On what felt like the first warm day of the year, our cow Daisy birthed out a beautiful heifer in the afternoon sunshine. I know it wasn’t actually the first warm day of the year, but it was the day that seemed to herald a run of warm days, the beginning of the end of winter. In fact, exactly one week prior, an ice storm had smacked the province around quite heartily and we had spent the day huddled without…
Two and a half weeks ago (to be precise), Mrs B. went into labour on a cold and breezy April afternoon. In all the years we’ve been breeding our pigs, this is only the second time that Mrs B. has birthed out during the daylight hours. We were grateful for this miraculous eventuality, but it didn’t detract from the fact that it was a very, very cold evening for sitting inside an unheated barn. Despite our familiarity with the pig…
The air at night smells like burning sugar, that deep, caramel smell that tells you something delicious is on the way. I don’t know what combination of plants and warmth is required to make that smell, but every summer it catches me by surprise. The light is always dipping behind the horizon when I catch this scent, I always wonder at first if it is something cooking somewhere. But then I remember, standing on that spot the year before and…
Of course the pig would have to choose a windy, icy night on which to birth out. It just had to be 3am after I’d been ill for a few days. Her milk just had to come in on the night Stephen had to work late and she just had to be in the wrong field and we just had to herd her into the farrowing barn through the ice and wind instead of being cosy and warm by the…
I’ve never made any bones about that fact that Stephen is the power house behind our farm. He’s the muscle that brings the hustle, he’s the man with a plan. Except. Well except for the fact that he’s human and can break. I know this because I watched it happen. Over months discomfort turned into pain, which turned into debilitation. After ‘treatment’ for back pain that only made things worse, we finally found out that Stephen’s back had herniated. It…
In the heat of summer, when just moving around sets the sweat dripping down your back, we are thinking about winter. From the first leaf of green peeking up through the mud and snow, to the last red and gold leaves that cover the ground with a luminous carpet, there is another colour that is always on our minds. White. Everything we work on, every project, everything we build is centred around the coming season. From the seeds we plant…
First of all thank you to everyone who said such nice things to us after I wrote about Morag. In person, on facebook, in the comments section we were met with kindness and understanding. Thank you. Well last week was a bit of a funny one. We are used to death in some ways on the farm, we are used to being in control of the lives of animals and part of that is deciding when the end should…
3 years ago, when I was in the UK visiting my Dad with the boys, I got a message from Stephen saying “I just bought a cow!”. My response was something supportive like “You bought a what?!” until I eventually established that no he wasn’t kidding and yes he’d bought a cow. A real one. Granted the messages had been preceded by ones like “I’m at an auction!” and “They have cows here!” so I really should have seen it…
Today I have actually reached the point of feeling that I can actually use the word ‘spring’ officially without a) crying at the same time b) using some kind of prefix like “what the $&@#$ is up with….” and c) expecting there to be some kind of weather related retribution that will bring at least 10 cms of snow in the next 24 hours. It’s been that kind of spring. A few times in the last couple of months I…
There is no doubt, now, that the balance of the year has indeed tipped. While the customary snow of this northern clime has yet to show itself, the nights are dark and the mornings frosty. Frosty is wildly preferable to snowy and, strangely, preferable to the milder weather we’ve experienced this November. With mildness comes rain and with rain…mud. I can’t say I’m sorry to have moved past ankle deep slop, in favour of firm and crunchy frost underfoot. Without…