sake of my girls.
Then the rain came.

 

It's hard to show rain in pictures, but you can see how little we can see across the road because it's pouring so hard.  The rain is bouncing off the driveway and the puddles are foaming.

We knew it was coming.  Mark talked about it all last week. "Sunday's going to rain."  We even briefly talked about shutting the sheep in.  I said, "if it's just showers, it'll be fine.  The sheep come in out of showers anyway.  The barn is too small for them all with their fleeces on. What am I going to do, jam them all in there for days until the rain stops?  Didn't you say Monday is supposed to rain too? Who KNOWS when the shearer will ACTUally show up!?"
Sunday came, and it showered a bit throughout the day.  I decidedly put it out of my head.  Then supper came, and it began to pour.  It was relentless and pounding.  I began to mumble to myself about the sheep and Mark gave me sideways glance as if to say, "I think I brought this up before..."
Suddenly, in a fit of anxiety I begged Mark to go over and shut them in.  I exclained, "I just keep having this vision of the shearer showing up, taking a look at damp wool and saying, 'I'll be back around this way in Septemeber' You've GOT to shut them in for me! Pleasee!!"

 And because I married the kind of man who does this sort of thing, he quietly got up and went over at the height of the pounding rain, thunder and lightning, and put a gate up at the door so that the sheep would stay dry (or not get any wetter at least).  Just look at those eyes, don't they just say, "Love you sweetie" or maybe it's "I love sheep."  :)

Anyway, as I write this, the rain continues to pour and Mark is speculating what his new Fathers-Day-Rain-Gauge will say in the morning.  The soil certainly needed it, although the intensity will no doubt leave some places (with more hills and less organic matter than ours) a bit washed out.  Yes, that's a bit smug on my part. Just for that, there will probably be a big rill running through one of our freshly seeded soybean fields come tomorrow.  Karma.

Hope this finds you dry and celebrating fatherhood!

-Sally

A June Day on the Farm in Pictures.

The perfect June weather-not too hot not too cold. Just right for a snack by the pool in the sun!

There is nothing less glamorous than keeping livestock during a 2 week rainy period.  Everything becomes a slick of green slime and areas that were previously safe for walking now require hip waders.  Not to mention to odour of wet wool and the humidity in the air of a barn full of panting, dripping creatures, hiding from the coyote howls.  Actually we haven't heard any coyotes lately (knock on wood), but we know they are living in our woods, so I'm not taking any precautions and am still bringing in my girls every night.  They are out in the large pasture now so back to the old barn and it's not big enough to hold them all.  If it's not raining too hard, some of them will sleep outside in the 'corral' which is really just a fenced off area outside the barn to hold the extras.  During these last weeks of rain, the corral became a treacherous stink hole of mud and manure, but as you can see below is looking MUCH better these days!

Mark had our local heavy equipment guys (the Waugh's) in to scrape and level up a new pad for his latest, large grain tank and while they were there, he got them to slip into the sheep corral and scrape out the yuck and fill it back in with some fresh 'shale'. It looks like gravel to me, but I'm told it's called 'shale'.  Must be a PEI thing.  Either way, I'm not complaining, it's much better than it was. There had been some grass growing in it and from an organic shepherdess's perspective was a prime habitat for worms, so the grass had to go.  That may seem contradictory at first, but I promise there is genuine logic to it.  


In other, sunnier news, the weather has been beautiful these last couple days and as the saying goes, "Ya gotta make hay when the sun shines." or plant clover, or finger weed or harrow in our case....
Wendell has been living in his tractor lately, getting the last of the ground ready for seeding and Mark has been finger weeding up a dust storm (yes despite two week of rain, there is dust in lots of areas).  You can see in the picture above the sheep, then red ground and then a field that looks like it's been mowed by a big golf course professional mower.  It's actually just been freshly fingerweeded and if you could see the detail better you would be able to see what an amazing job it does.  There are very clearly lines of grain showing up where it was a mat of green before.  I suggested that doing the fingerweeding when it's damp might help the weeds pull out easier, to which I was told it wouldn't make any difference.  I know from experience that weeds pull out much easier after a rain than after drought, but who am I to argue with the 'expert'.  Pffffttt.

We had the vet out and he confirmed that Rosie is indeed with calf and he estimated her to be due in the fall (September), so that is exciting news from here.  A bit on the bad timing side of things, since at that time, Mark's priorities will lie somewhere besides learning to hand milk a Jersey cow and it will be left to me I'm sure, but such is the life of a patient and loving farmers wife.  PFfffffttt again!

The hens are enjoying the sun over the rain as well. Here they are in their custom made dustbath.  If you've never seen a chicken have a dust bath, it's one of the funniest things.  They pretty much lay right over on their side, lay out their wings and kick up dust with one leg until there's just a cloud of it all over them.  Sometimes you can't see anything but a chicken leg kicking up a storm.  Usually there's three of them bathing at the same time and it's a dusty chaos.

This is a field ready for planting after Wendell's harrowing today.  If you look hard you can see our trouble weed specific to this field, right above Lucy's head.  For some reason the upper corner (and spreading) is always FULL of field mint.  Back when I was writing about the new sheep barn and when we laid out the straw it smelled like mint-well this field is why.  It's a tough weed and spreads like crazy, but can be brought to a manageable level, again this year, we hope!  That is to say, we hope the crop we plant can out perform and compete with the mint that will inevitably try to take over. 

Lucy getting her toes sniffed.

Wilson blinking at the sun, sporting his favorite shirt.  Nothing with a motor can go by without this boy craning his neck and hopping and waving while making vroom noises. 

Hope this finds you with your hands in some dirt and a smile on your face!

-Sally

Spring crop update 2010

Hi all

I continue to get hassled by Sally for not posting more on here and letting people know what is happening in the fields.  Well first off if you don't know we have had a lot of rain lately.  I was joking with a neighbour the other day that I don't have a rain gauge because I don't spray chemicals.  It is quite common that chemical companies will advertise their products on rain guages, hats or other items that farmers sometimes need and give them to farmers for buying their products.   A couple years back our rain gauge broke and has never been replaced.  So we don't have an actual amount of rain that fell, just a lot.

So far we have just shy of 100 acres of Wheat in the ground, it was planted on the 18th of May.  80 acres of barley and 20 acres of barley and field peas.   Also we have 20 acres of oats planted.  This year we are going to try and underseed the oats to clover and rye grass.  Our hope is to spread the clover and rye grass on at the time when we fingerweed the last time.   We have always worried about seeding the cereal crop and forage at the same time because the forage could grow so well that the cereal crop is consumed by it, causing harvesting difficulties.

Just before the rain hit I started sowing one field to clover and rye grass.  We sow fall rye with this in the spring and it acts as a nurse crop the first year and then comes out in head the second year but is cut off for silage. 

We have still about 50 acres of clover and rye grass to put in and 100 acres soybeans.  We are growing 4 different varieties of beans this year.  Our favorites are  OAC Prudence they are a shorter season bean and we have had good yields with them.  We are trying out two new varieties Laurent and Pheniox which are both short season varieties and we are hoping they will preform well and may become our new favorite.  In addition we are also going to be planting Black Soybeans.  These are a specialty bean that taste a lot better than regular soybeans.  We are going to also harvest some of these beans for Edamame this season.  You might remember us raving over Edamame last season in one of the posts.   We are trying to come up with a way we could blanch and freeze them so that we could extend the length of time we can sell them.

We may put in some sunflowers as well but are still working out all of the logistics on the potential market.

I passed by a field this morning and notice that the barley is starting to come out in the third leaf.  The third leaf stage of a cereal plant is the stage when the plant is able to withstand the fingerweeder.   So when the Sun comes out and the crops start to jump in growth we are going to be ready to try and clean as many weeds as possible.  The trick is that it requires nice sunny weather, showers are a benefit for the weeds.

Hope this finds you dry and Happy
Mark