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.

Co-habiting in the Barn

We have some new additions to the barn. The 'coop' is built and the chicks love it. The ewes love it too! And we have two new Guinea Fowl here to eat all the ticks! We call them He and She.

I finally managed to get  a lovely view to the east with actual sheep in the pasture!

The latest edition to the flock is Onslow, a yearling ram. He is the smallest of the flock and is a reddish brown colour if you happen by and see him. He also has more curled horn than the ewes.