Chicken Tractor 2.0

Our friends Julie and Will, from whom we bought our farm, were recently in need of accommodation for their ducks. When over here recently they saw the chicken tractor I made and asked if I could make them one as well. Since we had a deal in the works to buy one of their ewes, Mirabelle, we decided a straight up trade might work well. Here are a few pictures of the new tractor, which in my opinion is superior to the one I built previously for a few reasons. First, it's more sturdy because I reinforced the corners better and second, it's smaller and thus easier to move around. Theirs is 6' x 10' whereas ours is 8' x 12' and it's a bit of a beast to move each day.

Inside the Hive

Last week Erin, the owner of the beehive at our place, and JoAnne, a beekeeper from nearby, came to inspect the hive, do some maintenance and try to locate the Queen. This kind of thing is done throughout the summer in order to ensure the hive is thriving and, in this hives case, produce enough honey to last through the winter. As we don't intend to take any honey for ourselves this season the primary goal is that the colony of bees flourishes and reproduces by several thousand.

JoAnne with a frame

This is an older frame that came with the new hive to establish it

Peanut shaped comb can indicate a swarm may occur

The Queen has been found!

We scraped off a bunch of comb, and honey, that was built to brace between two frames.
As this is not ideal we took it off the frame and reaped the rewards.

Shiitake Mushrooms

Several years ago I decided to try experimenting with growing shiitake mushrooms in birch logs. I had seen a display about growing mushrooms in oak logs when down in Toronto for the Royal Winter Agricultural Fair. The display intrigued me and I looked into the possibility of using birch logs as the medium rather than oak or sawdust which is also often used. Though it isn't really done anywhere some studies out of Japan indicated that birch would work, just not as well as oak. "Shii", after all is the Japanese word for oak.

So back in 2009 Paul and I inoculated about 70 logs with Shiitake mycelium which came from a fungi farm near Toronto.

Mycelium spawn in a sawdust form, capped with styrofoam to deter infection

The work was tedious amongst what seemed like millions of mosquitoes but we got it done in two sessions with the help of a gas powered drill.

These logs were successfully inoculated in the first summer but due to their size (6"+ diameter) they never did fruit and the shiitake mycelium was overtaken by other naturally occurring fungi found within the log or bark itself. You can see in the picture below that the mycelium grew throughout the logs, visible by the white outline of mycelium.

Gladly, we did a second batch of logs in 2010, this time with much smaller diameter logs. Unfortunately, I never did take a photo of these ones. The smaller logs were the ones that eventually fruited this Spring. We had extremely wet weather in Thunder Bay in late May which "shocked" the mycelium into a fruiting cycle. This is usually done manually by soaking the logs which forces the mycelium to then propagate by fruiting and later releasing spore into the environment. Anyhow, I was pleasantly surprised to go to the sugarbush recently and find some full grown shiitakes growing on the logs.

They were a little worse for wear but I cut off the squirrelly bits and we made a nice meal with them. 

Delicious, meaty shiitake mushroom stir-fry. A great surprise as I had written off this experiment a while ago!

Townline Farm, Population: 3069 (approx.)

Townline Farm
Population: 3069 (approx.)


There's been a lot going on here as of late. Most notably, the population of our small farm has exploded. This is primarily due to the recent addition of a beehive. It's not actually our hive but a friends and she's keeping it here in exchange for some honey sometime down the line. Erin estimated there are 3000 bees in this hive and it'll grow by several thousand more!

We also welcomed our first batch of chicks from the hatchery. I converted a cracked water trough into a brooder complete with heat lamp, feeders and water reservoir. There are 30 White Rock X chickens. We'll have these guys and gals for 8 weeks only. Meat birds grow much faster than laying hens apparently.

On June 17th Freckles gave birth to two beautiful lambs. The boy, a black and white lamb, who looks much like his Finn father, is named Ippi. The ewe lamb is a spitting image of her mom and we've named her Isabella (Izzy). Unfortunately these two are the only lambs that lived this year. We had a rough lambing season with a pair born way too early in April (Ewe: Hazel) and a single birthed in a breached position that took fluid into it's lungs when still inside Henny and later died. So it's been a rough Spring in that regard but we're so pleased with Ippi and Izzy so that'll do. My dad has always said "If you're going to have livestock, you're going to have deadstock", a line borrowed from his father.

A few other projects have been on the go as well. I changed a lot of the fencing surrounding the barnyard to woven wire sheep fencing and moved the best gate we have to the main gate. Now I can easily drive the ATV into the barnyard and beyond. I added little patio solar light my friend Evan gave me a while back to each post which is great for monitoring things from the bedroom window.

Beth's birthday gift, a cutting board made from a birch burl. She actually asked for this about six months ago but forgot about it so she was surprised. The wood is from a tree we had to cut down in a campsite at Neys Provincial Park back when I worked there on the maintenance crew.

Esther loves getting sheared. We know several other llama owners and having spoken with them about their experiences shearing theirs we feel quite thankful Esther is so docile. She has let me putter away at this for a couple hours two Springs in a row now. No wonder, it would be so hot with all that fleece.

Peonies are in bloom.

Dinner a couple nights ago was fantastic.
Our own lamb and some freshly cut then BBQ'd garlic scapes.

Finally got the west side rafters on the deck roof.

Chicken Run.