Fall On The Farm

The regenerative organic farming technique is a way of treating a farm as an ecosystem. This is the goal on our little piece of paradise The Wooly Crow Farm.
Woofers welcome!

I had the helpers over today. We built a new permaculture bed using a layer of plain cardboard followed by a layer of manure mixed with hay, then a layer of seawed, then another layer of manure/hay mix for a total of 24' x 4'.

It's a couple of feet thick. We'll let it sit for 6 months and hopefully plant beets and carrots there in the spring!

After many weeks of sitting on eggs our broody hen has finally hatched 3 little ones! The two lighter ones are Icelandic, from hatching eggs I drove to Truro to get, and the dark one is a Barred Rock from one of my own hens!

We also have another little flock of eight keets from the Guinea guy and girl. They like to do their own thing so we leave them a little food and water outside the barn. But at night they go sleep in the field or ditch behind the house.

Then of course there are the woolies themselves!

Izzy

Daisy and Izzy

Onslow

Temerity and Astrid.

Good morning from The Wooly Crow Farm.

Newly named Guinea Fowl couple, Guinevere and Gawain, have a flock of their own now!

Summer 2018

Some photos from around the farm!

Hairy Vetch Coming To The Greenhouse

I had suspected that the great success of one of the first flower beds we put in last spring was due to the amount of Vetch we pulled out of it. I think I was right. Multiple searches using 'vetch in the garden' turned up plenty of evidence for its use as a cover crop, specifically useful with tomatoes!

I also found a great source of information covering ALL THINGS VETCH!.

Here's a photo of our vetch. Although it's not flowering yet, there is lots of it around. I can hardly wait!

Hairy Vetch growing at The Wooly Crow Farm

Here is what the flowers and seeds will look like.

Hairy Vetch Flowers and Seed Pods

Some photos of the tomatoes in the greenhouse. I will plant vetch in there this fall and use it as a mulch in the spring!

Tomatoes planted directly in the ground in the greenhouse

Tomatoes and peppers in pots will be transplanted in the ground in the greenhouse soon!

Green and Yellow Beans, Cucumbers, Zuchinni, and Pie Pumpkins in the greenhouse!

Our microgreen corner of the greenhouse is very effective. We get great colour and vibrant growth on the peas, sunflowers, red cabbage and radishes!

Microgreens growing at The Wooly Crow Farm

Microgreen corner in the greenhouse!

There is still lots to transplant out of the cell paks but we've got a lot done already thanks to the help of our lovely neighbours! You know who you are!

The Wooly Crow greenhouse on Sunday June 10, 2018!

Shearing Onslow

Yesterday was a huge day for me and some of the neighbourhood too. We got three sheep shorn by hand!
Photos thanks to Sue!

Grower's Coop

An idea that has been floating around for a little while is to pool the community's resources into a Grower's Coop that can sustain a CSA program for Queens County. The Grist article talks about food hubs and how they can help get growers and consumers together. I'll post more links to this post as I find them.

Long Weekend

I finally got close enough to Onslow to get a picture of him! I love how sheep always, well almost always, seem to be smiling. It makes caring for them so worthwhile!

We had a constructive weekend! The mircogreen operation got moved from our dining room, where it had been all winter, to our new greenhouse!

Now to just get the hang of temperature control in there so I don't keep killing the seedlings by overheating them, freezing them or letting them dry out!

 We planted five rows of garlic last fall and strangely, only the first three rows came up????

What did come back were several of the kale plants! Four of the Vates Blue Curly and one of the Siberian Kale! They will seed this year so we can plant more! Who am I kidding, I have enough kale seed to last the rest of my lifetime so I don't really need to collect seed, but why not!

We have built a 3 bin pallet composting system too! Now the sheep can't walk around in the big basket we did last year and eat all the scraps and the seaweed before it gets composted. We still have a fair amount to use though!

Lots of new gardens being prepped. There are some dahlias and some glads in them already, where the hay cover is, and some day lilies that were given to us by a neighbour. We're going to remove the cardboard soon, just keeping it covered for now so the weeds don't spring up before we've planted what we want in there.

We have a two gardens that we managed to plant in the fall with some lovely tulips blooming!

This strange contraption is a sheep milking/shearing stand I had a local man put together out of scrap wood left over from last years shed and barn construction. Tuesday, with the help of some friends, I'm going to attempt to shear them by hand, with manual sheep shearers which are like a giant pair of scissors.

We got some patio stones laid leading up to the doorway so we don't slip on the we grass or track mud into the house anymore! It's the little things folks! Baby steps, literally!

Things have been progressing steadily. Not as fast as I would like, but I am pleased.

I'm also pleased with the reception this farm's presence has had on this community. The people here seem to be embracing everything we are doing. If there is anyone unhappy, we certainly haven't seen any sign of it.