Homestead and Folly

  What I dream of as I sift through garden books and seed catalogues in winter What Life actually looks like as my garden is under  two feet of snow and ice This time of year, even though I spend a lot of my time going back and forth to the woodpile and shoveling snow, is an exciting time of year. No not winter, or Christmas or New Year's. That's right, seed ordering time! Time to sit with a hot drink, perhaps in front of a fire and pour through seed catalogues, electronic or paper, doesn't matter. There were already plenty of practice runs, the jotting down of seeds to look up and research into new plants to try but now it is time to let go into this decadent, though absolutely necessary, ritual. Having ordered and read from my library, a great deal of gardening books over some recent vacation time, I had decided to plant a perennial vegetable garden. I started with a look through my favourite, local seed companies to see what they could offer. I found a few

Our Chickens haven't been laying eggs well at all. Others are quick to ask "Are they molting?" We thought this a possibility...back in September but  unlikely they are still molting. "Is it the cold?" Unlikely as this has been a problem since September and we have experienced very warm weather until January, and last year was much colder.  They seem healthy and are of  varying ages. Other farmers have reported similar problems. Could be the feed changed or maybe the up and down temperatures. We trimmed the rooster's spurs having read that can make him go lame and upset the chickens. Still we are getting one egg a day from 12 hens. One is older and retired, but we are without explanation about our lame flock. So it came when my husband mentioned someone was selling  twelve, two month old,  Buff Orpington chicks, we decided to jump at the chance and raise an additional batch of laying chickens. Any that happen to be roosters we will raise for meat. We sc

Did you ever have a friend that you somehow lost touch with even though you enjoy that friend's company immensely? You didn't mean for it to happen but the more time that passed the harder it was to reach out and have that casual conversation? Before you knew it a ridiculous amount of time had gone by? That is what happened with my blog. I had been waiting for my house to sell and so had let my blog writing fall away, thinking my new homestead would be the perfect place to start my next entry. Well my house didn't sell and having now taken it off the market and decided to stay here, fall and now winter have come. Add to that, I got a part time job off of the homestead and the business of being thrust into fall preparations such as the arduous task of stocking up firewood. Had we known we were staying, we would have had at least started to process the wood in the spring and summer. A firewood shortage in our area as my wood guy, Danny says is due to "those bloody