Departures and Arrivals

After a brief hiatus from the Gael Glen Farm blog - we are back in action.  It has been a hectic few months since our last post.  Krystal was busy travelling across the country doing interviews for her dissertation on Integrated Home Care Programs for the elderly.  She did 117 in-person interviews over three months and achieved her goal of getting them all done before the baby arrived.  If you would believe it, her water broke during her last interview and the contractions started as soon as she got in the car to drive home.  Luckily this last interview was in Ottawa and she and Ian were able to make it home in lots of time to install the infant car seat, pack the hospital bag and call the midwife.  What an afternoon!

While Krystal was off gallivanting in the name of academia, Ian was holding down the fort (aka farm) and yes, drinking beer - not only drinking but brewing beer (a topic for another post).

Over the last few months we've had the departures of some dear farm friends.  We have had to say goodbye to our last zebra stripped hen, one of our brown hens and one of our itty, bitty yellow chicks.  May they all rest in peace.

We lost all of the koi fish in our backyard pond.  How they disappeared remains a mystery since no dead fish bodies were left as evidence.  Did they die over the winter and decompose?  Were they eaten by a blue heron? We'll never know...

Sadly, our hive of honey bees did not overwinter successfully.  Apparently, it was a really tough winter for bees and lots of local beekeepers experienced substantial losses.  It was really disappointing to lose our bees after all the time and effort we had put into them but at least we realized it early enough to place an order for new bee colonies.  We decided to expand from one hive to two and both our new bee colonies are doing amazingly.  Ian has taken over as substitute beekeeper for the time being since, until recently, Krystal did not fit into the bee suit and now, even though she does, she is not able to lift the heavy hive supers.

We are also mourning the re-homing our our bitey Indian Runner Duck, Leah.  Yes, he was still bitey.  He continually bit Ian every day for the more than four weeks that he has been acting as substitute chicken keeper.  We finally tried Krystal's idea of introducing the new juvenile female ducks into the flock to try to spread out his aggression but watching him try to breed the baby ducks was simply too painful - those poor female ducks being chased and then mounted by a male duck three times their size....it was time for Leah to move on.  We successfully re-homed Leah yesterday to another farm where he has become the pet duck of a 10 year old girl.  She renamed him Lucky (when Ian heard this he said: "Yeah, Lucky he doesn't live here anymore").  Leah/Lucky will live with a flock of free range chickens (which we're hoping will curb his protective tendencies since there are no female ducks for him to guard) and have his own kiddy swimming pool.  As sad as we are to see him go, we are glad at the prospect of no duck bites all summer!  A happy ending for all.

The most noteworthy of our new arrivals on the farm is our beautiful human baby - Liam.  Baby Liam arrived at 8:35am on Saturday, June 1st 2013 in the Queensway Carleton Hospital.  He was 9 lbs 10 oz at birth and is a gorgeous, healthy baby boy.

In terms of other new arrivals on the farm, we have been raising our new chicks and ducks (I'll provide a separate update on them later), our new colonies of bees are doing well and our veggie gardens are planted (it took two tries at it because of a late frost but the garden is finally beginning to take root).

It has been a busy few months for our household but now that things are finally settling down, we are back to focusing on our lives here on Gael Glen Farm and Apiary.  Hopefully you'll forgive our time away from the blog and will join with us as we recap some the fiascoes we survived over the last few months and post new stories about the many adventures I am sure are yet to come as our lives move forward.

Looking forward to sharing our farm tales with you.

Best,

Krystal and Ian