And now for something completely different...

Yeah, I wish. It's just the same old around here. We dug some very nice potatoes up to have a look see and while there were a couple with holes, overall they were fine. Chris accidentally dug some russian blues and thought there was something wrong with them so tossed a few before he realized they were all that weird purple colour and maybe that was normal. The squash are perking up a bit now that they've been watered quite a lot and had some nice seaweed fertilizer. It's also supposed to be cooler for the next few weeks and perhaps rain a little which will help. Gosh it's been such a hot, dry, windy summer. I feel bad for everyone affected by the forest fires. I hope they get some wet weather too.

Fish cakes and the Mt. Arrowsmith Great iPod Rescue

Hi Y'all. Greeting from the funny farm.

It's nuts around here so here's brief review of the past 2 weeks for all those friends and family we've neglected calling.

Friday just work and work and chores

Saturday spent 3 hours running around the field in 30+ heat chasing the STUPID sheep trying to pen 3 rams who obviously knew their end was near and weren't going down without a fight. Meghan's birthday party and a friend sleeping over.

Sunday, the rams were caught the previous night, wined and dined on water and fresh barley, then went to meet their maker with very little problem. Figures eh? All 3 done and in the butchers nice refrigerated van before 9am. The Steve and Chris went up Mt. Arrowsmith with Lynne, John and a friend just before lunch. On the way down they stopped to feed the Whiskey Jacks (birds) and Chris somehow lost his new iPod, along with it's new skin and headphones. Needless to say a very grouchy teenager returned then told me what happened and retreated to his cave (bedroom). Lots of watering, it's still dry and dusty due to no rain.

Monday, a few jobs then picking up a new wwoofer. Watering....and a trip up the mountain again to see if by some miracle they can find an iPod in a black camo skin. Yeah right, like that's likely. Still, lots of prayers later they returned victorious. Yay! We all met up at Cameron Lake for a swim and picnic and had a nice relaxing time with Aki, our Japanese wwoofer and Vincent who is from Korea.

Tuesday, watering...and took Aki to the bus depot for her trip to Duncan to learn more about bees.More watering and feeding, the usual stuff you'd expect at a farm with animals. Oh, and a cow escaped but was returned home by our 12 year old Jordan.

Wednesday, gotta get caught up with paperwork and figure out taxes owing the gov't and how much they owe me back because they've frozen the bank account again. Nice eh? They owe you and they do nothing, you owe them...well watch out!! So I'm like a little accounting troll doing paperwork. And watering for breaks. Oh joy! And there's an activity for the boys tonight so us girls are staying home working and having girls night. Fish cakes fro dinner with rice and carrots. And Vicki has apparently a great zucchini recipe for pizza crust so we'll have to try it. We have a new wwoofer tomorrow also so getting clean bedding ready. We also have to get some more chickens sold to have a little cash. The lamb will be ready early next week and is getting close to being sold out so if you're interested please let me know ASAP.

The fish cakes turned out great, all gone and arguing over who gets the most. They were dead easy to make too and i think they'd be great for a meal while camping. Here's the recipe:

1 lb. Fish (any kind)
5 Large Potatoes
3 Tbsp. chopped onion
2 Eggs, beaten
1/2 c. Bread crumbs (optional)
1 Tbsp. water
Salt and Pepper to taste

Peel and chop potatoes. Place in pot along with fish and enough water to cover. Boil until potatoes are soft. Drain and mash together. Add eggs and other ingredients and mix well. Shape into patties and coat in bread crumbs if you wish. Fry in a well greased pan until browned, turn and fry the other side. Serve hot.

This recipe is flexible as to what spices you add and the type of fish you catch and use. I've heard of everything from salmon, to tilapia, to shark. I like to add garlic and lots of pepper to ours and I find the addition of some fine dry bread crumbs holds everything together quite nicely.

As you're frying the fish cakes you can use the pot to cook rice or veggies and be super efficient with your pots.

So does that give you incentive to go fishing? I think we're going to renew our fishing permits this year and head out for some nice relaxing fishing, especially if we ever get the boat finished. It basically needs a coat of marine paint and two seats put in it and then it's good to go. I see kids permits are now not needed so that's easier than getting them one, even if it was free. And now it can all be done online so that's easy too.

I've gotta go and get back to doing my books.

Elizabeth

The Goat gets a Name

We have decided that to honour our friend Byung Soo who has been with us for the past 5 weeks, we are going to name an animal after him. Unfortunately, we only have girls so we've decided that our newest little black haired beauty, a Nigerian Dwarf goat, will be named "Sue". Her mother is named "Blackberry". Speaking of which, if it rains this weekend, I'm going to go looking for early blackberries next week to make jam!

Things at the farm have heated up. It's so dry that as of today I believe we've not had rain for 8 weeks now. Not even a light shower. It's supposedly going to rain this weekend but honestly, I'm not holding my breath. I might make some gutter diversions though anyways to channel some water into the pond of a storage bin like the old pool. If it does rain, I don't want to waste it! This has been the driest summer I've ever experienced, not good for gardens and lawns.

The other greenhouse beds have been built by Simon and Byung Soo, 2 of our wwoofers so they're ready to be put in place and the greenhouse hoops erected around them. Today looks to be another scorcher so we'll do outside work once it cools down again later this afternoon. The squash will need more water tonight too.

In anticipation of rain, we may plant some hard red winter wheat, but I'll check the forecast first. It wouldn't do to have it germinate and then turn dry again. We did plant buckwheat though. I sprinkled it on while the guys were tilling last weekend. It's a small patch so I can water by hand if needed. I mainly planted it for the bees to enjoy. Speaking of bees, I should check them today. It's been a few weeks since we introduced the new queen. We know she was laying but I want to see if they need feeding as it's so dry there are fewer wild flowers. This was a problem last year too. The buckwheat is a fast growing summer cover crop that bees love so that will be helpful as fall begins. It should help them store some honey for winter. And buckwheat honey is also one of our favourites. Dark and delicious!

I have to run. I'll let you know how the day progresses. I want to hang out laundry but it's so smoky we'll have to see.

Best Wishes.

WWOOF!

No. This is not a post about our dog. I wanted to let you know how our wwoofers are working out this year.

What is WWOOF? It's an organization that allows people to trade work for room and board on organic farms. Basically, they come and volunteer on the farm for upto 5 hours a day, and we give them a place to sleep and meals. It's really terrific. The canadian wwoof website is

We have Byung Soo from Korea who is a total gem. He's a hard worker and has taught the kids lots about life in Korea so that they appreciate a bit better how good their life is in Canada. He's been here for a little over a month so far and has really become part of the family. We tell him he needs to come back and open his optometry practice here.

Simon arrived a week ago. He's from Germany and we're his last stop before heading back to Germany in a week. He's energetic and hard working too, and has a great sarcastic sense of humour so of course he gets along really well with both Chris and myself.

Yu Jin has also been here a week and is a great kitchen helper as well as learning how to look after animals and she works outside along with the boys too. She's funny and keeps the boys on their toes. She's also a great cook and we're looking forward to home made Korean food for dinner one night this week.

With all the extra help it frees us up to work on other things. We've also got one greenhouse finished, one planned for this week, and lots of roto-tilling done in preparation for fall planting. The only bad thing about that was that the tiller seems to be missing some tines on one side and it's very slow and hard work. The guys don't complain but I feed them well to make up for it. I rented the tiller so I hope I don't get dinged too much when I return it. It's going to need 3 new tines. I wish I'd inspected it before bringing it home but hindsight is always 20/20.

Gotta run and get some work done.

Drama and water.

So as many of you know, we share this property with another farmer and the owner as well as several of his friends living in various buses and trailers all on one side. It's kind of odd but it's his property and as long as they stay on their side, we stay on ours. Not what we signed up for when we moved here as it used to be very quiet, but what can you do?

It's suddenly quieter now that one of our 'neighbours' has been arrested for a forearms charge and the owner has had his tractor impounded for DUI. I believe there was a brief article in the Parksville Qualicum Beach News. See, you shouldn't drive any vehicle when you are or have been drinking. Not your mower, your bicycle, or your tractor. This was a case of being still drunk from the night before and driving the tractor. Don't do it!! It's dangerous, stupid, and will cost you a bundle in fines and impound fees. So now there is less traffic around here and less people too.

Ahhhhh, the peace and quiet! I miss it from when we were the only ones here.

I could actually hear the water trickling into the furrows when watering the potatoes this morning. It's getting hot and has been very dry so I gave each row a good flood with the hose. The greenhouse reached 50 degrees today so emergency measures were taken to cool it and the plants are all headed for the garden this evening and tomorrow morning. It's definitely much more comfortable to be working outside in the early hours or in the evening. It's a better time to water too as the plants have time to take up the water before the heat of the day and we lose less water to evaporation. Around here, indeed anywhere on a well, we are very conscious of how much water we use suring the dry months of the year which are typically August and September. Even once it starts raining again it takes a while for the water to soak down enough to make a difference to the wells. Ours is a surface well of 15 feet deep so when the water table drops...there goes our water!

In the garden things are starting to get much better. The peas have set some lovely pods and are still flowering like crazy so that's good. The corn and beans are doing well, carrots are slowly growing...but slowly. I'm going to water once it cools down and then add some more organic fertilizer by hand. I think it will be time to move the hoses around again and give the front pumpkin patch a good watering all evening too.

The animals are doing good though we've lost a goat...anyone seen a little white goat kid? Our escape artist pigs are sleeping, the sheep and alpacas are snoozing in the shade and looking forward to getting their pen moved again so they can have some fresh grass. The cows are munching their way through a nice tall field of grass as we speak and drinking a bathtub of water per day. A typical dairy cow drinks between 25 and 50 gallons per day. A sheep of our breed can drink 2 gallons or more, chickens can drink up to a half liter each, turkeys twice that much. A large hog eating 12 gallons of food will drink 24 gallons of water plus need some for wallowing and keeping cool. So as you can see, we don't just need water for toilet flushing and veggie watering.


Ok, enough about water. It's starting to cool a bit so I'm going to take the kids to the waterpark for a splash and a cool down.

Gotta run and get back to work.

Elizabeth

Strawberries

Well the garden is finally beginning to look like a garden! Yes, it's about time! I know that our vegetable deliveries have been very sparse recently so it's heartening to see flowers on the peas and squash, the potatoes are up and the russian blues have lovely lavender flowers so we hilled them all up again yesterday. Not long now until fresh new potatoes! And we're planting several more rows this afternoon after I do the animals and get the field squash watered.

We're getting down to the last of the lettuce from the first batch so now we're planting some more hot weather friendly and more bolt resistant types. This weeks box will include some mouth watering strawberries if we're lucky and we're thinking of doing a trade with another local farm for some cucumbers. They're organic too. What do you guys think?

Our appologies to our egg customers who didn't get eggs this past delivery. Best laid plans and all saw us leave on time, get our daughter to the dentist on time, and then realize we'd forgotten eggs. Then our daughter in law was sick and rushed to hospital where they parted her from her appendix. She's doing much better now but it was a crazy and hectic last few days around here. It was lovely to have time with our granddaughters more than usual though.

I'm making baked beans today in the crock pot for dinner tomorrow and shepherds pie for tonight. We've got lots of eggs at present so last night the kids voted to have breakfast for dinner so we had a sumptuous feast of french toast, yoghurt and blueberries. It used up a couple dozen eggs so I was happy.

The lambs and sheep are moved to new lovely pasture while their home pasture rests. The pigs moved with them but have discovered they can get under the fence so we keep finding them in the adjoining goat pen. They're sure growing fast now and eating about 3 lbs of grain a day each plus the table scraps they so enjoy. We've discovered that their favourites include watermelon rind and strawberry hulls. Yum!

Dates are booked for our meat birds to meet their maker so we'll have fresh chicken in July at $4 lb. Did you know that's actually cheaper than the store? Same with our turkey. Speaking of turkey, they're moving this week into new housing.

I've got to get back to work. Hope you're all well and happy!

Elizabeth

Dost mine eyes deceive me? Is that the sun?!?!

It finally happened...a day of sun! And wouldn't you know it, we were working at the youth group's fundraiser garage sale at Q.Bay resort. We did well though making nearly $600 so far and a couple of big ticket items still to go. Camp is definitely looking better for the boys now :)

Once we got home we headed right for the garden. Reports of a rabbit were not exaggerated, one has a taste for lettuce (preferring romaine) and peas. Not too much damage but I have no intention of feeding this little critter again.

We got lots more planting done. More peas, beans, kohl rabi, lettuces, scallions and we put some leggy tomatoes outside using our sideways method. More tomatoes will be going out tomorrow and lots more seeds are going in the ground. Next week will see the planting of main crops of oats, buckwheat, more potatoes, leeks, cabbage, turnips, corn, and all the squashes including pumpkins. It's going to be a very busy week. The weather looks like it will be sunny for a few days and then showers so finally we have good planting weather! We'll be putting our first application of organic seaweed fertilizer for those crops that are up already.

On the animal front, we're deciding if we should attend the Coombs swap and find homes for some goat kids. Maybe the Silkie roosters too. Or a few odd chickens we have around. Hmmm, what else can I sell? Alpaca fibre? Maybe the billy goat.

The turkeys have stopped their big die-off so we're holding steady at 41. However the meat birds are eating and growing and eating and growing and eating...you get the idea. 5 more weeks and some will be eating sized, it's hard to believe...until you see them eat! We usually grow ours a little more slowly and let them outdoors as it's so much more healthy for them and more natural if they can peck around outside and feel the sun on their backs. They certainly seem happy.

Our injured chicken is ready to return to the flock tomorrow once his bandage comes off. Jasper the smelly Manx cat is fixed so that's a good thing and the last 2 kittens should be going to homes tomorrow with any luck.

That's it for tonight. I got most of the dirt from under my nails, fed the cats, and washed some laundry so now I'm going to bed for some well earned rest.

Thanks for praying for good weather!