Well it hasn’t felt like much of a week for completing projects. It started busy with a variety of projects, and ended with Nathan sick. But there is still stuff happening so we’ll get right in to this week’s update.
We are continuing to transplant tomatoes into the production houses. The first ones are really starting to look established and should take to growing over the next few weeks. This week we also started seeding cabbage for field planting in late April or early May. Things are really coming along and moving toward spring.
This week in CSA we have Lettuce Mix, Kalepini, Cabbage, Clancy Potatoes, Parsley, and Carrots.
Recently our guardian dog has decided he doesn’t care much about fences. Especially when they are half buried in snow, they don’t seem to be much of an obstruction. And once a habit is formed it is that much harder to break. We knew we needed to do something about it, but what and how soon. Then last week our neighbour sent us a message that he was over there and apparently digging holes. That night he got chained up. It kept him home, but it’s not much of a life, and prevents him from doing his job. After only a few days of tying him up one morning when we let him off we saw coyotes closer than we would normally expect him to let them. We needed a better solution for both of us. Fortunately technology has a solution. We got a GPS boundary fence collar for him. We can set his boundary to allow him access to most of the farm while keeping him home and safely away from the road. Since we didn’t have time for proper training sessions we set the collar to the vibrate so he wouldn’t get unexpected shocks, but at least it would send us updates if he went wandering in the mean time. Well apparently he doesn’t like his collar vibrating because he’s only pushed the boundary twice and come back home right away both times. It seems like we have a smart dog and might never have to use a stronger deterrent to wandering.
One project that we have at least mostly done now is gravel in front of the fuel pumps. It is good enough to use anyway, but could use a bit of soothing out. And there is a bit of broken concrete block left over from demolition that we want to burry somewhere in that gravel so that should happen before final grading, but at least we won’t be getting stuck there anytime soon. In the process of hauling gravel and fill around we managed to rut up the laneways fairly thoroughly so we tried to fix that too, but we’ll have to wait until it drys out to do that properly.
As spring approaches we are getting ready for lambing season! Officially according to the calendar we should be starting on April 13th, but looking at the ewes we almost wonder if some might come early. At any rate, three weeks from now we expect to have little ones bouncing around with the sheep. And before then we have some rams that need to be separated from the flock and sent home. Ideally we’ll get a bit more manure cleaned out before then too but we’ll see what actually happens.
A week from today we are getting our first batch of meat chickens. So this week we need to get their trailer cleaned out and ready for them. Seven weeks until fresh chicken!
Well it’s another busy week with lots to do while trying to balance health and work. The crew is here already harvesting Lettuce and Kale for Wednesday so I should go check how they are doing.
Until next week,
Happy ordering!
Nathan and Aleta Klassen
https://www.localline.ca/nith-valley-organics
