Environmental Farm Plan

I feel so official! Please to announce that we have completed our Environmental Farm Plan. Worked it through with George Powell, who did a great job. I was pleasantly surprised by some of the information he was able to bring to the table, like my soil data. Soil is measured from 1 to 7 - 1 being the best in the province and 7 being the worst in the province. I am thrilled to find out that we are in the 2 -3 zone for soil type. Yeah!! Makes me want to start gardening right now - what I'm planting next year just got a whole lot broader.

Our biogeoclimatic classification is sub-boreal spruce; no real surprise there, look out the window and see a lot of spruce. All told it was a great process and I would highly recommend that if you haven't done the process, you give George a call and try it out. And this is an unsolicited reference!

New Sheep in the Pen

So we finally managed to bring home our new sheep. The day dawned bright and early and I whipped through morning chores in record time and was on the road. First stop was 100 Mile House to pick up the stock trailer I was using and the first 3 sheep from New Cal Rabbit Farm. These are older ewes and really friendly. Since they are more "experienced", we will probably keep them for at least two batches of babies and then reassess their condition. Since two batches will be about 1.5 years they are still going to be here for awhile. The other 3 sheep we picked up from a smaller sheep farm, Thackerville, in the Savona area. These are younger ewes, in absolutely great condition, just coming on a year in the spring. We won't be breeding them until the new year and these will be with us for a long time.

Okay, some pics of the new girls:

So this is the first old girl. Great colour and incredibly soft.
I believe that these three girls are a cross of katahdin and something.
It's the something I haven't figured out.
 But they are very similar to our Bayberry
and Bunchberry in hair, colour and markings.

We haven't named them yet, so this is girl #2. Her wool is this dark greyish colour with the black markings.She's a little more standoffish then the other two.

This is girl#3. I love her black and white markings.
Her cheeks are incredibly soft. These three are all a fairly
good size - easily over 150 lb each and tall. Since they
have been bred with our Dorper Ram (hopefully!! by now)
it will be exciting to see what kind of colours the babies have.

This is new young girl #1. We also haven't named these ones yet. She is the only one of this bunch to have the interesting patches on her face. Helps to tell her apart. These three are still quite shy with people but have integrated into the herd really well.

This is new young girl #2. What I really like about
these girls is how clean their head, neck and legs are.
 By clean, we mean that the wool/hair is very short
giving them a clean cut look. Particularly having clean legs
just makes them so much easier to care for. They are also
very square, put together quite well. I don't believe they have quite
 finished growing yet, so we will see what their final size
 turns out to be - give them another six months or
so to grow out. But so far they are really nice.

New Girl #2 - #3 looks just like her and was being camera shy, so #2 is standing in. We'll have to put necklaces on them to tell them apart! With their white colouring and the ram being a black-headed dorper, the lambs could be anything from pure white, pure black or a patchwork of colours - like a holstein cow, all black and white patches. I can hardly wait!

 In the meantime, we have one sheep (Big Bertha or BB for short) which we purchased from a 4H'er earlier this fall, who is pregnant, but probably not due in December like we were hoping  - or if she is it will be the end of December. I have been watching her but we are at least a month or two away.

And of course, not satisfied with the ewes in the pen with him, the ram jumped TWO fences to check out some ewes in a different pen. So I'm hoping that he was able to control himself until we got him back in his pen. (hahahaha!!!) At this rate I'm thinking deer fencing might be an option for him!

Chick Update

Back in October we posted some information on a hen that actually hatched out 4 chicks. She was doing a great job. Unfortunately, it was October and the weather started to turn and despite her best efforts she lost two of the chicks. I was amazed at how good she was with the chicks. She had hiding holes all over the them. The problem is that in October there just isn't enough ground cover to help keep them warm or covered and between rain and cold, the weather got the best of them.

So we brought the last two in the house. Over the years we have kept numerous cages that we have used for various animals, like gerbils and rabbits, and these make excellent cages for little chicks. They are in a small one right now and then as they get bigger we will continue to move them into bigger cages. Works really well! So right now they are in a guinea pig size cage located right beside the fireplace. This is a great place for them as it keeps them warm and we don't have to worry about lights.

Yesterday, the biggest one (which I believe is a male) decided he was big enough to jump up to the top of their cage. I've been keeping the top open because when they are little they can't reach it. But now they can. So, on went the lid to keep them in. Of course, that doesn't mean they are always in their cage. I've been teaching them to be handled and to sit nicely on hands and shoulders. So they regularly get time out to get handled. They are both coming along very nicely.

The chicks hanging out on my arm.

This is the big guy - so interesting
watching the way the different feathers come in.

Another shot of the big guy. See the way his beak has more prominent ridges and his tail is a little more developed.

This is the little girl. Her beak doesn't have the same prominent ridges and her tail is not as developed. She is also physically smaller than the other one.

We always try to have a few hens and roosters that can be easily handled. It makes handling them for moving and catching so much easier. The other chickens learn by watching and when they see other chickens being caught easily and handled, they are much easier to handle. And it makes it nice when people come to see because then we can catch up a few chickens for people to pet - always a popular activity.

So, the chicks are doing fine. Their feathers are starting to come in - mostly black and white on the body, but their heads have some different colours so we will see where they end up. It will still take another month for them to be fully feathered and a number of months before they can go out, but they are doing really well.

How Much Hay?

One of the interesting things about ranching is figuring out how much everyone is going to eat over the next year. Between the horses, cows, sheep, llamas, pigs and chickens we go through a fair chunk of hay, grain and various feeds. We have been busy bringing in hay for this winter and having some fun moving it around. And what fun the cats are playing tag and jumping around. 

Sierra playing around with Chip on the hay

Chipmunk playing around and trying to look cool doing it!



Hay bales - 100 bales between 900-100 lbs each



The New Ram Is Here!!

This should really be like front page news! I brought our new ram home the other day. We will be calling him Mozart. We bought him from the same farm that we bought our first Dorper ram from, many years ago, and the first ram's name was Chopin - thus, the new guy is Mozart. He is a purebred Black-Headed Dorper ram. He is a yearling and a lovely size. Still some growing left to do, but he looks great.

This is the new guy. Notice how nice and big and muscly
rounded his front shoulders and back end are.

This is Mozart at the feeder with his first "harem" of girls.
For the next 17 days he will be working with nine ewes.





Another angle of Mozart. I need to get a better shot of his back end,
but you can see how great he is - standing square and big in all the
right areas. Makes me hungry just looking at him!

 So far, Mozart is doing great with the ladies. He's has had some recent experience so he knows what his job is. He's been with his new harem now for 24 hours and has already covered at least three that we know of. The green chalk on his chest is so that we can tell which ewes he has covered - easier to keep track of due dates that way. Colour wears off after a while so all is good.

Anyway, we are all excited here. He is a great addition to the ranch. As I don't have enough ewes to keep him really busy we will probably make him available to a few other select ewes. Call if you are interested.

Purple Potatoes

I love local food! I love the variety, and in some cases, I really love the colour. My latest food fad is purple potatoes. Yes, purple potatoes - I found them locally from Bea Cody at CastleRock Farms. 

Made them for dinner tonight (again!) and wanted to share the goodness.



This is what the potatoes look like raw.
They look more purple in good light.



I am halfway though peeling the potato. Notice that the layer right under the skin seems to be a whiteish layer and then it changes to solid purple.



This is what the inside of the peeled
potato looks like.




These are the potatoes cooking with some broccoli. I love the colour mix of the purple and green - makes for a colourful dinner.




Finished product - Mashed Potatoes! Not a great job mashing,
I was too excited about taking pictures, but I love
the fact that the purple carries through.




And when you done with the potatoes the juice
behind for making gravy is this teal colour! So very cool!!



Chicks and Pigs

The interesting thing about having your hens free ranging is that, well, you don't always find all the eggs. We generally collect eggs a couple times a day and the hens for the most part lay their eggs in areas we have situated for them. Hens prefer to lay eggs in areas that are somewhat protected, which for them means hidden and hard to see. But if you know that you can set up areas where they would like to lay their eggs and generally it works. But if you free range hens that means you are always on the lookout for eggs that are laid in new and bizarre places, and it means you don't always find them. We apparantly have a couple rogue hens that not only stayed hidden with their eggs, but they hatched them out. Hatching eggs outside in mid October is not exactly great conditions for raising chicks, so we are watching the hens to see how they are doing and at the first sign of distress or of them deciding raising chicks in -5 is too much work, we will swoop in and bring them inside. So we have one hen with four chicks in our yard and one hen with a couple chicks in our very nice and patient neighbours yard.

So this is a picture of the hen with her chicks. If you look closely you can see where she has hidden them.

This is a better picture of the chicks. You can see that they are all slightly different in markings. We have a couple different breeds of hens and we have three Buff Orpington roosters (which are a light brown) and a Bard Rock (which is black and white). So we will see what the babies look like when they grow up. The only thing I can say with confidence is that the yellow chick will probably grow up to be light brown. I have no idea about the other three - although I think the more solid dark one of the bunch will be a rooster.

We also brough home three weiner pigs. We have a couple more due to arrive when they are old enough. These piggies are actually a little big for weiners. The producer was kind enough to keep them for an extra week or two while I was busy with consulting work. Their new pen has a couple logs and a big pile of dirt/manure for them to play in, which they wasted no time in getting to know. Something about pigs really makes a ranch feel like a ranch. And between the chickens and the pigs there are no leftovers at our place.