Snakes in the Greenhouse

growth everywhere!

I've wanted a greenhouse for a very long time. Now that we have one, it's a joy. I grew salad greens that lasted in there through the winter (with covers). For the first time since we've been in Cape Breton I've had tomatoes ripen on the vine, and my peppers love it. So to do the snakes, rodents and ants. Once again I'm faced with attempting to control wildlife and looking for the most natural way to do it. I've put ant traps in, chemicals, I know, but they are not sprayed and can just sit on the edges of the beds. The snakes I think I'll just learn to live with. My guess is that they are there not only for the warmth, but they are probably eating some of the insect life and perhaps even the rodents. I'm covering the exposed ground outside of the beds with cardboard and newspapers to keep the growth down. This in turn should diminish the appeal of the place for critters that were living in the long grasses that were growing up. Once more, I'm trying to find a way to work with it instead of fighting it all the time.
This "live and let live" approach is not one of laziness. Far from it! It is necessary. I have no money for equipment and machinery, and I have limited time to work the farm. With 42 acres, we are just letting most of it be wild and are more seriously just trying to work the area around the house and barn.

This scraggly looking greenhouse is improving all the time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learning to love my jungle

After a month of grey, rainy weather, the garden is slowly growing, but the weeds and grasses are taking over. Without a lot of time to deal with it, I can easily get overwhelmed. More and more though, I'm learning to try and work with it instead. For instance, I see the Clovers, Vetch and Yarrow exploding at the edge of the garden. Tall grasses are shooting up through the fence. It looks like a jungle. When I think of it that way, my instinct is to get in there and rip all that stuff out. The key word is it "looks" like a jungle. Does the garden care? Actually, yesterday with  the sun finally coming through, the plants are growing madly. They don't seem concerned with the messiness. Then, when I stop to look at those "invasive" flowers, I see they are being visited by bees. In fact, the bees are loving them. Sure, I'll pull some of the weeds just to avoid too much competition, but for the most part I'll leave it alone. Having the garden look tidy and neat satisfies my human desire for order, but is not necessarily what the garden needs. It needs the pollinators more than it needs to look pretty.

When I first began gardening here with our clay and rock, I laboured with my shovel, fed up, frustrated and exhausted. Then I caught on. Don't dig, just build up. Ever since, I've been piling the old bedding from the animals around the garden, and using it to mulch everything like crazy. My happy little flock of free range chickens then comes in. They scratch it all around, eating the bugs and breaking it up to fine bits. I just leave it alone and let it break down. In a year or so, I have a whole new garden area virtually ready to go, with very little work on my end (other than hauling all the bedding over there in the wheelbarrow). Even better, is that the earth worms love it, so they get in there and start working the clay from underneath, improving it all the time.

This area has incredible wild Roses. They grow along roadsides making fantastic thorny tangles literally drowning in fragrant flowers. I have to do a bit of strategic planting to encourage them at our place, but now I'm going to let them spread. They make a wonderful animal barrier for the road side. I'm hoping that eventually, these and Blackberries will wrap a good chunk of our road edge, keeping the animals in, giving something to the birds and the bees and berries for us.

Buttercups and Snow Peas

Ripening blueberries...Yum!

A jungle of Clovers, Buttercups, Vetch and Wild Roses, all growing at the base of a Plum Tree.

As humans we do have a desire to control, shape and dictate how and where things should be. It's quite liberating to just let the farm be what it wants instead of fighting with it. We do guide, nudge and steer it so that it is pleasant and efficient enough for us too,  but working with it instead of against it is so much healthier for us all. It's a slower way to go. It would be faster to just get at it with machines and chemicals but I find this slower method of working with nature quite magical to experience, and it works for me. It's a slow, gradual building, but the results are quite magnificent. It also feels so good to know I'm providing a little sanctuary for the birds, bees and other creatures that are increasingly faced with the hostile world of habitat loss and poisons. In the end though, we seem to be reaping higher yields every year from our farm, and I'm seeing the quality of the soil and growth improve all the time.

Super moon June 2013

Tonight, I stood in the twilight in a field of Buttercups, Daisies and tall grasses. Fireflies lit up the field like hundreds of twinkling fairy lights or like tiny sparks shooting through the air. Amazing, a beautiful sight. Our dog Roxy wove in and out of the long wet grass, rushing over to "nose me" and wiping doggie wetness all over my legs. The sky is grey, but I'm watching for the rising "SuperMoon" that is coming tonight. I know I'm early, but it does make me tune in to the sky more closely. It's truly beautiful tonight.

Goat flipping July 2013

Maeve and I spent a few hours in Port Hawkesbury today flipping a goat in the back of our car every ten minutes. Somehow, I really doubt that anyone else that I know has actually done this. We took a young kid into the vet to get him castrated. The vet gave him a sedative, which knocked him out totally flat in the back of our car, and then he did it right there. After it was done, it looked like we had a dead goat. There was blood splattered around the back of the car, the little guy had blood on his white hair, and he still lay there flat out. Afterwards, the vet told me that we would need to flip him every ten minutes to keep fluid from pooling in him. We had a few errands that needed doing, as we don't go to Port Hawkesbury that often. So there we were in the Walmart parking lot flipping a goat. I then dashed into the store, bought a few things, dashed back out only to find our previously secluded parking spot now had a guy in a truck eating ice cream right behind it. Very aware of the attention we would cause flipping a bloody, dead looking goat in the Walmart parking lot, I quickly relocated and we did our task. I spent the next hour or so dashing around town, doing my errands in 10 minute intervals, flipping the little guy in between. In the Canadian Tire parking lot we had a car sporting the happy phrase "Just Married" beside us. We relocated to an obscure spot beside the dumpster not wanting to shock the happy couple. Sometimes my life feels so different from the ordinary!

Yesterday I was out in the Balsam woods gathering boughs for the goats. I paused to enjoy the stillness of the woods. It was so deeply beautiful. The silence is astounding. I am nearly always filled with such a deep peace when I'm there. Realistically, I should be a bit nervous, with Bobcats, Lynx, Bear, Moose and Coyotes around. I always take one of the dogs with me for this reason.

Brigida, the Maremma sheepdog is a magnificent animal. I feel no fear when she is with me. Although not so good when people come around the farm, she is incredible at keeping predatory animals away. She is a wonderful companion on these walks. Picking up the scent of something, she will at times wander away from me, but usually, she is never very far, nosing along, bounding over to me with a whistle. Living where and how we do, I am so grateful for her.

The snow is falling heavily today. There has been no sun for a couple of days, so my raised bed in the greenhouse is still frozen hard. I've spread plastic on it to try and warm the soil, but we need the sun for that. Today is a good day for a hot soup simmered on the woodstove. To curl up inside and read, and choose more seeds while enjoying a hot cup of tea.

Living in Cape Breton has at times been an enormous struggle. It can be a hard place. However, I've heard that once it gets in to you it gives back so much. I think I'm finally reaching that point where it is really getting into me. Coming home with the boughs yesterday, I paused on the hill to savour the sky. The most magnificent blue hung just above the horizon, deep, rich almost unearthly. It's light illuminated the edges of the trees and the mountains accentuating the line and form. It looked like a painting, almost surreal. I gazed, mesmorized, and then a few minutes later it was gone. Flat grey blue had returned. Briefly though, I witnessed some of the magic that finds you here and reaches into your heart.

Little Holly is doing much better, but it was a rough couple of weeks for her. Things began to turn when one sunny day, I brought her out of the stall to warm in the sunshine. Our Maremma sheepdog, Brigida would not stay away, although I kept trying to push her back. Finally, I just relaxed and let her come over. She immediately began to sniff and lick a recent wound on Holly's horn bud (given to her by another goat). From there, Brigida did not stop until she had licked Holly all over, and nuzzled her. When Holly tried to move away, Brigida grabbed her tail with her mouth and pulled her back. Though rather daunted by this "mothering", it seems it was exactly what Holly needed.

We had another such session later in the day, and since then, Holly has been far more confident and lively. Yeah for Brigida!

I'm experimenting with cold frames in the greenhouse, and plastic on the ground, to see just how early
 I can get planting in there. This is our first year with the greenhouse, and I'm truly hopeful that it will significantly extend our season. In the past, we have had frost in the first week in July, and again in the first week in September. That leaves 6-7 weeks for growing anything that requires warmth. I'm learning about four season gardening, and am very excited to try some of the techniques.

The food from the local stores is appalling and far too expensive. I am determined to grow whatever I can on our farm. It is as much about quality as price. We have raised our own meat and chicken for the past few years. By chance we had a store bought trurkey in the freezer that I cooked up recently. we could not believe how inferior it tasted to our own. We could barely eat it. It was dry and bland and tough. It really highlighted for us how vastly superiour our own food is.

This morning was  frosty and cold, ethereal with that stunning blue light of winter. The full moon hung low on the horizon preparing to set, as I headed to the barn to check on the cold critters. More frozen water buckets necessitated numerous trips to the house for warm water. Holly seems to be doing much better in terms of spunkiness, but is still being pushed around a lot.

Our kitchen downspout is frozen again, and the two wood stoves are slow to warm the cold air in this old farmhouse, but it's getting better. The floors are freezing!

Life on a farm is typically not as dramatic in winter. Sure, unexpected things do happen, but for the most part it is routine care and maintenance, especially when there are animals. There is more time for observation and thought. Living fairly simply here, without the benefits of electricity in the barn and heated water buckets, I have a profound appreciation for the old timers who depended totally on their farms for survival. The hardships they must have endured on a regular basis, really highlight how soft life is for most of us today.

Sometimes when everything is quiet, I think of  those who've been here before. It's like their spirits are here, silently observing. When so much activity has happened in a place, surely something remains of those people. Some memory, some energy. Something.

This farm was a hub of activity in its day. There were four mills here, with our house being the residence for the miller and his family. The loft above the kitchen housed the workers. The local Post Office was in our kitchen, as was a branch of the credit Union. At one point there were about 800 acres farmed here. Now it has been parceled off until just 43 acres belong with this house. Several decades of neglect have reverted the soil back to barren clay and rock, with just a thin layer of topsoil. We need to begin again, building the soil. The animals come in handy for that with piles of manure and old bedding. 

The house is situated at a crossroads. At one time, it was the centre of a busy, thriving community. Now the roads are mainly quiet, and very few families live out here. We are 16 km. from town, 10 of those are dirt road. Bumpy and pot holed, or icy and snow covered. Rarely good.