On this gorgeous spring day on the farm we feted our firstborn with a pirate themed birthday party. I am so glad that I was on the ball with party planning this year - I bought all the required party supplies for both boys' parties way back in February leading up to Seamus' March 1st birthday. All three boys were very excited about the fancy decorations and treasure chest birthday cake when they came downstairs this morning.
Liam's perfect day included watching Paw Patrol with Seamus before breakfast, roasting hot dogs and marshmallows over an open fire in the yard, smashing a pirate ship pinata on the deck, and playing an hour of Angry Birds with Daddy. And that is exactly what he did. He went to sleep tonight a very content six year old for one last time. Tomorrow I will be the mama of a seven year old - where has the time gone?!
Thank you to everyone who sent Liam cards, gifts, and well wishes. He is a much loved and very lucky (not so little anymore) boy. We are looking forward to another fun year of growing up ahead.
Charlotte's doggy sense must tingle when the chicks are about to hatch because all of a sudden she has begun to stand watch over the incubator with her sniffer working overtime.
The chicks are scheduled to hatch over the weekend but sure enough, today we began to hear chirping! We can also see a few tiny peck holes in some shells and the one teeny bantam egg we are incubating has begun rocking back and forth, back and forth.
Charlotte finds it all fascinating and is thrilled when someone offers her a boost so that she can see for herself what is going on inside the incubator. There is not much to see yet but it is only a matter of time!
Liam and I began the evening with high hopes. He had an epic afternoon nap and so was invited to stay up past his usual bedtime to help Mama. One particularly awesome thing about Liam is that he is very willing to participate in whatever farm adventure I have in mind if it means one-on-one time with me. The second I proposed that we work on turning the lilac tea into jelly, he was on board.
Despite giving it our best effort, I must report that things did not turn out as planned. The jelly started out a beautiful ruby colour (mauve tea with two tablespoons of lemon juice).
However, upon cooling, the "jelly" disappointingly faded to a boring straw colour.
I use the word "jelly" loosely here because despite following the recipe perfectly, using the correct amount of sugar and a brand new (not expired) box of pectin, the jelly refused to set. It remained a thin liquid even after it had cooled. Boo!
Then the kicker - I offhandedly tasted the last spoonful of jelly in the bottom of the pot after canning batch two. I retched. I was shocked - it was heinously bitter and absolutely disgusting. I could not get the vile taste out of my mouth for an hour. So yuck.
And there we have it folks, an epic fail in our lilac jelly experiment.
After consulting the all knowing Google, I have decided that my mistake was in not picking the individual blossoms off of the vines. The recipes I consulted prior to making the jelly showed photos of lilac tea steeping with the whole flower in the pitcher. I assumed that this was the way it is done. Nope. In hindsight, it is likely that lilac jelly is similar to dandelion jelly in that leaving any green stems in the tea will add undesirable bitterness. No kidding. As they say, hindsight is 20/20.
I guess we will be picking more lilac blossoms tomorrow and picking off blooms before we steep them into tea. There is no way I am giving up now. There will be lilac jelly in 2020.
Stay tuned for Round 2 of the syringa vulgaris affair.
P.S. We did pick more blossoms (good thing we have a big lilac tree!) and spent all day picking off the individual blooms. The boys declared this task worse than making dandelion jelly and even "worse than homework". Yikes! It was pretty awful. Hopefully the jelly it makes is worth the effort. If I ever smell another lilac, it will be too soon.
Ali taste tested a few blossoms and said they were pretty good.
They are pretty...pretty stinky. Our baby ducklings are growing like weeds - swamp weeds. It is hard to believe that they actually fit into an egg three short weeks ago. Now they are huge! Today they switched over from "duck starter" feed to "duck grower/finisher" feed. I suspect this might make them grow even faster. Yikes!
Unfortunately for me, bigger ducks means more duck poop. And, boy oh boy, does duck poop stink...like really bad. Not to worry though, I ordered some more wood shavings for their coop and I will keep changing their stinky bedding frequently. Also the hot weather has encouraged them to swim more. While I am not sure this helps alleviate their stench, it can't hurt, right?
On the opposite end of the scent spectrum from duck droppings is the heady floral fragrance of lilacs. Lilacs are also pretty stinky but in a much more pleasing way.
The boys and I are in the process of making a batch of lilac jelly. Lilac blooms are much easier to harvest than dandelions so making the tea was a snap. Tomorrow we will turn our beautiful mauve tea into jelly. If I have any leftover I would like to freeze some for a batch of lilac goat milk soap and I found a neat recipe for lilac lemonade! So much to do!
The thing about running a farm is that the work does not pause in undesirable weather. Whether it is a blizzard, thunderstorm or heat wave, the chores just keep on coming. In the same way that mid-winter is our slowest time of year, late spring is our busiest. With heaps of baby plants and animals to get established and help thrive, farm chores right now take forever. Even on incredibly hot days like today. We are talking a solid two and a half hours in the morning and over an hour at night.
And that is just to get the everyday things (feeding and fertilizing, watering plants and animals, opening and closing barns, moving animals, milking, etc.) done. There is always more to do; one off things like rototilling, planting, transplanting, weeding, moving straw bales, ordering feed, sheep shearing, hoof trimming, barn mucking, etc., and also issues that pop up without any notice at all.
Today our surprise issue involved the pigs. Their ears have been looking a bit sore for two days now which we figured was just the aftermath of too much sun. We have been limiting their time in the direct sun to help keep them shaded but they are very fair skinned and seem to burn quite easily. This afternoon; however, when I went to refresh their pail of water, in addition to their scabby ears I noticed that their bellies were totally covered in a bazillion raised red bumps. They had also begun scratching themselves on everything, including each other. That cannot be good.
After some WebMDing (Version Pig), Ian and I have diagnosed their problem as mange. They would have picked this up from their mother or the drove that they came from and it could also explain the etiology of the hemotoma on Gloria's ear. I cannot imagine how uncomfortable these poor beasties are being so itchy in this heat. We placed a call to the pig farmer to ask about getting them a shot of Ivermectin to clear up their mites. Luckily pig mange cannot spread to poultry, other livestock or humans. Phew!
If it is not one thing, it is another. Who would have thought that we'd be the proud owners of truly mangy pigs? Lucky us. Makes me itchy just thinking about it. Scratch, scratch.
It would not be spring without being sheep shearing time. With an upcoming heat wave, it is high time to get the super thick fleeces off of Abbott, Violet and Molly. Organizing sheep shearing is always somewhat of a fiasco and so every year I decide that I am going to shear my sheep myself. My sheep are small and super docile. I feel like shearing them is something I should be able to do. Yet, every year without fail, my shearing attempt goes awry and I find myself in need of the services of a professional sheep shearer. This year was no exception.
Last year I tried using some special manual sheep clippers Ian bought for me. On the second snip I sliced Abbott's skin and that was the end of that. This year, I decided that my electric dog clippers should do the trick to shear my sheep. I can clip the dogs' woolly coats with them just fine but nope, absolutely not. That totally did not work. So, we tried to buy real electric sheep clippers online. The only reasonably priced ones were being shipped from China and would not arrive for months. The ones made domestically were $700. We also tried to borrow some from a fellow homesteader with sheep but we had no luck with that either. Back to Plan Professional Sheep Shearer.
Now, sheep shearers in this day and age are few and far between. There are even fewer shearers who will agree to come out to clip tiny flocks like mine without requesting a small fortune for the inconvenience. So, I am beyond grateful for our area's resident hobby farm sheep shearer and very willing to work with his eccentricities.
Our shearer is a master of his trade and will shear each sheep in exactly 3 minutes and 30 seconds. Every time. Furthermore, he is most kind to the sheep. He talks to them soothingly while shearing, referring to the boys as "Chum" and the ewes as "Lassie". It is a riot.
On the down side, he is somewhat challenging to get a hold of each year to book our appointment. He is a very busy fellow without a cell phone so the only time you can be guaranteed to catch him is by calling his farm much earlier in the morning than is socially acceptable. This year I did not even try calling since I was pretty determined to shear my sheep myself and I was not even sure if he was working because of the pandemic. So, imagine my surprise when I received a call from said sheep shearer on Saturday telling me to expect him on Monday around "lunch time". Perfect.
Now, I know from past years that punctuality is not our sheep shearer's strong suit. He operates to the tune of his own drummer. So, when he still wasn't here by Liam's bedtime (much to Liam's disappointment), I can't say I was particularly surprised. He finally rolled in around dusk and made quick work of our sheep. Good thing too because our sheep had been locked in the barn all day and were getting antsy and the shearer said that he still had two other farms to get to before nightfall.
The lambs cannot figure out why half of their mamas are laying on the tarp.
With the sheep's fleece removal taken care of for another year, I was then able to turn my full attention to Mellie and the problem of her 10 month old kids determined to nurse every drop of her delicious milk, leaving none for Alistair. With them sharing a sleeping space, the morning milking yielded 3 tablespoons of milk instead of her usual 2.5 cups. Not cool. My "gentle" solution of using bandaids to cover her teats to try to prevent Luna and Percy from overnight nursing was an epic failure so I moved on a stickier option - green tape. It seems to work for everything else, so why not? I do not have high expectations that this will work but I have put some first aid tape on my shopping list. I think we might need to go with an ultra strength stickiness factor.
And so, we concluded the day with three naked sheep and one doe with taped teats. Yes, things sure can get weird on the farm!
There is nothing like a 15 hour work day to make your Sunday whizz by in a flash.
What did we get up to, you ask?
Baking two loaves of bread.
Making bread dough for tomorrow.
Watering all nine vegetable gardens as well as the mushroom, strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, rhubarb and fern patches.
Morning animal chores including milking the goats.
Cleaning out the turkey trailer.
The turkeys had some sunshine time while I mucked out their home.
Facilitating the adoption of Duke, Bishop and Autumn.
Bye bye my lovelies.
This trio is off to their new farm in Renfrew.
Mucking out the goat kids' stall.
Wheelbarrowing the straw bales from the front yard to the back yard.
Filling the stall with straw bales.
Wheelbarrowing triple mix from the driveway to the back yard.
Filling all the pepper pots with said triple mix.
Planting all the peppers.
Wheelbarrowing triple mix from the driveway to the kitchen garden.
Adding said triple mix to the garlic patch.
Transplanting cabbages to replace the ones Molly ate yesterday when she and the lambs escaped.
Transplanting some hardened off herbs.
Direct sowing some replacement cucumbers and zucchini.
Planting rows of lettuce, basil, spinach, sorrel, caraway and nasturtiums.
Watering all the transplants.
Evening animal chores including milking Martha again and taping Mellie's teats to stop Luna and Percy from nursing overnight since our four remaining goats will now be sharing a sleeping space.
Preparing this morning's bread dough for its overnight rise.
Not to mention, keeping the kids and inside pets alive. Now, I did have help (in no way is this a one woman show), Ian did brew a batch of beer concurrently with all of the above, and Ali did have an epic nap. Nonetheless, it was a very busy and productive day.
In between all this I managed to take a moment to appreciate the apple blossoms. They are in full bloom right now and all the neighbourhood bees think they are spectacular. Yes, it sounds like my tree is "mahh-ing" in the video but it was really buzzing if you can manage to tune out the sounds of the hungry goats calling for their supper.
And so, here I am - filthy, coated in several layers of sunscreen and bug spray, and bone tired. I am beyond ready to crawl into my nice, cosy bed. Good night and good luck from all of us here on Gael Glen Farm.
