Water

Watering the animals in winter has been a challenge here since we bought the place. Initially, we ran a hose from the basement up the stairs and out to the barn. Shortly after I put in an outside faucet and ran the hose from there. This has worked well for the summer months but didn't improve things for the winter. Up until recently I was hauling water buckets up the basement stairs, loading them in a toboggan and hauling the water to the big trough at the barn. Pretty labour intensive and not at all fun as I spend more than enough time in the Spring hauling sap buckets and don't feel the need to train for it. In an effort to simplify the process I bought a 10' length of hose and appropriate fittings and now run the water out the basement window into buckets already in the toboggan. This saves a lot of time and energy but is still not the perfect system. I'm saving my pennies, rather nickels, for a frost-free hydrant and water line that'll run 8' deep and span the distance from the house to the barn AND work year-round. Until then, I'll run the water to thirsty beasts with the toboggan but NOT up the stairs!

Thunder Bay Country Market

As much as I enjoy vending at the Thunder Bay Country Market, it's difficult to get there given that I work 5 days/week at Canada Post. I try to get there in the fall but for the last couple years I've set up a booth there just for the Christmas season, which is the busiest time of year I would say. I spent the three Saturday's before Christmas at the market and it was well worth it; better, in fact, than 12-hour days at the Royal in Toronto. The Thunder Bay crowd has been good to Boreal Birch Syrup over the years and they just "get it" whereas folk in Southern Ontario just "don't". People up here like to have things they can call their own and birch syrup is something they're proud of, which makes us proud indeed.

Royal Winter Agricultural Fair 2013

I made it down for the Royal this year but it was a very quick trip. My parents looked after the booth for the full five days and I showed up Friday afternoon and stayed till Sunday. It was a fairly good show though it seemed not as busy as in the past.

Preparing for the fair

Lately I've been busy preparing to exhibit at the Royal Winter Fair which happens the second weekend of November for us. My folks are going to tend the booth for the five days and I'll join them for the weekend. It's usually a very good venue for us and thanks to FedNor it's very affordable for us to go. 

Since the CFIA requires nutrition facts labels of products these days I've been making labels for our three syrups: 100% Pure Boreal Birch Syrup, Boreal Birch Maple Syrup Blend, and Boreal Sweetened Birch Syrup. A lot of math has been involved and a lot more time on the computer. In the end I've had my labels approved by the CFIA and last night I was up late getting them printed. 

I ended up buying a label printer which thus far I'm really pleased with. The labels aren't as glossy and nice as

the previous ones but much less expensive. 

I wish I had bought this thing 8 years ago. After the initial investment of the printer the cost of labels will now be so much less than getting the work done through a professional printer. If the CFIA is happy with it, so am I. 

The Red and White Rototiller

In high school I had a great English teacher called Bill Wright. His favourite poem was one by William Carlos Williams and it has always stuck with me.

So much depends

upon the red wheel barrow

glazed with rainwater

beside the white chickens

With apologies to William Carlos Williams....

So much depends
upon the red and white rototiller
sprinkled with snowflakes
beside the brown chickens

Snowy day

Ella is home sick today so I am too. We're hanging out in the new shelter feeding the gang and getting some fresh air. 

Summer

Wow, it's been a busy summer. I've not made the time to post anything in ages but here we are.

I'll just throw the photos I have on here and see where it goes. 

Boreal Birch Syrup this season 

Mirabelle's shearing session. I was happy to take her fleece in one piece. 

Our family trip to Port Dover and the African Lion Safari and a night of camping for Beth and I at Long Point Provincial Park. 

2013 is the year of "J". We name the lambs in alphabetical order each year to help us keep track. 

Tomato Haul. All green but ripening. 

Carrots

Nasty weed roots. 

Our pumpkins didn't grow well but Uncle Craig's sure did! 

Haying

Getting the hay in this year took forever. It was a particularly bad growing season for hay (cloudy, humid, rainy) and the cutting season was much the same. Many people, our suppliers included, didn't get their first cuts in until August and we got our hay in September! The quality of the hay is fair given the circumstances but the end product is more of a maintenance food rather than a growth food.
In any case, the day we pulled the hay off the field came suddenly and thankfully I've got great friends that came to help out. Erin and Justin came on the first collection day and we got all the hay off the field while my neighbour Gordie drove his truck and trailer. Things went rather well in the field and we got the big wagon tarped off before the rain hit. Later on, Gordie drove myself, Justin again, and another pal from work, Kevin, back and forth between our farm and Aspen Croft as we loaded the loft with the remainder of our winter feed.

A mid-August photo of an attempt to bring the livestock to more quality forage on and around the septic field during a poor growing season. The kids here learn very quickly that their parents are quite right when they warn, "Don't touch the electric fence."

Shearing Season

Shearing the sheep, llama and now alpaca is definitely one of my favourite seasonal chores. It's hard work and can be frustrating but for some reason I like it. It's tough to do well and as this is my third year it's becoming easier. I've now honed my technique for wrestling sheep to the ground and onto their backsides but placing my thumb in their mouth (in the gap between front and back teeth) and contorting them rather easily to their bum. It looked tough to do but now that I've got it down it's amazingly easy to bring a large animal down. Following is a short video on the shearing season.

Spring Time

Spring was long in coming in these parts. As mentioned in the previous post our syrup season ran very late, which meant lambing season started just when we were cleaning up at the sugarbush. Lambs come when they're ready no matter what the weather is like. Our first lambs arrived on May 24th courtesy of Hazel, a two year old ewe. Last spring she had two stillborns on a blustery cold day in April. This year she had triplet boys and they're all doing well. One of her lambs, Julio, is now being fed by bottle as he wasn't getting what he needed from mom.

Later that same day Freckles had her own set of triplets and suddenly we had three times as many lambs as last year. 

A quiet period followed until June 3rd when Mirabelle birthed her lamb and a stillborn ram lamb. Oddly, three weeks prior she went into what appeared to be labour showing all signs such as not eating much, spending time on her own in various corners. In retrospect I think she was indeed in labour but for whatever reason she didn't actually birth the lambs and one made it later on while the other didn't. Her single lamb is doing very well now though and has lots to eat! 

On June 6th the lambing season came to a close as Henny had her set of triplets! In all we have ten lambs; six rams and 4 ewes. 

A couple weeks passed without incident until last weekend when I noticed Freckles seemed to be in pain. It turned out to be mastitis and it came on rather quickly. What I think happened is her lambs were feeding so aggressively that they cut her udder with their teeth (she has scabs on her teats) and due to the pain of open sores she wouldn't let them nurse. When a full udder doesn't get emptied infection sets in and that's called mastitis. At the best of times it's a tricky balance getting feed right when ewes are nursing in order to produce enough milk but not too much. Freckles' lambs were growing really well and she's a terrific mom so it's too bad this has happened. Anyhow, we had the vet out and Freckles has been on painkillers (Flunazine) and antibiotics (Borgal) for a week and likely more. I was stripping the milk out of her udder for a few days until it hardened so much that I couldn't get nary a drip. Poor Freckles didn't look like she was going to make it but the drugs seem to be working now and she's been eating but isn't herself otherwise. 

Meanwhile this has meant I've had to bottle feed her lambs: Jerry, Jolene, Jasmine and Julio (Hazel's lamb). This is the year of "J". 

At first I was feeding them with a single bottle one at a time. I was getting to work late and up at night too late so something had to change. I started feeding them with four bottles in my hands, but this was difficult. 

Then I mounted six baby bottles onto a scrap piece of 2"x6" and lashed the bottles in with a strand of clothesline. The result is the multi-milker, until I come up with a better name, and it works amazingly well.

Birch Syrup 2013

What a strange spring we've had here...again. Last spring was so warm (hot even) that we lost all the snow in early March and the bush was so dry we decided to not have a syrup season. This was followed very soon after by an epic flood on May 28th, 2012, go figure.

This spring was more like, well, winter!

We had snow up until May 10th and the last snowfall occurred on May 7th I think it was. In any case winter held on for a very long time this year which resulted in a difficult birch season. With such heavy snow this winter all our main sap lines were buried prior to the sap run which meant we had to hang about 1000' of new lines to transport sap from the back of our bush. 

Tapping day was particularly memorable as May 5-6th were very warm but we still had two to three feet of snow on the ground. T-shirts and snowshoes those days and boy was it a slog! I was happy with how smoothly the tapping went with my new drill. I finally decided to upgrade from a brace and bit to a new 20V Dewalt drill. I charged the batteries with a 700W Eliminator throughout the two days and the system worked perfectly. 

Tapping each tree took a fraction of the time and with Paul and Mike placing buckets ahead of me we were able to do 645 trees in two days.

Back in 2011 we had a lot of snow as well which forced us to collect sap in a different way. Previous to that year we used the ATV and a sap trailer to collect from all over the bush. But with so much snow on the ground we couldn't use the ATV at all and ended up carrying our sap tank around and pumping from various locations into the main sap line. This winter I made a sap tank sled that I've dubbed the sap rickshaw/rickski. It's made of a pressure treated wood frame, downhill skis from the Sally Ann, a couple old hockey sticks and a Krazy Karpet. It worked wonderfully for hauling buckets as well.

This year saw a number of technological advancements aside from the drill and sap hauler. We also started using reverse osmosis this year which meant we needed a power source from a generator. 

The generator then allowed for the use of a refrigerator, pressure washer and wet-vac for cleaning the evaporator and sap tanks. It also let us charge two Eliminator battery packs throughout the day which then meant we had LED lights in the sugar shack and an HD TV that picked up the hockey playoffs!

The sap run was brief this season. After tapping we had four solid days of flow then the temperature dropped again freezing the whole bush, stopping flow and freezing our sap lines. We lost two days like this then resumed the season for another 6 days. The last few days of the sap run were very warm and as a result the sap changed and was no longer good for syrup production. 

In the end I can't say the season was a tremendous success but certainly not a failure. We tweaked all the new systems and I think we'll be very prepared for next season. The reverse osmosis was amazing this season and it significantly reduced boiling time which made the end product lighter and better tasting. Time to prepare for next year! 

Thursday Nights

 Thursday nights are spent washing eggs. Now that I've got a system down it doesn't actually take all that long, perhaps an hour and a half. If we were ever to have more than 30-40 hens we'd have to come up with something better. But with this number of birds, our mini-fridge in the basement works perfectly.

We keep the eggs in a small fridge all week until Thursday.
Then we wash with them with
warm water and dish soap. Rinse with warm water. 

Drip dry for a few minutes. The eggs on the ledge are for us
(cracked/weird) and the eggs in the basin are not for anyone
(broken/eaten/really weird).

Towel dry.

Into the cartons then into the fridge until sold. 

This is Skunkii, visiting from JoAnne and Jay's. He's here to service our ewes. We expect lambs for the end of May.

 Here's one of Ivy and Nina. She's getting bigger and more cute with her fluffy face.

 Ippi and Izzy. 

And a nice sunset from the other night.