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February 3,2012: With this unseasonably mild winter, it sure is easy to get into the spring planting mood. Maureen has been busy planting from seed some radishes and green onions in our heated greenhouse. It's so important to maintain the soil temperature at 10 C or higher during seed germination and Maureen has already checked her plantings. So far everything looks good! These veggies will be ready later on in the winter for our CSA baskets and will replace the Claytonia or Miner's Lettuce which will soon die back again till fall. This Claytonia is an amazing lettuce. It flourishes in the cold weather, severe temperature drops does not seem to bother it, it just keeps growing. Once the days begin to get longer in the spring our Claytonia begins to turn brown and die off.
We are now in the midst of our apprenticeship interviews. So far we have 3 very worthy students signed up for this summer and we are looking for 2 more before we close up the interviews for 2012. It is reassuring that agriculture will be in safe hands for years to come if we go by the number of young people who are keenly interested in taking on farming as a career.
This week has also been a week of contacting horse owners who have a draft horse for sale. "Maggie", our remaining Norweigen Fjord, looks so lonely out there in her paddock all by herself. Maggie is only 14 hands in height so we are looking for either another Norwiegen or a shorter type of heavy draft horse for her new stable mate.
Reading in my great grandmother's journal, this date in 1916 - "Gordon completed 24 days of winter road work on the 14th sideroad. Ellwood went back to go on the log haul. Harry was out collecting for the Campbell's presentation. He did good. He collected over $11.00. Gordon planted 50 seeds of yellow alfalfa seed and 25 brown ones in a box in the house for a trial. Dad done chores. It was a stormy day"
January 27, 2012: Farming can have it's ups and downs and this week was certainly one of these times. On Monday after considerable sleepless nights we decided to put "Peaches" down. She developed a foot problem last summer called "founder" which can come about when horses are grazing on too lush of pasture. The vets don't really know the exact reason but for some reason horses are susceptible to founder in the springtime and the grass is growing very quickly. The hoof develops a condition where the two plates in their foot come loose and begin to grind back and forth causing a tremendous amount of pain to the animal. Once a horse founders they never recover. After many visits from our vet and farrier throughout the remaining summer, fall and this winter, Peaches was getting worse and not better. Every step she took you could see the pain in her eyes, she had lost quite a bit of weight, and it took her forever to walk to the hay manger. I have farmed here on this location all my life but never have felt the sadness and frustration as I have experienced this past week. Now Peaches if finally free of her pain. On Wednesday, some guy came off the sideroad and was looking for 10 chickens to be in a movie - believe it or not. They had to be pretty looking and have all their tail feathers. We showed him our laying hens and we agreed on price. He picked out his ten and drove away happy and contented. Now it may not make sense that we sold 10 laying hens since one of our enterprises is selling of the eggs, but as most chicken farmers know, your poorest layers are usually the nice looking and fully feathered hens. Some don't even lay at all. So far, our total egg production hasn't suffered from the loss of our movie stars. This day on January 27, 1916 my great grandmother's diary says: "Dad chored, Ellwood and Kenneth cut and brought ice home from the river, Harry (my grandfather) took away our big sleighs to draw Newman another load of hay to go to Barrie tomorrow, Gordon took 15 bags of grain to New Lowell to get crushed".
January 13, 2012: We ordered our first selection of organic seed today. Now we have a month to get our greenhouse in order, mix up our composte with the soil and get prepared for our first seeding in the trays. With such mild weather it has been easy keeping our cold storage at the correct temperature, as our root vegetables seem to be keeping very well so far this winter. Very little heat has been required in the first greenhouse. The greens are doing exceptionally great in mid January, especially the miners lettuce (claytonia). It is an incredibly hardy winter green and seems to thrive in winter.
January 9, 2012: Another mild and rainy day. These last 2 weeks Maureen has been busy going through the organic seed catalogues and picking out the first veggie seeds to order. It's a great way to break up the winter blahs and really gets you all excited about our summer gardens again. It's a big job and time consuming. Going through the records from last year we have to decide which varieties did well and which ones we were disappointed with. Of course the weather has alot to do with it as some veggies prosper in hot dry summers and some do quite poorly.
January 5, 2012: Today was a busy day. Maureen attended an organic seminar in Barrie. Learned lots of interesting things including marketing tips, consumer trends, and the do's and don'ts of selling at the farm gate. Meanwhile back at the farm Jim was packing baskets and delivering the CSA veggies into Barrie at the 2 locations.
We have a great time reading entries written mostly by Jim's great grandmother in her journals of 1916, 1917, and 1918. Jim's grandfather, Harry, was in his mid 20's and was one of 6 brothers - all single and working full time on the family 100 acre farm. Remember, no electricity, no cars, and no running water. The spelling and grammar can be somewhat rough at times to read. This date in January of 1917 - "We took 3 hogs out to Pete's. They averaged 200 lbs apiece. Elwood stopped drawing wood to take them out. Gordon chored. Frasier is sick in bed. Harry is still logging for Geo Johnston. Dad is overseeing as usual. It snowed heavy, there is good sleighing. The Sunday School Annual Meeting was at night."
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