Fall update

It's getting colder here now, and I hadn't factored in the potential of days and days and days of rain at this time of year - not since we were practically dealing with a heat wave and drought for our first summer at the property.  We'd only mowed the grass twice in our first three months - it wasn't growing since it certainly wasn't getting any additional irrigation from us.  Now, the past weeks of rain have brought on new growth that I want to cut for adding to the orchard beds and to the compost pile, and the leaves are coming down, and the wood is being delivered, and I have things to do in the garden and orchard.....and we wind up running inside soaking wet when the rain finally gets too bad to work in.

The mushrooms started to spring up everywhere in mid-October, and though there are many new appearances each week, the main flush is starting to look a little worse for wear - in some instances being grazed or trampled by our deer.

The kits were getting some time out on the grass before it just got too rainy for us to leave them outside on the wet ground. They'll be 9 weeks this weekend, and the kits out of Spot and Anna are huge! Well, huge compared to some of the other kits we've been breeding. I'm trying to make up for the lack of play time with plenty of assorted greens brought to them - and apple slices too, from those apples too affected by scab to be easily processed. We've dehydrated 6 full dehydrator loads of apple slices for the winter months, which will work nicely with a bit of chicken scratch and some sunflower seeds for a burst of inner warmth for the bunnies on the coldest nights. The best apples have gone to the pantry for fresh eating, and slightly damaged apples are now being chopped, dipped in sugar/lemon water, and frozen in portions for small apple crisps throughout the winter. *Next year* we'll look at steaming some apple juice, or renting a cider press, or think about making more applesauce and apple butter.  For now, we have a supply of canned sauce from our apple trees back in Surrey.  Hopefully our care in the orchard will reward us in the years to come

After weeks of frustration, trying to lock in a delivery of firewood, we have about half of what I believe we will need for the cold season.  Luckily, our woodstove is in good shape, and the winters on the Island are not quite as harsh as elsewhere in BC.  The temperature hasn't ducked too low, so we've slowly been learning how to manage the heat output - our chimney sweep assured us that each stove has a personality and we'll be pros in no time. We scavenged some pallets to keep the wood off the ground, and started to stack the 2 cords we had dumped in the driveway....before the rain returned.

It's a work in progress.....

Of note, we finally had enough blue sky to do a full hive inspection.  We went into our secondary hive, which we artificially split from the main hive last spring, and sadly verified that there was only one small section of older brood, and no evidence of a queen. Their stores were all over the hive, and located largely towards the back side of the box. Much like we transplanted honey to them on our last month's inspection when they seemed to be struggling, we decided to try and help them replace their missing queen.  We found a frame in the strong hive that had evidence of eggs laid within the last 3 days, and transplanted it to the middle of their hive. Luckily, Adrian got a visual on our queen, so we could be sure we didn't move her with the brood.  If the girls don't manage to hatch a new queen within the next couple of weeks, they will not make it through the winter.  If she emerges, she may not be able to mate at this time of year. We figured it was worth a try.

Our original colony is settling in for the winter, and the queen has cut way back on laying brood.  There are no drones left in the hive, and they are set for honey and pollen, given their smaller numbers. I removed a couple of largely empty frames, to encourage them to tighten up their stores, and with the bottom board put on last week, we may not go back in to the hive again unless there is an emergency.

The Reveal

We're heading in to winter, and have hosted some friends and family at Front Porch Farm this summer and fall as we finally got ourselves sorted.  Everyone has liked the bright new paintwork and neutral flooring, and now it's just the nit-picky things that go in to making final decisions about what fits where and how rooms will work for our needs.  We're quite pleased with the results of our decisions and efforts, and thrilled to call this our home. There are still a few boxes hiding in cupboards, and tools to be (neatly) returned to the workshop - which itself needs an overhaul.  The kitchen will be a winter project as we strip wallpaper, try and clean things up with some paint, and figure out a way to keep the old cupboard doors closed until we can afford to replace them.  For now, I've been asked for some before and after pics...

Almost all of the carpeting came out, due to age and stains.  The carpet in the living room required extra attention, because the underlay was glued down.  We painted all of the main rooms and hallways, and primed and painted the plastic faux wood walls to either side of the woodstove to make the room brighter.  We also replaced the fan, and are on the way to deciding on art placement and getting blinds installed - which will help prevent our heat from escaping the room as the temperature drops.

  

The upstairs rec room, formerly home to a lovely orange and brown couch from the seventies, has been upgraded to a comfortable boardgame playing area, with armchairs for reading and playing video games.

Everything in the guest bedroom needed attention - the nailed-together, narrow shelves were pulled out, leaving many holes and scratches on the walls, and the dark ceiling trim and corner gaps took a lot of work to seal and paint.

But now, my mother is happy to come and visit!

The upstairs bedroom is largely unchanged, but a new bed, dressers, black out blinds and and some personal items have helped to make it a bit more to our taste.

The master bedroom downstairs has been made over with a softer palette, and a is now a  place to curl up under the covers.... 

We're also preparing the fruit trees for next spring - pulling grass, killing off weeds with cardboard, and preparing areas for mulching and an after-the-fact form of hugulkultur.  We've started to work on one of the large piles of wood debris piled in the corner of the orchard, and are cutting straight poles for next year's peas and beans while we move old, and sometimes punky branches to form raised berms around and between the established trees. My hope is that the branches, manure, and mulching we put down around the trees will help to retain moisture, and the plants we locate there will increase beneficial insect presence, entice pollinators to the fruit blossoms, and improve the fertility and bounty of the area, while at the same time reducing our need to water and mow grass where little benefit will be seen.

Preparing

There are always tasks to be completed when your're gardening in a temperate climate.  We don't have down time during the winter here on the British Columbia coast - not like I was used to growing up in Ontario.  The apples need picking, the garlic and shallots have gone into the ground, and we've finally managed to sort out our pantry after months of moving boxes from room to room as we've been settling into the house.  We are still waiting for news on a source for firewood, as the dry summer months resulted in a ban on entry to the woods for firewood providers to get in to gather their already-downed trees.  Perhaps in the coming years we will get a permit ourselves and take the truck and our chainsaw out to gather fuel for the winter, but this year we've already had enough on our plates.
 

The 'pantry' when we arrived at the new place - beautiful fake wood panelling, OSB ceiling pieced together with dark brown millwork, tons of cracks, crevices, and holes that seemed to invite our new-found friends the carpenter ants to use the walls as a highway.....

Part way through 5 coats of primer and paint, steel wool, caulk, poly filler and sweat during a week of 30+ degree weather....

Things that needed to 'fit' into our pantry area, which had been gathered in hallways, closets, and other rooms awaiting our attention.

Our wonderful, finished pantry - now home to many plastic bins since we have discovered our mouse problem. We've only seen one silverfish, so I'm not escalating that to problem status yet! I'm thrilled to have everything to hand right across from the kitchen (a stripping and painting project itself, for this winter). We will be building a work island in the kitchen from an antique table, where we can chop vegetables and pull up a stool to prepare meals, but this space allows room for us to slow cook, dehydrate, mix and measure without having to clutter up the kitchen proper.  I'm looking forward to baking apple crisps and continuing to dehydrate our remaining Cox and King apples for winter with all of the tools immediately available.  Unblemished apples can store in our pantry fridge, and we will be filling the freezers with more meals as we harvest fall vegetables from the garden and butcher our final 2 litters of rabbits for the season.  We're home!

Fall is Coming

Now that things have settled down a bit, and we're definitely heading into fall with cooler nights and the apples ripening on the trees, we've been lucky to have some friends visiting while we prepare for a visit from our parents.  One of our wonderful houseguests installed a new fan in the living room to help the woodstove heat the house more efficiently, and we played boardgames until long past my bedtime. We fed them from the bounty of the property - greens, bush beans, carrots, and peach cobbler for dessert.

Our original, 40 inch fan, with a broken switch to turn the light on or off - the owners had simply removed the bulb, so there was no light in the room...

and our new, 52 inch, 5-blade fan with remote control.  Bring on the wood heating season!

The bunnies are on their fourth week, and are bothering their moms constantly. We will be separating them back to their own quarters this weekend, as the kits are quite content to eat pellets, grass, and greens.  Because we were unable to reunite our last pair of sisters due to territorial instinct, we tried to get these sisters back together earlier last weekend, after only 3 weeks of separation.  I mistakenly thought that they might enjoy some time without the kids.  After a few moments in the run together, on fresh grass, they began to fight and one had been gashed before we were able to lean over and separate them. Hydrogen peroxide and Polysporin have cleaned up the wound, but I am sad that they won't be keeping each other company through the boredom of winter.

We had an arborist come out to view the fruit trees on the property, and the review was largely positive, though we all agreed that the forest blocks out more light than is ideal.  We may eventually be thinning some of our surrounding evergreens.  As the trees go dormant this year, we will be doing some selective pruning and shaping, removing grass at the base of the trees to be replaced with cardboard, manure, and mulch, and then underplanting into those new beds with berries, flowers, and herbs to create a more diverse system, and to encourage pollinators and beneficial insects to visit our trees.

I've been walking the property, trying to assess vegetation, and where the light falls at this time of year so that I can plan ahead, but really, we have a lot of unknowns still affecting those decisions.  We need to get a cistern installed and a new well pump, which will affect where the future fencing goes, which will affect where any outbuildings and garden beds go, and the list goes on from there.  I very much want to get fencing in place, as there is evidence that people are trespassing and breaking into our sad, moldy trailer. We've put up No Trespassing signs, and left an inquiry at the District as to our responsibilities should someone hurt themselves or start a fire, but have not heard back.

The firewood is still on hold, as the dry weather has prevented access to the logs waiting to be hauled out of the woods.  I have leads on two wood providers, and am trying to be patient waiting for their confirmation of delivery.  We had a very interesting visit with our chimney sweep, who told us we had her 'second favorite' stove, (a good model with the perk of an integrated ash-catcher), and we learned some of the finer points of fire management.  Our chimney received a clean bill of health, and we'll have her back in the spring to assess how well we burned our wood during our first winter.

A weekend trip to a pancake breakfast/swap meet resulted in a potential connection for chickens next spring.  We still need to set up an enclosure and bang together a coop, but we have a line on Naked Neck Turkens to start a small flock in memory of our funny bird, Nugget.

The Joys of Country Life

Well, the renovations are done, and most of what remains to do is to unpack the boxes we've squirreled away in corners and closets.  The pantry room has become a bit of a catch-all, but the shelves are built, the fridge and chest freezers in place, and we will sort things out as we go.  Now my main problem is the invasion of house mice which have decided they'd like to settle in too.  They've replaced the carpenter ants which vanished, unexplained, a month ago.  Maybe they just got smart? Anyway, I've set out traps for the mice, as I have no wish for a population explosion of that kind.

The other thing we need to start planning for soon is our wood supply.  The full woodshed we saw while viewing the property was emptied almost entirely when we moved in, and I need to have the chimney and firebox professionally inspected and cleaned to make sure we're off to a good start.  I have some leads on local wood suppliers.

Two weekends ago (wow, how time flies by), we butchered 22 rabbits - a project which had been hanging over our heads as we sorted the house, waited through incredibly hot weather, and planned our butchering site.

The site is temporary, as the workshop needs to be made safe for use or may eventually have to be torn down. We are hoping to work an outdoor kitchen into future plans for the farm.  For our purposes, the location worked well enough despite some persistent, inquisitive wasps, and we completed the cull over a 2-day period.  Currently we have 12 rabbit casseroles in the freezer, as well as portions of loin, hind and forelegs, and pre-cooked, seasoned meat pulled off of the bones.  We made rabbit stock, bone broth, and a bit of extra seasoned gravy - all portioned and in the freezer for future meals. The wash buckets and much of the blood went to the King and Pink Lady Apple trees, and I decided to try saving the hides for curing later, since these rabbits were older (15 and 17 weeks) than the normal 12 weeks' cull.  In the future, I look forward to being able to use more of the rabbit offal to feed to chickens and dogs as well. Seems a good way to pay respect to the rabbit's life.

The hides are currently in the freezer, for my attention later in the Fall. From the young rabbits we brought over to the Island with us, we held back a crossbred male rabbit (dubbed 'Thumper,' born of Sweetie and Notch) whom we hope to use in our breeding program, and we sent 2 of his sisters off to start a rabbitry with friends on the Southern tip of the Island. Their 'cost' is being bartered against part of the cost to go in on butchering a local pig for the freezer!  We have welcomed 2 new litters to the rabbitry. Two sisters and first-time mothers have healthy, though small, litters of 5 and 7 kits.  They've been wonderfully calm moms and the kits are thriving.

The bees are happily foraging, and we've only made 2 inspections since we arrived due to high heat.  A family visit last weekend led to taking off the lid and removing a few bars to explain the hive, and I was so proud (and relieved) that the girls ignored the incursion.

The peach tree on our back deck had been ever so slowly ripening, and I finally harvested more than 100 peaches to put up in the freezer.  I froze individual slices, chunky dices for cobblers, and a few whole peaches with skins on, to use for whatever suits in the future. Did you know the skins of frozen peaches and tomatoes slip off easily when they're partially thawed? I still haven't unearthed all of my canning supplies, and there are a few jars of sliced home-canned peaches still on the shelf, so the freezer was the way to go. The unripe peaches were left on the counter, and unfortunately were sampled by our aforementioned "mouseguests."

The ants and mice aren't the only challenges we've had to deal with.  There is evidence that people broke into the old mobile home on the other side of the property, and that makes me nervous.  We are hoping to have livestock dogs guarding the property and our animals in the future, but without proper fencing, I am unwilling to risk having dogs that might adventure off the property and cause problems with the neighbors.  We've also been having some spotty connection with the 'Net, and then my provider was unable to contact the service guy to repair his 90-day-warranted install.  3 days without connection takes a toll when you're supposed to be attending school online.  Luckily, the modem was replaced today, and all is again well with the world.

Loving Life On The Island

A quick hello from Front Porch Farm!  We've been settling in and getting ourselves oriented to the lay of the land and the somewhat different pace of life here.  Things are a bit more spread out than we're used to, and although we have basically everything we need within 45 minute's drive of the house, not everything is in the same direction! Running errands tends to be a bit more time-consuming than we're accustomed to, and we do try and make our time and trips worthwhile. It hasn't been unusual to be out of the house for 5 or 6 hours as we organize flooring, painting, and 'house' supplies, purchase tools, and simply explore.  We've had to do a bit of searching for particular items we need, including a chainsaw and a ride-on lawnmower.  2 days, and almost 5 hours behind a lawnmower for my first pass on the property showed how important a lawn tractor and a gas-powered trimmer was going to be - just to maintain the property already cleared.  We now both have steel-toed boots, several pairs of work gloves, respirators with air filters, and the basic equipment we will need to see us through until the winter. Speaking of winter, we arrived to find the woodshed had been emptied, so we need to work on that very soon!

We've been settling into the property as well, and getting used to the house and garden - and the quirks that come with each.  The garden soil is oddly barren, and I've started to stockpile rabbit manure, kitchen waste and grass clippings - but have yet to site and build a proper compost pile.  The spot I have in mind is currently overrun with bracken fern and other wild growth.  I have my work cut out for me, as I think the previous owners were accustomed to throwing Miracle Grow at their plants, rather than feeding the soil.  There are some lovely (though rampantly-growing) raspberry bushes which have been keeping us in fresh fruit, and I do have carrots, peas, greens, some root vegetables and other assorted veggies seeded to the existing garden beds (which had been full of chickweed, hawk weed, and plenty of raspberry volunteers when we first arrived).  I've focused on planting for the fall and winter, so I'm seeding carrots, turnips, parsnips, beets, chard, collards, cabbage, kale and lettuce in hopes of having some small amount of harvest after the heat of summer is over.  I also planted a short-season corn, beans, and some tomato plants just for the hell of it. 

I managed to plant out my blueberry, black currant and honeyberry bushes during our first week (and then discovered I will be needing to net them off against the robins next year!). Most of the perennials and herbs which we had potted up and brought over with us have been permanently planted to the beds around the house, or to the "fenced" kitchen garden.  The fence is merely a visual deterrent, as a strong wind could currently push over many of the old posts, and the wire sags fairly heavily.  Fencing is on our priorities list, somewhat behind replacing our 20-year-old well pump and adding a 2500 gallon cistern.  We've run out of water multiple times - which we were assured by the listing realtor was never a problem with 5 adults and garden irrigation for 20 years prior..... *sigh*

On the bright side of that, we've been told that there is supposed to be an undeveloped spring in the low-lying area we are thinking of as a future pond site.  That's an interesting project for next summer - one step at a time.

We've had visits from the local wildlife - a deer in the orchard, and a cougar sniffing around the rabbit cages on one of our first nights here.  Luckily, I had just picked up net fencing from 'up-Island,' and a farming friend was on a day trip for new rabbit stock.  She popped in for a visit and gave us a crash course on setting up our own little electric net area for the bee hives and rabbit cages. No sign of problems since!  

Currently, we're working on the house interior before we unload our shipping container full of furniture and assorted belongings.  The carpet has been ripped out - all but 2 bedrooms on the second floor - and we are prepping, priming, and painting the main floor in preparation for some new subfloor, vinyl and carpet flooring, and low-flow toilets. Vinyl goes in this week, and new carpet the week after that.  We're painting ceilings, walls, and trim in advance, so that we only splatter paint where it doesn't matter. 

Where To Start? A New Beginning...

I finally have an internet connection, access to my laptop (though where my camera is at the moment is anyone's guess), a moment of time where I'm not working, eating, or sleeping, and therefore I will post a brief update on the beginnings of Front Porch Farm...

Though the planning for a move was in the works for several years while we searched for a "suitable" piece of property, we knew the actual move itself was going to be a major undertaking.  As the date of our move became imminent, we began to realize just how major an undertaking we were looking at; after all, we had turned our sixth of an acre in the city into a mini farm, with mason bees, two honeybee hives, 14 rabbit cages, various livestock equipment, assorted plant cuttings and potted divisions, a rather admirable workshop, a very well-equipped kitchen to allow for all of our food preparation and preservation, and a pantry which was sizable - despite our eating the majority of our reserves and emptying out our two small chest freezers in preparation for packing. We had arranged for a 20-foot container, to be dropped, picked up, and delivered to our new address.  There was a 17-foot Uhaul truck rented, and reservations made for the truck on the ferry trip to our new home on Vancouver Island.  I thought I had everything in hand.

As we had a group of friends help us with our final packing of the container, I began to have some serious doubts about being able to find room for all of our remaining belongings.  Thinking it was best to be safe, I consulted with the ferry regarding our reservations, and called UHaul to upgrade our truck to a 26-foot model, actually measuring 34 feet from bumper to bumper - the largest truck I could legally drive without a commercial license.  The reservation was necessary, because we would be transporting the beehives and rabbits, and we therefore qualified for priority sailing on BC Ferries.

The weekend before our move, Adrian had finished his last day of work, and now the packing continued with our undivided attention.  The UHaul was picked up soon after the container was hauled away on Monday (full to the brim thanks to the hard work of many awesome people), meaning we had until first thing on Wednesday to load the remainder of our household goods, the workshop material, and finally the livestock just a short time before we pulled out of the drive.

By Monday evening, it had become glaringly apparent that there was simply not enough space to fit all of what had at this point become known somewhat disparagingly as 'stuff.' I lay awake that night, while Adrian got a few hours of rest, trying to figure out what in the world we were going to do to make our deadline for the new owners to take possession of the house.  It would have been difficult to go back to the buyers and ask for extra time - but added to that, we had the complication of a ferry ride to get where we were going.

Tuesday morning, I woke Adrian with the declaration that we needed a second truck.  It was 6:30 in the morning, and I had no way to contact any reservation desks, but we started the day - Adrian with a bit of rest, and me with fraying nerves and an upset stomach.  As soon as I could, I began to make calls to find us a truck - any truck really,....to find that UHaul had nothing available, and Budget wasn't even answering their 800 number (silly me, heading into an end-of-month holiday long weekend!).  I finally managed to put my name in for a truck with a company I had never heard of, and which required that the truck be returned to the Mainland.  At that point, we were happy with any additional moving ability, and so began the story of Adrian's 5 ferry crossings in 3 days......

We picked the truck up early on Tuesday, and with the help of a couple whom we ourselves had just helped move (karma!), we managed to completely fill our second, 16-foot moving truck, park it out front of Adrian's parents' house, and recommence the loading of our original, upgraded 26-foot truck.  That may have been one of the most stressful experiences of my life.  The day seemed to go on forever, and after our friends had left for the night, Adrian and I continued to move boxes as darkness closed in.  We lay on the floor for an hour and a half around 12:30, then started to load everything that we could fit into the truck in a desperate rush, maneuvering in the hives and the rabbit cages, knowing that we had to be at the ferry at 7:15, a half hour before departure.

We made it with four minutes to spare.

On the closed commercial ferry deck, I opened the back of the truck to give the rabbits fresh air, listened to the sound of annoyed bees and watched as, one at a time, bees stumbled towards the light of the open door, and took flight inside the ferry.

Crap.

I couldn't do anything about the bees, since the hives were wedged in well back of the rabbit cages, blocked from rabbit messes by a wall of plastic, and surrounded by all of that 'stuff' we had managed to squeeze under, around, and over them - so I spent the 2 hour ferry ride cracking the door for the rabbits, and then closing the door when too many bees started to find their way out of the truck. When we arrived at our new home, we very carefully unpacked the rabbits and found that the lids of the hives, though tied down, had tipped and shifted during the drive, allowing some bees to go exploring.  We lost some of our girls, but an inspection shows no damage, and brood in both of the colonies.

The 26-foot truck was emptied on Wednesday, and returned to a local dealer early Thursday.  Adrian took the ferry over that afternoon, to bring back our 16-foot truck, which we proceeded to unload that night in order for him to return in on Friday.  His 5th trip on the ferry was him bringing over our pickup truck, and he got home after eleven.  Then, we slept!