I suppose since you haven’t heard much from us lately you thought we’re on holidays! Well, I guess you’re right – sort of. We always enjoy winter and the chance to catch up.

Well, our daughter Rebecca did take a part time job at a local old folks’ home, so she’s not exactly on holidays.

I’ve been doing the usual crop planning, poultry license renewals, seed ordering, laying out new berry and perennial plantings, the general farm accounting paperwork, along with the permaculture course I’m doing with Jesse. I’ve also worked at some more of the drafting and design I do for my brother’s Cackellac poultry shelter business (the “chicken tractors” that we use on our farm).

The Boys’ Projects

Winter is the time of year the boys catch up on school lessons. The boys also look after feeding and bedding the cows and chickens twice a day. Here’s a picture of Jesse and Caleb grinding organic grain (in the new shed we built last summer) to make feed for the egg-laying hens.

One of the top things the boys are interested in: we’re considering buying a small band sawmill to cut some lumber for ourselves and neighbors. I told them they’d have to start in as board handlers before they’d get to be head sawyers, but they don’t seem to mind – yet.

Caleb and Jonathan are also planning a wood-fired forge to try their hand at blacksmithing. They’ve already built a small rocket stove to use as a forge, and hammered out some “wrought iron”. They were bitten with the blacksmithing bug after visiting the Ross Farm Museum last year. We bought a welder at an auction recently, so we plan to build a small shed with a sidewalk slab floor as temporary housing for it and the forge.

The Cows

The cows are waiting for spring…and lush green pastures. We bought a Guernsey-Jersey cow a few months ago which will have a calf soon. She’ll be especially glad to get out to green pasture when she has her new baby. She’s the one standing on the left in this picture – she’s a little itchy with lice right now, so we’re dusting her with our standby remedy, diatomaceous earth mixed with sulfur.

We are in the process of “drying off” our older cow, since she has been milking for almost two years since her last calf. We don’t know yet if she is “in calf”, but we’ll know by spring. If she doesn’t have a calf, we will probably pasture her for a few more months and slaughter her for ground beef.

It won’t be 100% percent grassfed and organic, since she was grain-fed before we bought her 3 years ago. However, for those of you who are not purists regarding organic and grass-fed, you’ll still get most of the benefits. Although I can’t find the article, I remember reading about studies done some years ago by the Meat Animal Research Centre in Nebraska, showing that meat changes quickly in response to a change in the animals’ diet. Within about two or three months on pasture, the meat had a large percentage of the healthy attributes of 100% grass-fed beef. (This study also showed that if cows were pasture raised all their lives and then put on a high corn diet for a few months just before slaughter, they lost most of the same health benefits just as quickly.)

So, we’ll just wait and see what our old cow’s fate will be.

Healthy Snacks

The whole grain baked goods seem to have become a favorite at the farmers market. Selema and Judith will probably be adding one or two new products soon.

We finally got our ton of organic spelt this week from our friends in Ontario. (For those of you who have become accustomed to the hyperbolic use of “ton”, I suppose I’ll have to specify that I mean 2000 pounds.) Therefore we’ll also be switching to all spelt in place of the whole wheat. Spelt is an older grain than our modern wheat. It is mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible as one of the grains in common use. (Of course, so is wheat, but I understand it’s not the same type of wheat anymore, whereas spelt hasn’t been “improved” as much.) Since spelt is more digestible than wheat, some people who can’t eat wheat are fine with spelt.

You may also notice a somewhat more nutty taste in the cookies, crackers and bars this Saturday.

We are planning to have these snacks available at our farm market stand when we open this summer, so stop in whenever you’re coming by!

There’s your little peek at the farm this winter. We’re preparing to again bring you the best free-range, healthy products that we can this season. See you soon!