Liam's Green Green Garden

Inspired mostly by one of Mercer Meyer's Critter books and maybe a bit by Mom and Dad, this year Liam grew his very own green, green garden.

He dug it up, planted the seeds, has weeded it and waters it (almost) daily.

We had a few minor setbacks, like when Seamus pulled out his newly sprouted bean plants to see if they had roots yet.  It has also been difficult to convince Liam that more water is not always better and that the plants do not actually like to swim in an inch of water.  However, we managed to work through these and today I am proud to report that Liam harvested his very first peas from his very first garden.  He was thrilled and without prompting immediately shared his bounty of three pea pods with Seamus and me.

Liam: "I have BEANS!" (actually they were peas but who's counting
when you see him enthusiastically popping the pod into his mouth)

Who knew fostering feelings of ownership of one's own garden would be such an excellent way to nurture a love of vegetables in toddlers?

A Place to Rest Your Wings

Our two new hives are doing well.  Friday's inspection went great and we have been watching the forager bees coming and going from the hive entrances ever since.

Today we heard from Beekeeper Jim that the third hive he made for us is queen right and will be joining our apiary later this week.  He also advised us that some of his hives are preparing to swarm and suggested that we might set out some spots for a swarm to land in case any of these swarms happen to come our way.

So today we set out a nuc box up on a ladder with four empty but drawn out frames in the spot where our swarms always liked to go.

We also made some small swarm lures.  They are a pill bottle with some holes drilled into it and a cotton ball soaked in lemongrass oil inside.  These are hung in a tree and are supposed to give swarms a safe place to temporarily gather.  The swarm can then be safely lowered into a hive body and relocated to the apiary.

Look carefully and you will see the bottle hanging in the tree.

We can now officially say that Gael Glen Farm and Apiary is a safe haven for honey bee swarms looking for a place to rest their wings.

Fences and Hills

With our new fence completed, our morning and evening animal routine just got a whole lot easier.

Charlie: "I don't think I like where this is going..."

Done and done.

This leaves more time for other farm chores, like weeding the garden and hilling the potatoes.

I was not sure we would get a potato crop this year after Seamus "helped" by ripping the eyes off of all the seed potatoes.  Lucky for us, they still sprouted.  Here's hoping for a great crop of purple and yellow potatoes.

Sweaty Work

Halfway there....

The Great Animal Shuffle

Keeping Charlie and the lambs separate unfortunately requires us to engage in a twice daily Great Animal Shuffle.  The first thing you should know is that making sheep go where you want them to go is next to impossible.  There is a reason that shepherds use sheepdogs.  Second, and lucky for us, a lamb acts as a homing beacon for its mother.  It is really quite amazing how quickly most ewes come running when her lambs call.

Each morning and evening, Ian and I must move both sets of ewes and their lambs from the barn in one paddock into the goats' grazing field in a separate paddock.  Unfortunately there is no gate directly between these fields, so we must wrangle the sheep through the backyard and past my ever so delicious vegetable gardens to get to our final destination.  Alice is an excellent mother and stays glued to the leg of whomever is carrying her lambs.  Violet, on the other hand, gets easily distracted by new greenery.  This often results in one (and usually both) of us yelling repeatedly, "Violet?  Focus!  Where is your baby??"  and hoping Cobalt baa's continually to keep her on track.  If it wasn't so frustrating, it would be funny - Violet running haphazardly around the backyard in search of her lamb stopping every 2 or 3 seconds to munch a tree, vegetable, or hops plant as she forgets what she is supposed to be looking for until Cobalt's insistent call jogs her memory and she continues on her way.

Liam and Seamus helping with morning lamb relocation.

The ridiculousness of the Great Animal Shuffle cannot continue.  Tomorrow Ian and Weston are constructing a fence to divide our back paddock into two sections so that Charlie and the lambs can co-exist safely and in relative harmony on their respective side until the lambs are grown.

Seamus and I secured all the necessary fencing materials today.  Ever the helper, Seamus aided Mr. Pierre at TSC (thank goodness for his patience) in loading our trailer with bags of quick set post cement. I have no doubt that he would have tried to load the t-posts and corn crib if I'd let him.  Seamus was the talk of TSC with many the farmer noting his exceptional work ethic and alerting me that I am lucky to have such a fine farm hand in the making.  I know.  Seamus is quite the kid!

Seamus and Mr. Pierre at TSC.

Moonlighting

The members of my family are hard workers.  Like many family farmers, much of our farm-related activity occurs after our day jobs or on weekends.  For example, my brothers Shawn and Kyle moonlight as a hay man and a farm supply store/farm tool rental agency, respectively.

Shawn the hay man.

Upon hearing about our Charlie woes (Side note: Charlie has decided she hates lambs.  After she maimed Cobalt in a nasty (and obviously unprovoked) attack, we now have to put a fence across our paddock to separate her from the lambs.  Cobalt's leg is not broken and his limp is slowly improving.  I am still mad), Kyle generously supplied us with many of the tools and supplies we will need to construct our new fence.  Thank you!

How Charlie cannot love this adorable beast I cannot understand.

Ian moonlights as a our farm carpenter and handy-man.  Today he fixed my gate and finished building my milking stand (Side note: Cobalt has decided to nurse only off one side.  That leaves me needing to milk out Violet's other udder as it fills up and puts her at risk of developing mastitis in the apparently undesirable teat.  Resigned sigh.  I did not love sitting on the barn floor to milk her so Ian stepped in with a milking stand so I can sit on a stool.  Happy sigh.).

I moonlight as a calf namer.  Much to my chagrin, Kyle and Shawn tried to name their male calves with a number (e.g CAF1).  Unacceptable.  As I explained to them, these beautiful animals should have a proper name even if they are destined for the dinner table.  They humour me now by allowing me to name all their lovely male calves.  So far, we have Calvin, Malcolm, and Oakley.  Good cow names, right?

Oakley and Charlotte.  Oakley was born this afternoon.

All this moonlighting makes for long but satisfying summer days.  I wonder what other people do after work?

Back in the Game

Beekeeper Jim brought over two new hives for me today made from his spring splits.  I am back in action as a beekeeper!  I am thrilled.  Thank you Jim!

I will let the hives settle in until Friday, then I will check them out, add a second brood box, feed them sugar syrup, and generally get to know my new ladies.

Everyone is eager to come out now but they need to wait a few days to acclimatize to their new apiary.

Welcome to Gael Glen Farm honey bees.  I hope we have a long and happy time together.

Delivery Day

On Tuesdays we deliver our CSA baskets.  This week's basket was another beauty.  We had red scallions, radishes, a turnip, chard, spinach, kale, leaf lettuce, cabbage leaves, broccoli leaves, arugula, jalapeno peppers, basil, mint, parsley, daikon microgreens, wasabi mustard microgreens and our first head of broccoli.  Our extra this week was a bouquet of beautiful fresh cut flowers.

Today, however, we were treated to a double delivery.  Alice finally gave birth to her twins!  Two beautiful chocolate brown lambs - a boy and a girl.  Ian and the boys named the new ram lamb Lego.  As innocent toddlers, they were excited to name him after a toy.  Given Ian's other name suggestion (Racka), I do not think his intentions are nearly as pure.  Before lambing season began we agreed that ram lambs would become supper, while ewe lambs I would add to my flock.  As such, I am thrilled to get at least one ewe lamb this season.  I have not decided on a name for our new little girl yet so if you have suggestions, feel free to send them my way.

We finished out the day with "Family Weeding Hour" after dinner.  While this was more like a half hour, we are trying to encourage the boys get involved in the farm.  We let them weed in their underwear (we have little nudists on our hands) with lots of sunscreen and bug spray on.  They had a wonderful time and were actually quite helpful.  You know what they say, a family that weeds together stays together - or something along those lines anyway.

Keeping Watch

Charlie and I are busy keeping watch for playmates for Cobalt.  Despite today being Alice's due date and Cobalt's increasing eagerness for some buddies to bounce around with, there were no new arrivals.  The wait continues.

One New PhD and Two Naughty Goats

I have received so many heartfelt congratulations from my family, friends, and colleagues today.  I am truly grateful for all the support and well wishes.  Completing my doctorate was a very long and difficult road and I am relieved to finally be free to close this chapter of my life and start the next.

My goats, on the other hand, are not the least bit impressed by my accolades.  Instead, I think they are feeling overlooked and have begun engaging in some seriously naughty behaviour in an effort to redirect the attention back to them.

In addition to crying incessantly all day (a loud piercing MAAA!) for no apparent reason and escaping their run, they have also taken to destroying the inside of their barn.

I think Martha and Mellie will be thrilled when the excitement of both new lambs and new doctors of philosophy are over, so that the attention can go back to all things goat.

A Really Great Day

Some days are just really great days.  Today was one of them.  Cobalt is now nursing like a champ.  No need for a bottle anymore!  Woohoo!

Alice (left) is still pregnant.  Violet (middle) and Cobalt (right).

This morning we harvested produce for our second CSA basket.  It was epic.

This week's basket included: a head of leaf lettuce, 2x heads of endive, a turnip, 5 jalapeno peppers, red scallions, red and yellow radishes, chicken and/or duck eggs, parsley, mint, chives, oregano, basil, arugula, spinach, kale, chard, garland, pea shoots, red clover microgreens, and wasabi mustard microgreens.  Whoa right?  Delicious.  Both our CSA families are really happy, which makes me as the farmer really happy.  I love to see people excited over the vegetables that I have put so much time and energy into.

While I was occupied with harvesting and preparing baskets, Grandma, GG, and Seamus helped me by weeding my vegetable gardens.  They now look amazing and are ready for more grass on top in the big garden and more planting in the pallet gardens for later crops.  I am so grateful for the help from my two best ladies.

This afternoon was excellent.  My Mom treated us to High Tea at the Chateau Laurier (my favourite thing EVER) in honour of my graduation.  It was wonderful.  I swear, if I ever go "missing", you know where to look...

I am so incredibly lucky to have these two strong, capable, hardworking and loving women supporting me in achieving my dreams - whether they are farming or completing my doctorate.  I love them both very much and am so thankful that they are part of my life.

Did I mention that Cobalt is off the bottle?!  Woot!  Woot!

Sheep Milk Custard....Oops!

Yesterday's victory was getting Violet's milk flowing...finally!  Ian and I flipped her onto her bum and managed to get some milk to shoot out of each teat.  I have never been so happy to see a squirt of sheep's milk.  Despite this major step forward I was still concerned that Cobalt was not getting enough to drink.  Between bottle feedings he was looking thin and when he did nurse it was only for 30 to 45 seconds at a time.  After speaking to the vet, I ruled out mastitis; however, I began to worry that perhaps Violet's teats were too engorged for Cobalt to really latch on to properly.  Her udder was huge!  And very firm.  There is no doubt that it was very full.  As a mother who breastfed her babies, it did not look comfortable for either ewe or lamb.  Something had to be done.

Fast forward to today.  GG is down vising us to attend my graduation ceremony on Wednesday.  She took one look at Violet's gigantic udder and pronounced, "It is too bad that Ed [my paternal Grandpa who is my farming inspiration] isn't here.  He'd tie that sheep up and milk her out."  And I thought to myself, "Heck, I am part of Grandpa's legacy.  If he would milk her out, why can't I?"  And so, this evening after getting the boys to bed, I gathered up a pot, a pitcher of warm water, Charlotte's dog collar, and a Tupperware of ewe pellets and headed down to the barn.  I tied Violet up so that she could eat her pellets, got down on my knees, positioned the pot under her belly, wet my hands and with my forehead resting on her side, I milked.  And I milked.  And milked.  And milked.  Twelve ounces of milk later she was empty.

Cobalt was my assistant in this process, of course.  He was right in there under Violet's tummy bunting her udder and nursing in short spurts.  He loved when I managed to shoot a stream of milk right at his snout.  The downside of this, of course, is that he got his hooves right in the pot of milk more than a few times and well as some hay and who knows what else.  I just did not feel good about feeding the contaminated milk right back to him given his almost zero immunity.  So, I decided to strain and pasturize the milk first.  It was fairly easy to get the milk up to 72 degrees C for the 15 seconds required for pasteurization.  Unfortunately, this also turned the milk into custard.  Oops!

Now I am in possession of 12 oz of sheep milk custard and the conundrum of how to feed this back to Cobalt.  There is a distinct possibility that it is now too thick to flow through a bottle nipple, though I will not know for sure until my 10:30 pm feeding attempt.  If this is the case then I might try to water it down with milk replacer.  Or else try to feed it to Cobalt in a dish?

I suppose that there are worse issues to have than how to feed your lamb delicious custard instead of boring old milk.  Maybe he will not even want it now that Violet's teats are so soft and supple?  We will see - the milk saga continues...

Introducing Cobalt

After a week of poultry related departures (two of old age and one by mauling courtesy of Emily the Chicken Murderer), we finally have good news on the farm!  Violet had her lamb today.  A sheep's gestation period is between 145 and 155 days.  June 8th was day 145 and so today, June 9th, is right on time!

Violet gave birth to a beautiful black ram lamb that I named Cobalt.

She had an easy and fast labour - we did not even notice it was happening!  Ian spent the morning mowing the yard.  When he turned off the mower at 11 am, I heard an unfamiliar "Baaaa!" coming from the barn.  Sure enough, upon investigation, a tiny new black nose poked around the barn door.

Our ewe Alice was convinced that this new fellow belonged to her.  He did not.  She is still very much pregnant with twins.  Yet, when we put Violet in the barn with her lamb, Alice was less than impressed.  She was livid.  She spent the next two hours circling the barn and wailing mournfully that we had stolen her baby.

Violet seems to have accepted Cobalt just fine.  She is intermittently munching on hay and licking his body.  She delivered her placenta with no issues and promptly ate it - yucky but normal.  She drank almost a whole pail of water and seems calm and sensible about the whole affair.

The only catch is that her milk has not come in yet.  I am not sure if this is because she is a new mother or if there is a problem like mastitis.  I spent two hours with her and Cobalt massaging her teats to try to get the wax plug out and get the colostrum to flow.  I have tried warm compresses, rolling the teats, pretty substantial pressure to push to plug out - you name it but no success.  Cobalt has helped by repeatedly bunting her udder and trying his hardest to nurse but to no avail.

With the nearest TSC closing at 6 pm and no guarantee that we would be able to get Violet's milk flowing before then, I ran out and bought some colostrum powder and milk replacer.  By 5 pm Violet was still not producing milk so I bottle fed Cobalt 5 oz of colostrum which he gladly devoured.  He got another bottle at 7 pm and is scheduled for two more at 9 and 11 pm if there is no change in Violet's milk production.  I have put in a call to the vet.

It is going to be a long night with lamb feedings every two hours.  However, I figure as long as I keep Cobalt fed until we get Violet's milk situation resolved, none of us should be that much worse for the wear.  So far Cobalt is strong and healthy.  He is standing and walking, actively trying to nurse, and getting ready to explore.  Hopefully we can let them outside tomorrow to get some exercise and fresh grass.  We might have to put Alice in the barn though to avoid a second mismothering situation.

Ram-less

Loki the ram

Earlier this week, Loki made the big move to his new home on a hobby farm outside of Montreal, Quebec.

Say "bye bye" to Loki's bum!

At the new farm Loki will join his new mate, a one-year old Dorset ewe.  She is apparently larger than him but very shy. 

This is Loki's new pen.  His new friend is hiding in the shed.
She is not sure what to make of him yet.

 I hope they will become good friends and make beautiful lambs together.

Telling the Bees

There is a European custom of “Telling the Bees” wherein important life events are told to one's bees. It is said that if the bees are not told about the death of a loved one, they cannot go into mourning and a penalty would have to be paid, such as the bees would leave the hive, not produce enough honey for the beekeeper or even die. Celtic mythology has always held that bees are the link between our world and the spirit world and if you want anyone who has died to stay informed about the goings on on Earth, you could tell the bees and they would pass along the information (Great Lakes Bee Supply, 2017).

Upon learning of my bee-less beekeeper status (a result of having lost my hives over the winter), my kind neighbour Beekeeper Jim offered to help me rebuild my apiary this summer using his spring splits. Sharing his bees with me is such an incredibly generous thing to do. I am truly grateful.

Given that in about a month's time, some of Jim's bees will be re-homed onto our farm and become our bees, I figured that it would be appropriate to head to his apiary to tell his bees about the unexpected passing of my dad. With the moral support of my mom, Ian, Liam, Seamus and our dogs, we told the bees that Dad passed away in his sleep. He was buried in the family cemetery. His soul is with Baby and Grandpa Ed in Heaven. Even writing about it now, almost two weeks since it happened, it feels surreal. It is hard to believe that such a great man is truly gone.

According to folklore, the head of the household, using the key to their home, should softly knock three times on the hive in order to get the bees' attention, then pronounce, in a low soft voice, the name of the departed. Given the group of us who felt it important to share this news with the bees, our pronunciation was a little more boisterous. Liam and Seamus stood off to the side of the apiary and shouted "Hi Bees" at the hives. When they were satisfied that the bees were paying attention they proceeded to share our sad news. I hope our way works just as well and that the bees got the message.

It is difficult for me to imagine how life on the farm will continue without someone so central to our daily lives and my journey as a hobby farmer. My dad has been my constant helper and advice giver on all things farming since we moved to the country ten years ago. He helped me bring home my first laying hens, my first day-old chicks, Alice the ewe with Abbott and Violet as tiny lambs, and Loki the ram. He was there to help me dig post holes and stretch fencing, shovel so many loads of mulch, triple mix and gravel, rototill and edge gardens, plant vegetables, cut down dead trees, build my lettuce frame, shovel snow, muck barns, move hay bales, fix gates, and so, so much more. He was my very best farmer support system. I still remember him talking me through the death of my first hen - it seems like so long ago now - I was so devastated at the time.

The day Dad and I brought the sheep home from Wolfe Island.

It is impossible to put into words what my dad means to me.  He was truly one of a kind, I loved him fiercely and I will miss him tremendously. I don't need the bees to tell him that life around here will never be the same.  We will move on because with Liam and Seamus around there is no other choice, but I hope that he is watching over us and that we continue to make him proud.

Derrick W. Kehoe (Feb 17, 1956 - May 27, 2018)

Citation

Great Lakes Bee Supply (2017). https://www.greatlakesbeesupply.com