Food Security Network AGM

So, remember me?  It's been so long since I've posted on here that I feel a bit intimidated looking at this empty white space I'm expected to fill.  But I have great intentions of getting my blogger groove back on.  I've gotten myself off Facebook so have lots of grand plans for all the freetime I'll be enjoying that was previously eaten up by whatever it is that Facebook saw fit to feed me all day.
But to ease my transition back into this, I'm going to cheat a little bit.  I'm going to copy and paste my notes from my recent keynote address at the PEI Food Security Network AGM.  It was a great group of concerned individuals from a variety of backgrounds, across the PEI, coming together in the name of food security, locally.  If you haven't already heard, 2014 is the year of the Family Farm, so I was asked to incorporate that into the theme of my talk. 
I started out with a little visual tour of the farm, using photos and sharing details of what we do, how we do it, etc.  I am going to leave that part of out of this post, since it's not news to you, and because it's kind of the foundation for nearly all the talks both Mark and I do, so you can find out nearly all of it by reading this blog, or checking our website.  So the notes below, start after I've done the first 13 slides of farm description stuff.  I'll toss in some pictures now and then so you can really pretend you were there. :)
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So that’s my farm.  What kind of farmer am I?  I guess I usually say we’re organic grain farmers.  But we could also be called chicken farmers. Or egg farmers.  Even cash crop farmers.  We’re also a family farm.

 It’s easy to get caught up in the imagery of ‘family farms” and “small, local agriculture”, but we all know those are subjective terms. What is a family farm?  I’m sure the McCains and the Irvings consider themselves a family, and they have a farm, right?  And small farms here are a lot different than small farms even in Quebec, let alone on the prairies.  So let’s forget about trying to label certain operations as small, or local or family operated, and let’s focus instead on what we are producing.

What does an egg farmer produce? What does a potato farmer produce?  What does a dairy farmer produce?

Now what does a family farmer produce?

The kids and I spend a fair bit of time on the farm.  We don’t accomplish much of substance. In fact, from a managers perspective, we probably make it worse most of the time.  But I still consider myself a farmer.  And if you were to ask me what is that I’m farming I’d probably say…”chickens”.  But in my head I’d be thinking “farmers”.
Like any crop, you give it a good start, feed it well, work hard, pray a lot and hope for the best. But you don’t know the results until they’re grown up.  Maybe my yield will be terrible.   Maybe my crop will look good all along and then be a crop failure.  Maybe I’m not actually a very good farmer farmer after all.  That remains to be seen.

All farms produce some important, usable product.  There is perhaps no more important product than farmers.  To produce and grow farmers is an art that has been lost. The exodus we’ve stood by and watched as farms have gotten bigger and more ‘innovative’ and ‘efficient’, as farm kids move to urban centers and get secure jobs, with regular paycheques, proves that we’re losing the ability to grow farmers. 

When big farms are so mechanized that the farmers themselves never actually come in direct contact with the animal or the crop and rely instead on technology and the knowledge of those ‘experts’ outside the farm itself, it is no longer growing farmers. It is growing a business.  Perhaps a very successful one.  Perhaps one that grosses a lot of money and maybe there will be a young person who is excited by the possibility of making a lot of money, but it is not growing farmers. 

 

And, from experience, it takes a lot of work and resources to grow farmers. Thinking of the effort my parents made to grow farmers, I now recognize that it is not something that happens by itself.  It takes great patience to help a little girl train a big steer to want to be led around the farm yard by a rope.  It takes hopefulness to give your best ewe to your daughter for Christmas so that her next batch of lambs can be registered under her name, to start her own flock.  It requires nerves of steel to let teenagers run tools and machines. 

 

From personal experience, there is little more frustrating than being under pressure to get a job done, and watching tiny fingers try to figure out the intricacies of opening a bag. Or being eager to get home after a long day, but taking the time to sit in with the pigs and figure out personality-appropriate names. Two weeks ago we had 300 chicks arriving the next day and were working hard to get the brooder room built and insulated after a winter of letting it fall to the bottom of the priority list.  And it was patience-testing to watch three kids under 6 take turns running the drill, stripping screws, reversing the bits and dropping the heavy drill, but were they ever proud of the job once it was (finally) done. It probably took nearly an extra hour from what their father could have done by himself, but for an hour that was forgotten by us by the end of the day, it was an hour they may never forget. 

The lesson of life and death is one that family farmers in particular, appreciate with a depth not found on other farms.  With kids, it is a necessity of life, filtering and understanding the connection between birthing something, growing something, killing something and eating something.  It’s not an easy lesson and some are harder than others, but it’s one that isn’t found on non-family farms.  Having the appreciation for life, and the solidarity of hurting over an unexpected death or particularly difficult end-of-life decision creates a bond between the farmers in the family.  

 
And I’m not talking only about kids.  I recently ran a workshop at our on-farm poultry processing facility for individuals interested in learning how to process their own chickens.  In the pre-amble we talked of our experiences with various poultry and as happens with farmers, the chat grew and expanded and everyone ended up spending far beyond the allotted time, just sharing in the challenges and successes that come with family farming.  There was an unspoken, shared mood in the killing room as we came to terms with our role in the circle of life and one that I think can only be found on a truly family farm. 

The gift of mentoring and apprenticing on farms is a beautifully visible sign of growing farmers.  As an apprentice gains confidence over the season and begins to notice, for themselves, subtle changes in the plants or better yet, the soil, a farmer is grown.  And in turn, as the mentor begins to feel they can, with confidence, hand over significant responsibilities to the apprentice, their own load is lightened and they know they have begun to grow a farmer.

It is not a responsibility to be taken lightly, growing a farmer.   Have I gotten away from my main point? Family farming?  But no.  For we all know that is nigh impossible to farm by oneself.  Farmers are by nature, team players.  They want partners in crime and sometimes those partners in crime, lead to more tiny partners.  Thus, we have farm families. 

Given that this is the Food Security Network AGM,  I would suggest true food security relies not on increased food production, technology and efficiency, but on an increase in true family farmers.  We are increasingly fed by businesses and managers, but our food sovereignty will rely on farmers who will in turn grow more farmers and families.

And there is no one in particular to blame for the lost art of growing farmers.  Smaller and smaller margins have resulted in farmers having less time, fewer resources and shorter patience for the time-consuming task of teaching and sharing the love of agriculture.  I strongly believe the low cost of industrial food and a disconnect to the eater has had a direct impact on farmers’ ability to grow farmers.  So let’s vote with our food choices and support farming family farmers so that we can ensure truly sustainable food production for the future.

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So that's that.  I would like to acknowledge that last photo which is a still from Mille Clarke's film Island Green, which coincidentally played after the AGM I spoke at.  And no matter how many times I see it, it makes me cry with its sheer beauty everytime.  And at the same time invigorates my sometimes tired spirit.

May this find you enjoying the smell of drying, spring earth and anticipating the first chirp of spring peepers.

-Sally

Inspectors, Acadia, Babies, oh my!

It was a BIG day here at the farm. 
We got a call yesterday afternoon from the health inspector who was in the area this morning and wanted to stop by.  After some initial freaking out, we decided this would be a valuable learning experience and since we had made it clear that we were still waiting on a compressor for our cooler, we felt pretty confident in everything else. 
Turns out, we're awesome and he was super impressed!  He seemed to be making an effort to put us as ease right away and it was sort of like an organic inspection in that it was more a matter of him offering suggestions rather than just 'writing us up'.  It was great and we're feeling pretty proud.  I posted a photo tour over on the Chicken CSA blog. 

Then, Armour showed up with a special delivery to the farm, for ME!  Mark had sent a sample of this year's Acadia wheat off to Speerville and they reciprocated with 5 kgs of flour in a fancy bag with a lovely logo.  I immediately set to work to make the first batch of bread with our home-grown heritage wheat, bred especially for the Maritime climate! Even more exciting, Acadia has proven to be agreeable with some gluten intolerances, which we all know is a growing concern for many. 

Here is the Beast at work.  This cleaner is a work of art.  Seeing it in action feels like performance art that is also extremely functional.  Watching all the belts moving and the pulleys turning and hearing the grain falling and sliding and running out, it's so complicated, but not so complicated at the same time.

And here's the proud wheat farmer posing with his fresh flour sitting in a tonne tote bag of Acadia, ready to go!

 Here's my baker's helpers checking out the rise in the new flour.  Beautiful!

A very satisfactory 'bed lunch', as my sister always called it.  Warm Acadia bread, butter & molasses.  I predict solid sleeps tonight with bellies full of that, and the chilly air coming through the windows. Lots of quilts and familiar books, cold night, sunny days and busy bodies, make for my favorite time of year.

A couple more kid shots for those of my family members who read this pretty much soley for those:

 This photo seems to have caught Sol at a funny angle, since it doesn't really look like him, but I thought he slightly resembled Rex Murphy so I wanted to include it.  All he's missing is the crazy eyebrows. haha!

 And here he is, already loving the jolly jumper.  Hard to believe he's that big and strong already! It's a good thing we slow down our development as humans, since going from newborn lump to jumperoo king in 3 months is pretty serious business and I don't think adults could deal with that themselves.

I feel winter air on its way.  The chicken CSA is down to it's last two pick ups, which means we're gearing up for pork!  It's been so long since I had bacon, I can hardly remember what it tastes like.

I've got a bit of a rant coming regarding a blog posting that's gone facebook viral lately among the farming community.  I'm sure it won't be popular with many, but I'm tired of the 'we're doing the best we can' line, when in fact very few of us are doing the very best we can.

Anyway, more on that later.

Hope this finds you making lots of warm soups, maybe piling wood or packing away summer clothes.  Fall is here!!  YAY!

-Sally

Moral Dilemma

I'm having an internal struggle.
In the midst of my struggle I'm thankful that I have this compassionate husband, a healthy family, this beautiful farm, a solid faith and a place to lay my head.
However, tomorrow morning at 8 am I am going to make a call that I never expected to make and that is making me question all the efforts that I've made in my life to keep my family and myself from poisonous chemicals.  That's an awfully dramatic way of admitting that I am hiring a pest control company to take care of an infestation in the house, but in my state of irritation and exhaustion, it FEELS dramatic.
From where I sit typing this I can hear the beetles falling down the lower steps of the basement, their hard shells clacking on the hardwood.  Mark just came in the front door, cursing at how many are on the entry way steps.  I just came out of the kitchen from getting a drink of water and they skittered at my feet and I could hear them running around in the heating vents under the cupboards.  This morning when Mark took the milk bucket down from its hook in the front closet, which hangs away from any wall, there were 18 of the non-flying beetles in there.  The only place they could have come from is the light fixture directly above the bucket, which means they're in all the walls throughout the house. 
So what's the struggle? 

They're common ground beetles and according to everything I can find online, they're harmless.  They're actually beneficials and the main recommendation for when you find 'the odd one in your house' is to scoop them up and put them in your garden to control pests.  So they eat other bugs, but don't bother people.  It's true that we haven't seen a single earwig all summer, which is something I never thought I'd say, but at this point I'd take the odd earwig over these invaders. And they are definitely scared of people as they scurry away at top speed at the rumble of even the lightest footstep.
They only come out after dark and are attracted to light, so the front step is nearly alive with the shiny black shells.  So despite to invasion after 9pm, there is ZERO sign of anything during the day. 
Again, what is the struggle?
Well, since they're harmless and they're not around during the day, if it weren't for my socialization by society that bugs are inherently gross and dirty, should I really be paying someone to come in and kill them?  What would have been done in the time before chemical sprays?  If they're not REALLY doing any harm, what's the big deal?
The big deal is that they're gross.  They crunch under my feet in the middle of the night when I'm up with Sol.  They don't belong in here and are not in their natural environment.  Even if I could manage to make myself comfortable with them, I couldn't expect that out of anyone else which means I couldn't have people over to visit anytime after supper, which means I'm letting some stupid insect decide my social calendar and abilities, which is just demented.
So, where is the struggle again?
The struggle is that for the past 6 or 7 years I've dedicated a good chunk of my life to ridding my surroundings of synthetic chemicals.  I use all unscented soaps. I buy hippie toothpaste that makes me shiver, but has no fluoride. I look for organic cotton when buying linens and baby clothes. I spend a significant amount of our income on ensuring I buy organic or non-GMO only food.  I avoid eating meat I haven't met. I spend a HUGE part of my day preparing food that we've either produced, grown or at least prepared with confidence in it's chemical-freedom.  We've spent our entire farming careers learning how to farm WITHOUT chemicals.  We've got such a strong belief in the philosophy that a soil without chemicals can be so much healthier and productive, which in turn makes for healthier plants, animals and people.
Yet, I am going to invite a chemical into my home, throughout every room, that is capable of killing a hard shelled insect on contact.  And not only invite it, but pay for it and make way for it by moving all the furniture away from the wall so that the sprayer can get in every nook and cranny.  And then I'm going to leave for a couple days and then come back and go back to life as normal; eating my organic food and washing with my scentless soaps. 
The pest control guy, knowing that we run an organic farm, made sure I understood that he would be using an insecticide and wondered if I had tried glue boards.  I remembered last night as Mark and I tried tag teaming with me ahead, killing all I could see and him behind vacuuming them up, we must have killed 200 in 20 minutes.  Within 15 minutes you couldn't tell we had done anything at all.  How would I stick a glue board to a light fixture on the ceiling.
No.  I know this requires chemicals. And I know that chemicals have their place.  Hell, I'm not an idiot.  Technological advances have made for longer, better lives and chemicals have played their roles all sorts of important milestones in health, agriculture, you name it.  But here I am, after working so hard to keep chemicals out of my home, throwing out the welcome mat, eagerly, frantically, to have them come in and make my life 'normal' again.

Can you appreciate my struggle or is your skin still crawling with my description of their crunch under my bare feet?
Don't fear.  I am making the call, forking out the dough and obliterating the damn things.  They are going to spray one chemical on the outside of the house and another on the inside, all around the baseboards and 'wherever you think they're getting in m'am'.
I've always liked bugs and found them pretty interesting.  Following my plant science diploma at AC I actually had a few meetings with a couple advisors and profs about a masters and subsequent career in etymology.  So I usually don't mind insects and their various habits.  But they've crossed a line and my tolerance level has reached its max.  (That is not suggest that this is an ongoing problem that I'm only now addressing.  We've always had a couple of the critters in the lower level of basement bathroom, but it was just a couple and never much a problem.  This invasion just occurred suddenly last week and has gotten worse by the night.)
Anyone out there with a similar issue, ever?  They're not carpet beetles, despite Google's attempt to convince me otherwise.  It would seem that a ground beetle invasion in the house is actually incredibly rare (lucky me), but they can congregate outside of homes and that is apparently bothersome to many.  I'd be quite happy to leave them alone if they would just stay outside.  Too bad.  They have brought the wrath of a tired woman down and will suffer the dire consequences.

Off to try to sleep. Hope this finds you free of any unwanted guests, six legged or otherwise.
-Sally 
 

Business versus Lifestyle

Back when June seemed like a good time to have a baby, because "everything would be in the ground, but not ready for harvest", I think we were thinking of farming in the "lifestyle category".  Reality however, is that April-November is very much the height of the "business category" of farming and having a new baby in June is a terrible idea.  When I had Lucy in November and felt house-bound by the weather for the following 4 months I thought THAT was a bad time to have a baby.  Wrong.  I'd take the relative ease of November right now, in a heartbeat.

I have this personal internal struggle with agriculture and this pull between it being strictly business or a lifestyle.  I know that it's really a bit of both, but what a difficult balance to achieve.  I think there's added complication by the fact that I grew up on a farm, different to how Mark grew up on a farm, so we have a different perspective on where that balance lies. 
It's easier to justify the insanity and pure exhaustion that is this summer when we put it in the 'strictly business' pile, insisting that we need to remain competitive, innovative, daring, successful and most importantly profitable.  But then that makes the necessary 'lifestyle' parts of it seem frustrating and annoying when they should be the fun part of the farm.  Like chasing that damned cow around the pasture at milking time because she doesn't want to come in, after a long, hot day.  Why do we keep that cow?!  When you compare the time and resources that go into that cow, to some of the super-efficiencies we've implemented around the farm in other respects, it sort of throws everything up in the air and makes me wonder what the hell we're doing. 

I'm sure sometime I'll look back on this time and appreciate how much work we put in and the foundation we were laying for better days ahead.  I hope that more than the exhaustion and frustrations, I can remember the kids faces as they laugh at Gail getting hosed off and rolling in the mud, or them snuggling up to fuzzy yellow chicks, or them covered in grease as they 'fix things' in the barn.  Because lately it seems often the tiredness weighs much heavier and eats up far more of our lives than the fun. I often wonder how I can create a love of farming in the kids when I hardly look to be loving it myself and am often not making it very fun for them.   

So for starters, we're implementing some changes when it comes to our direct marketing:

• Our farm business hours for feed, meat or anything requiring our presence at the farm are like most agricultural retailers; 8-4, Monday-Friday.  If you show up at 5, we won't be there and we won't be happy to be called over there.  This does not apply to eggs- my egg customers know the scoop and I'm happy to see them nearly anytime.  This does not apply to my CSA members either, who also know the scoop and how to serve themselves accordingly. 
• If you want a quantity of feed, you should put in an order at least a week in advance.  Even if you have put in an order in advance, please ensure you come during the afore-mentioned hours or make arrangements that do not require our assistance at pick-up.
• If you have vague questions about organics in general, GMO's, what 'pasture-raised' means or just want to chat about the farm, please direct your questions to our email so that we can either respond directly or set up a time to discuss your questions.

 One of our ways of dealing with the fluctuations of an emerging market like organics, is to be a diversified farm with many avenues, but having many avenues makes one wonder how much simpler life would be with only one or two to rely on.  What would life be like around here with no livestock?  Or if we relied on one cash crop like potatoes?  Or if we didn't have to market our own products?  Sometimes I wonder what it's like to leave your job at 5 and not think about it again till the next day when you show up.    Or have specific weeks of designated vacation in which life switches from one trail to a very different, relaxed trail.  Or even follow a TV series every week.

Also, just in case you didn't know, I've been writing two other blogs this summer (which is partly to blame for my quietness on here).  One is for the Chicken CSA which is going great (the CSA, not the blog) and the other is a food blog for the veggie CSA I'm a member of.  I provide recipes each week, using the veggies provided by my favorite vegetable farmer, Jen Campbell of Jen and Derek's Organic Farm.  
I'm really excited about the CSA, and loved meeting my first group of members last Saturday in Charlottetown.  The initial set-up of registering people and filling the spots was a pile of work (way more than I expected), but hopefully it'll all fall into a routine after these first few weeks.  Our processing facility is nearing completion, with the electrician at work as I write this.  Our contractor has been doing a fantastic job and we're so looking forward to getting it going.  Having our equipment all set up and ready to roll each week will make a big difference to how we're doing it now, having to start from scratch every week.  The new chicken houses are such a huge improvement over the old ones, I can't wait until Mark has time to renovate more of the old ones to the new model (hopefully this winter along with the rest of the items on an increasingly long list).

Well, rather than venting on here, I should go compose a post for the food blog and draft up a note to my CSA members.  The cool breeze coming in the window is certainly making bed look inviting, given the last couple of hot nights here.

I hope this finds you sleeping well after gratifying days.

-Sally 

Welcome Baby Barnyard #4

 

Sunday morning at 7 am, little Solomon Mark Bernard arrived on the scene, as bright eyed and bushy-tailed as could be.  

 

We were convinced he was tiny (and he sure looks it to us), but the scale revealed a chubby 9lb 6oz'er.

Initially disappointed he wasn't a girl, big sis soon became pretty territorial over her new charge.

 

There's no shortage of attention and curiosity.  Sol will be well supervised for a little while at least.

 His name took a while to come to us, but once we settled on it, it seems to fit him perfectly.  We intend to call him Sol for everyday use and the particular spelling is because in french, 'sol' translates to ground or soil, which is especially appropriate for our family and farm.  Of course, Solomon also means peaceful and wise, so here's hoping he catches some of that as well.  :)

The crops all jumped while we were in the hospital for a couple days and the air is beautiful out there tonight.  Happy to be back on home turf and at such a perfect time of year.

-Sally

Living Soil

I keep meaning to get out to the farm with my camera in hand to show you all the heart-warming sights around these days.  You've never seen happier pigs than the five we've got slowly rooting their way through the used-to-be sheep pasture.  Or a happier little girl rolling around amongst them, making best of friends with each and every one.  Our new chicken tractors are dreams compared to our old ones, which we were pretty proud of at the time.  They're truly palaces and so far, exceed our expectations.  The new winch system is so much smoother than the old dolly cart and filling water and feed is much easier.  We had a minor miscalculation of how many birds we ended up getting with our first batch, so have three pens on the go, but hope to do an early kill of some of the bigger ones so that will alleviate some of the space crunch as the next ones get ready to go out.  More babies arrive tomorrow (at the wierd time of between 4 and 8 pm?).  Batch number three.

The cow and calf are doing well although Rosie continues to demonstrate her independence and personality by frequently refusing to come in at milking time and making for a chase and round-up situation that is annoying when it's chore time and cranky kids need to get to bed.  Having Duffy egg her on by tearing around, heels kicked up and dancing among the dandelions doesn't help either.
The crops are looking really good.  Wheat and barley is well up and looking 'the best it ever has' (boy am I looking to knock on some wood with this entry so far eh!?) according to Mark and when I look at our cashflow, it should.  We spent some extra resources this spring on some fertility inputs that should balance the soil better.  We also put on more lime than we have in recent years, again to help balance the soil and help make everything as available as possible.  As I've been driving by looking at all the fields of corn and grain coming up around the Island and noticing all the weeds (mostly cooch grass) I've been silently patting Mark on the back for all his hard work because although those weeds in the neighbours' fields won't be there in a week or two when the herbicide kicks in, the true health of the soil can be seen right now, when things are new and before chemicals get to play their part and it seems clear to me that our soil is particularly happy.

I've been thinking more and more about soil and how we so often fail to recognize that it is the living being upon which we produce all the things we use as benchmarks for success.  If we treated it like an animal or a fellow human being, how much healthier would the world be?  How much healthier would our food be?  It truly is a living thing, so indulge me in my little analogy here for a minute.

If we only eat fast food (chemical fertilizers to soil) what happens?  Our health starts to deteriorate.  We aren't as productive, we get sluggish.  But we continue to need more calories to survive and it's easy food, so we become dependent on it.  Or if, in the same vein, we are worked too hard, without a varied diet, we begin to suffer.  If our needs aren't fully met, it begins to show in our production, in our health and in what we can provide.  If soil doesn't have organic matter to help it hold water, it gets dry, worn out, fails to produce.  If the microorganisms are starved for nutrients and worse, killed off by fumigant and excessive tillage, the soil begins to die, literally.  It must be re-filled with synthetic nutrients.  If liquid dairy manure is layered on, year after year, it is so acidic that it literally leaves a wasteland of dead earthworms in it's wake.  We wouldn't wash ourselves in vinegar, why would we think it's a good idea to coat the soil is such a highly acidic input, no matter the nitrogen value?  If I look out and picture each field as it's own self-contained being, living thing, it is much easier to see the importance of a 'healthy, balanced soil' and the importance of NOT treating it as a benign, empty vessel to be used as we see fit, custom fed for our specific, short term needs.
I always struggle to explain to the elementary school kids who tour here, what exactly organic is, but I think this whole metaphor of making the soil the priority and treating it like it's very own animal, is something I can break down and elaborate on, that is visual enough, but also interesting enough to help begin the thought process.  Then again, all they're going to remember from the tour is when that one pig peed on the other pig, so I could save my breath. :)

Have you heard  A variety of GM alfalfa has been registered for sale in Canada!  Get in line quick, you won't want to miss out on this miracle crop I'm sure.

Still waiting on baby #4, but I decided today that instead of sitting and waiting and wishing, I would remember the realities of having a newborn, and enjoy my relative independence right now.  I could use a lesson from Rosie and go for a rip through the dandelions at chore time, rather than being tied down to a rocking chair or bed or whatever other newborn torture device I'll be subject to when it does finally arrive.  So until it comes, whenever that may be, the kids and I are living it up.  We had a bonfire tonight while Mark was gone to a meeting and I don't know that I've ever seen a child with such an endless thirst for raw marshmallows as Thayne.  He had no interest in the roasted ones, but was certainly able to pack away the raw ones in a hurry.  Evidently, he's recovering from his chest infection last week.  If that many marshmallows doesn't kill ya, it can only make you stronger, right?

Hope this finds you enjoying the scent of a freshly mowed lawn or lilacs or the sight of lupins on the side of the road.

-Sally

    

Bad Customer Service, Runaway, Jury Duty

It's one of those evenings here tonight that really only happen this time of year.  It was a glorious warm day of clear skies and the air carried a purpose to it, incensing everyone to get to their gardens, or get out for a walk, or at least mow their lawns.  People made good suppers that they maybe ate outdoors and many are still working away.  The kids are sound asleep after a long day outdoors and I'm not far from it myself.  Mark is still in the field, planting peas and barley, hoping to finish before dark.  I love the feel of the air getting colder by the hour and the sound of the spring peepers slowly coming back to life after a couple frosty nights.  I love watching the robins pull worms out of the freshly mowed lawn and seeing all the motorbikes out and about on the country roads for their first rip of the season.

It's not been a week without incidence around here though, nor will it be, before it's over.  We've got two school tours tomorrow morning, an adult writers group on Friday and then another school tour and a tour of Japanese journalists next week.  Thankfully there's lots of animals to see right now, so that will eat up most of the touring time and we won't have to rely too much on filling time with looking at various seeds and trying to make crop production sound exciting to kids. 
We got our four weaner pigs this week and Gail is a happy mama wannabe, teaching them the ways of the farm.  May-May, Beatrice, Sparkle and Runaway are their names and they're pretty darn cute right now.  They weren't so cute when they got out the first night and we spent far too long looking before giving up and letting them come back on their own.  Runaway, after a lengthy house arrest, escaped again yesterday, but surely, has learned her lesson by now.  She will make particularly tasty bacon I'm sure and will be particularly easy to say goodbye to come fall. 
Our second batch of chicks came yesterday and as I type this I can hear another peeping away in the incubator downstairs.  We really messed up this last batch, but somehow three have managed to hatch anyway.  The incubator (on lend from Mark's sister) has an automatic turner in it and we forgot to take it out until the night before they were due (the eggs are NOT supposed to move for the last three days).  Anyway, lesson learned and next time we'll be sure to pay attention and probably even program it into our various technologies to remind us to be better mother hens.  I was looking particularly forward to these chicks since they were from our red rooster, Big Handsome, and our red hens.  But we'll try again.

We've been having some wet weather, although not as wet at some areas of the Maritimes.  It's been grey and cold and on and off showers, but no real heavy rains to speak of.  Just enough to keep the tractors out of the fields.  So yesterday, when it was our first real, sunny dry day of the last couple weeks, you can imagine how happy Mark was to be puttering around on the lawn mower and building chicken pens, rather than planting.  We've had some real challenges in the last couple years sourcing an inoculant for the peas that is acceptable under organic standards.  Much of the dry, peat products we used to source includes irradiated peat, so is no good to us.  This means we have to find a liquid and it turns out it's a lot trickier to source.  Or at least it's been made out to be much trickier.  We've been dealing with a particularly useless local Co-Op manager who has made life rather difficult, despite Mark having ordered the product back in February and being very clear as to what he needed.  Unfortunately this is not the first bad customer experience we've had with the Co-Op, so I suspect we will be moving our (rather significant) business elsewhere, following a letter to the board and manager.

The kids and I planted most of what will be our garden this year, today.  Given my 'condition' and anticipated desire to be weeding and picking, it is limited to onions, corn and pumpkins.  We might throw some tomato transplants in for salsa after a bit, but the rest will be buckwheat to give it a rest and cover and still lots of bee food.  I'd probably be way less happy about this if I wasn't so excited for my CSA share with Jen and Derek's Farm Fresh Veggies this summer.  For 18 weeks I will be getting a variety of veggies from the best CSA farm on the Island and I'll also be maintaining a separate blog with coinciding recipes (to share soon).  Really excited about this!

If things weren't busy enough Mark received his first ever jury summons, to appear June 10th. Could this be some cosmic joke!?  So we're hoping that the "owner/manager/single employee of a large farm business, father of three under 5 and husband of wife expecting baby #4 within a week" qualifies under the 'extreme hardship' excuse to get out of it.  If all else fails, he'll just act like a wacko at the interview/selection part of the process and hope to be dismissed.  gah!!!  Surely there are enough people on EI in Summerside who can fill the spot without causing 'extreme hardship'!!

Wish me lots of patience tomorrow with the elementary school kids and then the highschool kids.  They're both traveling from an hour away (each in the opposite direction), so should be glad to get here when they do.  Here's hoping! 

Yawn.
-S.