Farm Girl Friday -12 April 2013

For Farm Girl Friday I was going to share the signs of spring around the farm.  But this is what we woke up to:

We didn't get as much snow as they had forecasted.  In fact, it barely covers the grass.  It was a bit icy when Grandpa came over at 6:30 but the plows have been by since.  I'm not sure why everyone is freaking out about it being cold and a bit of snow.  It is only April in Ontario.   I've had snow on my birthday in May for goodness sake!  There's a reason most of Ontario shouldn't put out plants until the May 24 weekend.

Tuesday was a nice sunny day so Ella and I went for our first nature walk of the year.  One good thing about the old railroad bed, it has good drainage and isn't a mud-bog this time of year -unlike most of our yard!

Grandpa's house across the field.  Nearly all the snow was gone.  Disturbingly though, there is very little water sitting in the fields.  That's how desperately dry the ground is still.  If we don't get the right amount of rain and the right times we could easily slip back into drought.

On the way to Almonte Wednesday we passed a field with a bunch of adorable baby goats.  They were so cute.  It was hard to get a picture because the Momma's started moving them away as soon as we pulled up the car.

I forgot to tell you that we had some chickies born on March 18th.  

They are really growing.  Momma is very protective and it was really hard to get a clear picture of them.

And of course it wouldn't be spring without THOUSANDS of geese trampling down our fields.  Geese are really bad for fields.  Their big flat feet really compact the ground which makes the water pool and makes it really hard for planting.  Not to mention all the crop damage they do when they arrive after things have sprouted.

Wow, you should hear the noise when the geese all take off!  It's nearly deafening.  We've got some hunters that want to come in, so hopefully they will encourage the geese to keep moving on.

Farm Girl Friday -8 March 2013

Last Saturday the Farm Girlie was patiently waiting for Daddy at the kitchen table.

Well, maybe not so patiently.

It was the first day for planting tomatoes.  The first of this year's crop of heirloom tomatoes.

These are the tomatoes on Tuesday!!  Ella's fingers worked their magic again this year.  Today they are too tall for the lid.  Colin is almost ready to transplant them.

Not sure where Farm Girl Friday has gone, but I'm posting anyway  :)

Laundry Blues

I'll admit it, I hate doing laundry.  I don't mind hanging it outside in the summer (when I'm not being carried off by mosquitoes), but other than that I can do without it.

Take a little tour with me and see if you can figure out why:

These are the stairs to the dungeon cellar and 'laundry room'.  It's better now because Colin fixed the bottom step after we got married.  It's leaned towards the bottom for decades and they just knew to step on it 'right'.  After I nearly fell a couple of times Colin realized it was a problem :)

And yes, you are right.  You can't carry a laundry basket down these steps like a person normally would, you have to hold the basket lengthwise (if you value skin on your knuckles).  And shoes must be worn in the cellar at all times.

The view from the bottom of the stairs.  I have two lengths of clothesline for drying in the winter.  I have a dryer but only use it once in a while -most often in the summer if we have too much rain.  My washer is the largest small washer I could find.  The back stairs to the basement aren't much wider than the house steps so we have to watch the size around here.

This is my pantry.  It's a race to see if I can use up the canned goods before the damp of the cellar starts to rust the cans.

And here's me so you can get a feel for the scale of the place.  Keep in mind I'm 5 ft and Colin is 6 ft.  I actually have to duck in a couple of places where the floor has a few more layers of cement.  Yes, that's a second washer I'm standing beside.  If your husband was a pig farmer you'd have 2 machines too  :)

I forgot to mention what an improvement this cellar is from when we were first married.  A couple of years ago Colin put up all the silver insulation you can see on the walls.  It went directly over the stone walls and made the place much brighter and cleaner looking (if you don't notice the cobwebs).

I get my exercise on my laundry days.  My washing machine has issues every time it needs to fill with water, so I have to go downstairs 2-3 times each cycle to restart the machine.  Colin thinks it must be a problem with the float, but they make these things so you can't fix them yourself any more.

Check it out and see what the other Farm Girls are up to this Friday.

Farm Girl Friday -15 Februrary 2013

It's been a rather quiet week here on the farm.  Everyone, including the Farmer have been down with a cold.  The Farm Girlie is nearly better, so is the Farm Girl.  The Farmer -not so much.

Last fall we bought the 'home farm' from Colin's parents.  This month we made it 'officially' ours.  Down came the old farm sign that Colin and his sister gave Mom and Dad back in the 80's.  And up went this:

It's getting exciting every day when the mailman comes.  Large boxes of seeds are beginning to arrive.  Colin and Ella will start planting the tomatoes in a couple of weeks.  It's hard to imagine spring is on its way.

Farm Girl Friday -18 January 2013

Sigh, you gotta love living in Ontario.  Wasn’t it last week that we were in the middle of a January thaw and Ella was outside without hat or scarf?

Today we woke up to -25C and frozen door windows.  This time of year really reminds us that we need to put new doors on the ‘to do’ list.  Our doors are original to the house (1905) and are single pane glass.  Needless to say we never wonder where the drafts are coming from.  The ice (on the inside of the glass) does make a pretty picture “like leaves” as Ella said this morning.

A lovely friend gave Ella this beautiful chess set just before Christmas.  It has no markings on it or anything but it seems to be made of marble.  Ella loves playing chess, though I need to brush up on the rules to make sure we are doing it right.  Here she’s playing with Lula -and Lula almost won!

I’m fairly certain I’ve vented here before about my frustration with Starz in Motion up in Petawawa and how they weren’t teaching Ella actual highland dances.  Ella was up there for 2 years and didn’t know ONE dance, all they learned was ‘choreography’ for the recital.  Luckily I found Pamela Reid in Renfrew and we love it there.  Ella already knows TWO highland dances and as you can see they are starting on the sword dance (which will be 1000 years old in 2026 -cool).  In fact, they are dancing at the Robbie Burns supper in Eganville tomorrow.

Daddy and Ella playing ‘Angry Birds’ on Ella’s new tablet.  Colin really doesn’t ‘get’ just how happy pictures like this make me.  He has some idea what things were like with my dad growing up.  But unless you were there and lived through it, it’s really hard to truly understand.

The Farm Girl is still trying to come up with ways to use eggs, so I came up with this recipe.  Boy was it yummy!

Egg and Potato Pie

Grease a 10 inch deep dish pie plate (I like Pam with flour)

Ingredients:

2 slices bread, cubed                             1/4 c butter

8 eggs, beaten                                            1/4 c milk

salt & pepper                                             1 clove garlic, minced

1 large cooked potato, large dice       3 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled

1 sm onion, finely chopped (I use dehydrated onions because they don’t upset Colin’s tummy)

1 c cheese, I used combo of mozzarella and Monterrey jack

Melt butter in a frying pan and fry up the bread cubes.  Remove cubes and saute the onions and garlic.  Combine everything and pour into pie plate.

Bake 350F for 30 minutes or until eggs are set as you like (we don’t like ours runny).

Farm Girl Friday -11 January 2013

I know we live in the country in an old farm house.  Mice are a fact of life.  

I have a love hate relationship with the mice.  In cartoons I think they are cute.  We love Tumtum and Nutmeg and we love Brambly Hedge.  The problem starts when the mice start coming in my house.  I sort of tolerate them in my cupboards and drawers.  I have everything in there all mouse-proof.  It's when they start 'playing' on my counters at night that I have to draw the line.

Any one have any help for getting rid of the mice?  And don't bother suggesting blocking up holes, did I mention I live in an old farmhouse -ha ha.  

Farm Girl Friday -7 December 2012

For Farm Girl Friday I thought I'd share what we have been doing to celebrate Advent.

Every night we read a chapter from The Jesse Tree and the Advent Storybook.

And we also read a story book too.

Sunday we got out our Advent wreath and tree and set up Ella's nature table for Christmas.

We read The Very Fairy Princess: A Fairy Merry Christmas.  Some days I find the nicest little books at No Frills. And yes, the book is by that Julie Andrews.

Monday was a very special day.  Ella's elf friend Merry arrived!

I know there have been some rants out there about Elves visiting and how it's not going to make children behave.  Well this isn't why Merry comes to visit.  See that happy smile?  What you don't see is the jumping up and down and happy shouting when she spotted Merry for the first time.  It's just fun to have a mischievous elf around the house.  And you know what, 'remember Merry's watching' does help rein in the sillies.

Ella also set up her Christmas stable.  As usual, Ella supplemented with her other LP animals.  She has so much fun with her stable set.  She's going to wear out the battery playing the song though  :)

December 4th Daddy surprised us by getting the Christmas lights put up outside.  We also put our Christmas candle in the window.  I found my other German pyramid and got them lit too.

Ella was a little pokey getting ready for bed, so we just read the reading for today not the extra story book.

December 5 we hung up our door wreaths and our bunny angel made an appearance too.

We really enjoyed A Gift from Saint Nicholas, which we found at the library.  I was hoping for more of a biography, but this is a beautiful book with a good story.  Ella really liked it.  The illustrations remind me of Jan Brett.

December 6 we celebrated St. Nicholas day by baking St. Nick shaped speculatius (Kris Kringle) cookies with the cool cookie cutter I received the other day.  Ella really enjoyed our new book, The Legend of the Christmas Stocking.

Today Ella went skating and then for a sleep over at Grandma's (it's Knit Night for Momma).  Not sure what they will read tonight, but Grandma has quite the collection of books.

Farm Girl Friday -30 November 2012

Farm Girl Friday, the last one before Advent gets started and all the Christmas fun.

Remember this summer when I was complaining about my chickens not laying because of the heat and their age?  Well, be careful what you wish for:

And then there are these:

And that doesn't even include the other bucket sitting on the floor waiting to be washed too.  Luckily, my mother-in-law ran out of eggs yesterday so I was able to send over 15 dozen and now I have fridge space  :)

The Little Farm Girl and I headed into the city yesterday to do a bit of shopping to visit with the Big Guy.  For some reason Ella was almost a bit shy with Santa.  But he's so great she warmed right up.

Farm Girl Friday -9 November 2012

The Farmer and the Farm Girl are finished with the Farmers' Market for the year, but that doesn't mean things are slowing down here on the farm yet.  Now it's time to see just how much damage a level 3/almost level 4 drought has done.

Remember back in the spring.  We spent tens of thousands of dollars on seed and we got such a good early start...

Colin has the soy beans all harvested.  We ended up with about 85% of our expected soy bean harvest.  Just enough that we won't get a crop insurance payout, but not as much as we had hoped.  Now Colin and Dad are working on the grain corn.  It's not looking good.  Right now we are getting about 40% of what we should get.  With the cut backs in the barn I'm not sure if that will be enough to feed the pigs in the coming year.  Colin may have to cut the sows back a bit more.

The 1500 cloves of garlic are tucked in the ground under the straw for the winter.  The tomatoes are all pulled out and the pumpkin patch has been put to bed.

And now for some random Ella  :)

Ella had a great time playing the other day in an early November snow flurry.  Her new dress and tights got a little dirty because she was digging in her garden but apparently it was my fault.  I had told her to 'stay out of the mud' not 'stay out of the dirt' too.

But how do I stay angry with this face  :)

Farm Girl Friday -26 October 2012

A couple Farm Girl adventures to share this week.  I had a couple more but the littlest Farm Girl accidentally erased my camera last night.  We had a fabulous home school Halloween party on Wednesday.  Being an 'over-achiever' I volunteered to make 'really difficult' homemade caramel apples.

I actually read the recipe wrong the first time and cooked the caramel up to 284F instead of 248F.  Oops.

Bulk Barn had lots of Halloween coloured sprinkles so we bought some for dipping.  My sticks should have been longer.  I burnt my thumb on the very first apple, so after that the apples just got dipped, not covered.

My friend's son has PKU and cannot have protein or risks brain damage, so I also whipped up some candy apples.

I'm so glad I made these.  These are the Halloween apples from my childhood.  They are so yummy.  We lived in my great-grandma's house, which was around the corner from my grandma and grandpa's house.  One of their neighbour's, Mrs. Brown, made dozens of these candy apples every year for Halloween.  But you had to make sure to get there early.  My Mom and her siblings always made sure to hit Mrs. Brown's first on Halloween too.

Ella and Daddy took advantage of the lovely weather the other day and dug up her potatoes.  Boy, plants sure know the difference between rain and water.  This is Ella's harvest this year:

I've used the 3 biggest ones already (forgot to take a picture first).  A really sad harvest for 5 lbs of seed.  But given the year I'm surprised we have any potatoes.  Our Mennonite friends, who grow acres of potatoes and usually have them available all year, figure they will be out of potatoes by December.  Not good because theirs are the potatoes I like to buy.

We grew a new kind of potato this  year, the German Butterball.  I will definitely be growing these again.  They are such a beautiful yellow flesh.  I've never seen a potato like it!  Now I just have to remember where I ordered them from, hopefully I have it written down in Colin's garden notes.