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.

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.

Happy New Year

Happy Halloween

Wow, it's October 31 already! A lot has happened since our modest little first market in Port Medway in late May. The short version is - we worked very hard, learned a lot from the experience of greenhouse growing in shallow raised beds, tried our hand at growing microgreens, had great success with some things and little success with others, and got some sheep on the far!. All in all it was a fantastic experience! Moving forward, we have decided to take a break and re-evaluate the direction for The Wooly Crow farm.

In other news, we got our fall garlic planted, yay! We planted about 90 cloves in total of several varieties; Continental (historically grown in NS), Music, some from our neighbour Vincent (also our Halifax Seed rep!), some from neighbours in West Berlin (thanks Dan and Elaine!) and some mystery cloves that I collected from farmer's markets (West Dublin, Liverpool, Bridgewater etc). Hopefully next July/Aug we'll get a great harvest and can double the amount we plant next fall.

Now we come to the sheep! Wow! So exciting to have 3 young Icelandic ewes come to live at our farm. They love it when I feed them kale, but I have to hold the stalk for them so they can tear the leaves off!

They were shorn in the image above. Here they are in full wool!

~ the cranky crow

1st Market Day

Our first day at The Port Medway Crafter's and Vendor's Market May 21, 2017. We sold 3 and 4 oz bags of mixed greens, baby beet, spinach, tatsoi, endive and arugula, as well as a Mesclun mix. We potted up some young plants grown from seed, tomato (Celebrity, Big Beef, Lemon Boy and Matt's Wild Cherry), Calendula, Zinnia, and two kinds of kale (Siberian and Vates Blue curled).

Introducing The Knotty Crow

Well, her butt at least.

Day 122 Winter Has Arrived!

Hügelkultur

Hügelkultur is a German term for raised-bed gardening using buried woody material covered in compost and topsoil. As the wood decomposes within the bed, it retains more and more moisture over time. However, a good crop can be planted in it in the first year.

I would like to try this at The Wooly Crow Farm. I just pruned a mountain of branches from an enormous wild rose and some kind of flowering shrub that threatened to eat us.

For more information see Paul Wheaton's blog Richsoil
or check out Permies.com