What Day is It?

I've been looking for a fun kid's calendar for ages with not luck.  I had just about given up on ever having one until I came across this blog post.  You don't need a laminator to make it but it will make the pieces more durable.

Here's our version.

It was an easy project using stuff I already had on hand.  The pieces are kept in place with blu-tac.  I put it up in the dining room and the kids enjoy updating it every morning. 

My Camera is Back

After messing around with new batteries and a new card, my camera is finally working.  I admit to whispering sweet nothings to the lens when the camera finally turned on and that nasty red error light disappeared.

Unfortunately by the time it was up and running, the weather went downhill and it started to get dark.  All I have for you is a picture of our beautiful muscovy ducks which coincidentally (or not) are for sale!

For the low, low price of $15, you get a ten week old grass and bug eating machine.  But wait that's not all, you'll also get a decent meat bird that doesn't require a pond! If you call in the next fifteen minutes I'll also throw in a sponge.  Call now.

Party Update

As of now the party is still on for Saturday.  It's calling for a little rain but that can mean anything.  As long as it's not pouring Saturday evening, the party will still be Saturday.  If we have to cancel, the new party date will be the next day, Sunday the 31st, at the same time.  If it rains Sunday as well, then the party will be cancelled. 

For various reasons, I've changed the party menu. 

khalua ham
goat curry
pitas and bread
rice
garden salad
veggie tray
cold peanut noodles
coconut cake
watermelon

We'll be serving a mai tai punch as well as a non-alcoholic pineapple strawberry punch.  If the kids don't want to eat the regular food, we'll have hot dogs available.


Limey has been polishing up his face painting skills and we have lots of little games for the kids to play.

Don't forget to wear your best luau gear.  There is a prize for best costume.  Tourist outfits, mumus, sarongs, grass skirts and coconut bras are all fair game.

Hope to see you there!

Friday Bullets

• Chickens have been laying in the field.  Found some hens trying to brood out their infertile eggs.  Don't they know that no egg sales = no chicken feed?
• Raccoon spent several hours screaming to death (literally) near the barn.  We have no gun so called the Ministry guys to come out in their bomb squad gear to put it out of it's misery.
• Starting to freak out about the party.  
• The humidity is killing me.  I'm melting into a puddle on the floor. 
• 6ft tomato plants and 4ft basil.  Loving the hoop house.
• When you mail out a letter cancelling someone's home insurance during a postal strike, don't you think it would be considerate to give them a phone call?  It's been a last minute scramble to fix the electric and secure new insurance. 
• Tire blew on the car. 
• Need a new fantasy or scifi novel to read.  Any suggestions?

For Sale

I'm selling my antique treadle sewing machine with new belt for $300.  In addition to the new belt, it comes with lots of extra replacement belt and an accessory kit.

8 week muscovy ducks $15
6 week New Zealand rabbits $15
Fertile Australorp (blue and black) eggs $18/dozen
Fertile quail eggs $9/dozen

Bullet time

• Waiting on camera battery
• No payments or interest for 18 months at Future Shop
• WTF external hard drive?!  You aren't supposed to delete things at random
• Curriculum almost done.  Only art and FIAR wannabe left to write.
• Party planning this week.  40 coming, 40 have not graced me with a yes, no or maybe.  
• Blew a tire.  I think we're way past three now.
• Banana ice cream is to die for.  Made the same way as the peanut butter one just sub 1 mashed banana for the peanut butter.  
• Rabbits and muscovy ducks for sale $15 each.  Pets, grass eaters or just fabulous eating.
• Lost 2 turkeys.
• Where are my parcels?!  Damn you Canada Post!
• Harry Potter! 
• The Hunger Games!  Debating whether or not to read the other two.
• Torchwood?!  Why are you now a run of the mill American CSI type show?
• 40 Australorp eggs in the incubator. 
• Did I mention the party is in 11 days?  

Blargh

It's the end of days.  My computer is officially dead. I thought it was bad when the camera died or when the ceiling pantry fell in or when Limey's hours at work got cut down.  This is infinitely worse.  Despite doing a backup yesterday, a bunch of my files are missing off my external hard drive.  Goodbye 2011 photos, goodbye home videos of the kids.  Goodbye all my business files.  I have no idea when we're going to be able to get it fixed or replaced.  Can't upload photos to the laptop so blog posts are going to be boring or unwritten for awhile.  Please don't leave me, hopefully a miracle will occur and all will be well.

Where's my big mac?  I need to sulk in some greasy, gmo garbage.

Did I ever mention that I'm overly dramatic and prone to extreme exaggeration? Think Marvin the Paranoid Android.

Quick Update

My camera is back and fixed.  Unfortunately my imac is on the fritz.  It keeps crashing.  Yesterday it wouldn't reboot.  Today it's on again but still crashing.  It started when I installed a new printer and updated Firefox.  I'm working on fixing it and hoping it's not a hard drive issue because if it is, I won't be able to get it fixed and no more mac for me.

I do have a laptop but the kids broke the USB thing on it so I can't upload anything on it.  I just emailed myself all my curriculum links and copies of the curriculum I wrote because it would really suck to lose them now.  I have an external hard drive but again I can't upload it to the pc.

I'm running permission repair right now and when that is done I'll run the disk repair.  Any Apple techs out there?  Advice?

A Reprieve

There were three large maples lining the driveway.   I'm not particularly fond of maples and they were blocking the sun over our garden.  For these reasons we decided to do away with them.  Limey cut the first two down and then moved on to more pressing matters. 

Since then, the kids and I have spent a bit of time laying around under the remaining tree.  It's been horribly hot lately and the maple provides us with the only decent shade on the property.

Needless to say, I've granted the tree a temporary reprieve.  I'll rethink it's status when the fruit trees have filled in.

Speaking of fruit trees, Limey brought home 15 of them from Canadian Tire.  They are 5 year old trees, half price for $15.  Score!

A Hardy Cactus

I planted a cactus in my flower garden. It's not really a cottage favourite but what they hell, it's a zone 4 cactus!

Goat-Sitting

A friend of ours took off to Halifax for the weekend and left us her goats.  They are really cute with much nicer ears than our goats have.  Robin and Lily aren't entirely impressed with the situation but that might be because they've been kicked out of the main part of their house and are now sleeping in the baby side. 

In other news, my first attempt at mozzarella was an epic failure. It was fine right up until the stretching phase. At that point it disintegrated. How can I move on to making brie if I can't even get mozzarella right?

PB and Cream

Limey requested, ever so nicely, that I make peanut butter ice cream tonight.  I was a little "meh" at the thought, but whatever floats his boat I guess.  I made the ice cream, had a little sample and now I'm reconsidering allowing him to eat it.

Good camera is still at the shop.

I'm not a big peanut butter fan but this stuff is fabulous.  When I sent Limey an email suggesting that there might not be any left when he gets off work, I received a very unpleasant reply.  I responded saying that I made the stuff so I should get to eat it (all).  He replied saying that it was HIS idea so he should get to eat it. 

Here's the recipe that has set off a bitter feud in our house. 

2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup sugar
pinch salt
1/4 cup peanut butter
1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix it all together and pour into your ice cream maker.  Turn the machine on and when it's done you'll be locking yourself in the bathroom so that you can eat the entire bowl yourself.  It won't be in peace though because the rest of the household will be trying to break in while yelling at you not to be so damn selfish.

You've been forewarned.

Nature Study

I've been thinking about doing nature study for a while now but it keeps getting put on the back burner.  It didn't help that I wasn't really sure how to go about it.  I bought this book a couple of years ago hoping it would help.

It's mostly examples of sketches that one could put in a nature journal with a bit of drawing instruction thrown in for good measure. It still didn't really help me figure out how to implement nature study in our lives.

Then I heard about this book.

The Handbook of Nature Study is a how to/field guide. It's massive, the print is small and the amount of info it contains makes this book slightly intimidating.

HNS is in the public domain so you can read it online for free. I prefer print books so I bought a copy.

Now I had the right book but still wasn't sure what to do. I honestly couldn't be bothered to sift through it to figure out a method for nature study.  I'm lazy.

Then I found this site. Have I mentioned how much I love the Internet?

Some brilliant blogger with much more patience than I, has done all the work for me. If you scroll down the right sidebar you'll come to her list of challenges. There are 10 introductory lessons that you should complete and then go from there. She posts weekly challenges year round with links to other people's blogs who have wrote about their version of the challenge. She also lists challenges by season. You can download her ebooks for a small fee or just read them on the blog.  

I spent a couple of hours on the site the other day and I compiled a list of the challenges I want to complete and a brief summary of what we're supposed to do for each one.  We're going to start in the fall with the rest of the school stuff.  In the meantime I'm on the lookout for 3 blank journals for myself and the girls to keep our notes and sketches in. 

Nature study is not just something for the homeschoolers.  I'm sure most kids would enjoy this as well as some adults.  It doesn't take a lot of time either.  A sit out in the garden or a short 15 minute nature walk is all you need.  The point is to take a little time to observe, to stop and smell the roses.

Attack!

Well they are here.  I've heard about them from the locals and we finally found one in our potato patch.

This is my first Colorado Potato Beetle. I never had them in Thunder Bay. We only found one along with this little clutch of eggs. The most common method of eradicating these hungry bugs is chemical.   Potatoes are on the top 10 list of foods that you should buy organic.  I've read about potato farmers that won't eat the potatoes that they sell to the grocery stores because the plants are so heavily dosed in pesticides.

Pesticides don't really jive with our hippy plan so we have to come up with an alternative defense.

Our options are:

• Search and destroy
• Neem oil spray
• Predators such as ladybugs, lacewings, spiders...
• BT

We have tons of predators already.  As we only saw one beetle, maybe they are already doing their job?  BT only works doing the larval stage and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Neem oil.  For now I guess we're going to do a regular search and destroy and see how that goes.

Have you had any success with keeping the beetle at bay?  What about companion plants?

The Pork Went Missing

Me: What was that noise?!
Limey: Just the movie.
Me: It sounded like pig's grunting behind me (looks at open window).
Limey: I'm sure it was the guys fighting on the movie.

Unsatisfied with that response I go out onto the step outside the kitchen.  3 pigs approach me.   We go out and shake the food.  Still only 3 pigs.  Start having mild heart attack.  Inconveniently all the flashlights were dead.  After 15 minutes of searching in the dark, shaking the food bucket, the other three show up.  The electric line was down.

I think we'll be buying some barbed wire in the morning.                                                                                    
                                                                                          

Turkey

We bought 10 turkeys to raise for meat.  These are the standard feed store variety.
We put them out on pasture with out Cornish X chickens. 

I've been trying to find out when to butcher them and how big they will be but Google isn't helping.

Anyone have any info for me?

We still have six of them left for sale.  Check out the Products and Services page for more info.

Sale Update

We have some extra eggs for sale this week.  $3.50/dozen

I'm also making fresh bread.  $3.50 per boule.

Check out the Products/Services page for info on meat sales.

If you haven't been by yet to visit the farm, come on down.  We'll be here all day tomorrow and Thursday. 

Luau Fare

I've compiled a list of what we'll be serving at the party.  As I have the tendency to change my mind, this list is in no way set in stone.


Luau menus are an eclectic mix of tastes from the different ethnic groups that have immigrated to Hawaii.  There's a little bit of Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Portuguese, American to name a few. 

Here's what I've picked out so far;


Kahlua ham
Goat (curry, roast, stew?)

Cold sesame egg noodles

Spam musubi

Mai tai punch

Haupia (coconut pudding)

Kimchi

Coconut cake

I'll probably add a cold rice dish, potato salad, a veg platter and a fruit salad.  If I have time I'll make some chevre and feta as well.

Do you have any favourite luau dishes that you think I should make?   Tell me in the comments!

A Little Fun

Sometimes you have to take a break from homesteading and have a little fun away from the farm.

Upper Clements Park has being having BOGO days, so we took a little drive and spent the day there.  The park is a nice size.  It's not huge like Canada's Wonderland so there's minimal whining from the kids about having to do so much walking. 

We started with a little train ride.  And thennnnnnnn.....

Practiced long distance truck driving.

Flew some airplanes.

Reenacted the Kentucky Derby.

Got a little cardio in on the manual go carts.

Cooled off in the pool.

Turned my legs into jelly on the paddle boats.

Climbed some tubes.

Bumped around on the bumper boats.

There's also some bigger rides like a ferris wheel, zipper type ride, flume, waterslide, zip lines and a wooden roller coaster.  It was a fun time and we'll definitely be attending BOGO days in the future.

What's Blooming

The flower garden is starting to fill up. A lot of the stuff I planted from seed (poppies and such) doesn't seem to have sprouted. But all the perennials are doing great. My DSLR is still at the shop so I'm still taking blah photos with my point and shoot.

Evening Primrose, the only yellow in the garden.

Autumn Joy Sedum, not blooming but still nice!

No idea what this is.

Endless Summer Hydrangea.  Not this colour.  It's actually blueish purple.

Farmgirl Friday