lupinfarm's journal: a pretty little wilderness

[patandchickens]

I really want to start a poultry supply business because as we all know it's terribly difficult to find poultry supplies.

Er, you know that Jason sells supplies as part of his business, yes? Just a sort of basic range. Owing no doubt to the high cost of importing things and maintaining a standing inventory...

Not trying to be a wet blanket, just pointing out that he's already doing it just down the 401 from you...

Also, we've decided that come spring we're going to start get some goat kids. We're salvaging the old paige wire that was on the original farm fencing, there's some pretty huge sections out there and they're all in decent condition so we'll clip them off the t-posts, take the t-posts out for future use, then attach them to the back of the horse fencing so we can almost immediately accomodate goats come spring/summer.

Have you talked with people about confining goat kids in page wire. Goats are exceptionally escapey, never more so than when they are tiny.

I am totally jealous of you getting goats though, they are so much fun I wish I could justify our getting some. Hopefully when the boys reach 4H age...

Have fun,

Pat

 

[MorelCabin]

I think that bussiness is a great idea! Jason has his hands so full since the owner of the other hatchery we had in Ontario died and the hatchery closed. We really need more places to be able to get chicks and supplies. I think you will do well!

 

[lupinfarm]

I really want to start a poultry supply business because as we all know it's terribly difficult to find poultry supplies.

Er, you know that Jason sells supplies as part of his business, yes? Just a sort of basic range. Owing no doubt to the high cost of importing things and maintaining a standing inventory...

Not trying to be a wet blanket, just pointing out that he's already doing it just down the 401 from you...

Also, we've decided that come spring we're going to start get some goat kids. We're salvaging the old paige wire that was on the original farm fencing, there's some pretty huge sections out there and they're all in decent condition so we'll clip them off the t-posts, take the t-posts out for future use, then attach them to the back of the horse fencing so we can almost immediately accomodate goats come spring/summer.

Have you talked with people about confining goat kids in page wire. Goats are exceptionally escapey, never more so than when they are tiny.

I am totally jealous of you getting goats though, they are so much fun I wish I could justify our getting some. Hopefully when the boys reach 4H age...

Have fun,

Pat

Yep I know... he's not really just down the 401 haha, I like to say he's local but he's almost an hour away!

I want it to be more of a hobby farming type store, there are lots of hobby farms and small farms, but there is no supply. You can go to the co-op to buy supplies, but good luck. I put in an order for goat halters about 3 months ago, LOL think I am ever going to see those two halters? ... No they have bigger orders to fill. Same with my damn roofing steel which I wanted pricing for ages ago but have yet to receive a reply because we only need enough for 35 sq. ft. and instead found a guy who had salvage fo $8/sheet and in great condition in Smiths Falls (in the end I was too lazy to get up on the roof of the old chicken shack and take the steel off just yet).

And yeah lol, I know goats are tricksters. My cousins back in England used to have two, Nanny Jeanne and Nanny Joanne... named after my great aunts LOL who were meant to eat the scrub in their drainage ditches. Regularly they'd find them in the village square tormenting church go-ers on a sunday. We will have a small set-up for them at night, a small pen as well and little house.

There's a hobby farm closeby that uses dog kennels and like chicken runs pieces them together and put a three-sided house for them in it, they're out in the fields during the day and in this little run at night.

I think at first they'd be in most of the time, and eased into a larger space with the paige wire fencing. The hobby farm down the road has theirs graze with their horses in a paige wire and electric fenced field and they have yet to escape... though never say never!

 

[lupinfarm]

HA HA HA last night mum and I drove to the end of the road and screwed onto our road sign post a giant egg... that said " Farm Fresh Brown Eggs " and had an arrow pointing towards our road on it, totally felt like criminals even though it's perfectly legal to do so.

I also started making the sign for the coop, our house is called Hill House (We made it up shh, its a house on a hill) and so the coop is called "Hill House Eggery" which I thought was cute as a freaking button.

OMG I have to tell you guys about the mouse! ... Okay well last night I went to bed around 11pm and I was just lying there and I heard this squeaking and walking, and I'm thinking well Accio is downstairs so he can't be in the cold air return again lol and Ginny is downstairs so that must be a mouse. I turned on my bedside light and looked over to where I thought the noise was coming from. And there it is, a mouse backing its way out of the baseboard that I'd pulled off last week.

Anyway, I went downstairs and got Accio to come and dispatch the mouse, so he sees it, his tail puffs up and he's all excited, grabs it and it starts squealing, he lets go because he likes to play with it before death... unfortunately he didn't injure it enough and it went into hiding under the bed. Well after 20 minutes he hadn't caught it so I'm thinking... Ohhh no I am not sleeping with a mouse and a cat in the same room, and the mouse being still alive and running around. So I went down to sleep with my mum in her room.

This morning I went to see if Accio caught it and to let him out, well he did... but he puked up the backend he'd eaten all over my dirty laundry, and he as always left the front end of the body on the floor entact... except... here is where it gets freaky

IT HAD NO EARS OR EYES, and they hadn't been eaten out... IT JUST DIDN'T HAVE THEM. My dad was like, well okay maybe it was a mole... nope it was too small and otherwise it was a normal Deere Mouse, except for the lack of ears and eyes.

Mum reckons that it was born with a deformity, maybe it does have ears but just the canal and no trumpet on it, but no eyes.. and since mice use mostly their nose it would work out in the end.

BUT MAN WAS THAT FREAKY, imagine finding a dead mouse with no ears or eyes?!?!?!

 

[lupinfarm]

Well we filled out the order form for our seed order from Vessey's today LOL.

Here is what we have ordered..

Arcadia Broccoli
Early Dividend Broccoli
Premium Crop Broccoli
Jade Cross Brussels Sprouts
Napoli Carrots
Sweetness 3 Carrots
All Season Blend Cauliflower
Sweeter Yet Cucumber
Tasty Green Cucumber
Spring Garlic Sets
Rome 59 Romaine Lettuce
Tiber Lettuce
Vista Watermelon
Lantha Watermelon
Red Beauty Onions
Cortland Onions
Greek Salad Onions
Parade Bunching Onions
Fat 'N' Sassy Green-->Red Bell Peppers
Early Sunsation Bell Peppers
New Rocket Pumpkins
Big Beef Tomatoes
Classica Tomatoes
CrackerJack Marigolds

And...

Some Garden Inoculant.

All that came to... $108.51 CAD

And we still have to pick up our OSC seeds from the Campbellford Co-op, which includes...

Alaska Peas
Homesteader Peas
Slenderette Beans
Tendergreen Beans
Jade Beans - Substituted for Yard Long Beans
Olympia Double Podded Peas
Green Sprouting Broccoli
Long Island Improved Brussels Sprouts
Coppenhagen Market Cabbage
Mammoth Red Rock Cabbage

And then we need to buy corn, Peaches & Cream, SunnyVee, and Sweetness 2, plus some good sunflowers so I can harvest at the end of the season for the chickens.

As a Legend, Bolded means that I've bought them.

 

[lupinfarm]

It's Friday, and a PA Day so my brother is home.

Last night we were watching CSI and my mum got a message on her cell phone from a girl who called about boarding a week ago. She works at the army base in Trenton as an aircraft mechanic, and is ONLY 21 years old! .. Just a year older than me (I'm 20). She was in the process of hopefully buying two horses from a place in Barrie and after a long discussion with my mum told her that we were her first choice for boarding for her horses as not only did she love the place, we were also the only place that would be willing to take care of her horse/horses while she was away abroad for work (she applied to go to Germany to work as an aircraft mechanic on a base there for 3 months).

Anyway, she called last night to say that she got the horse/horses and would be needing board starting first week of March (I expect she's keeping them at the farm they're at because the earliest someone will trailer is March, which makes sense as the weather is horrible LOL). Anyway, looks like we'll have a boarder first week of March. She just needs to ask a few questions, and we need to get the paperwork out of the way.

Also, update on the mouse... no mice since Accio killed that weird deformed one thank heavens.

... I need to go and water the seedlings upstairs, got some peas going and some lettuce in the itty bitty green house (those plastic ones from Lowes). Then I have to plan out the vegetable garden a bit and our personal vegetable garden that will go at the front of our house. Then I have to deposit some money from my dad and go and buy some layer mash as we ran out last night lol. Hopefully I can get some sunflower seeds as well, and perhaps a flockblock (I noticed they had some flockblock TYPE blocks at the co-op made by Purina but they don't say flockblock... they appear to be for regular wild birds but the ingriedients are all the same). Then I have to make bread.

Eek, way too much work.

 

[lupinfarm]

I think that bussiness is a great idea! Jason has his hands so full since the owner of the other hatchery we had in Ontario died and the hatchery closed. We really need more places to be able to get chicks and supplies. I think you will do well!

We have Frey's as well, but they don't sell the diverse selection of breeds that Jason does.

 

[FarmerChick]

see with spring coming you can surely start getting some boarders. spring means riding and horse people might be calling.....glad your business is starting!!!!

wow with a list like that for seeds, you won't have a minute to sit and rest!

seed catalogs can get you into so much trouble..HA HA HA...but for $108 can you imagine the amt. of food you will be growing! COOL

 

[patandchickens]

Man oh man, I sure hope you've got considerable experience with really big gardens before, with all that! I'd be terrified to plant half as much, even with just a few plants of the big things.

Good luck!

Pat

 

[lupinfarm]

LOL I KNOW, there's a really good chance we're insane.

We've had large FLOWER gardens, a huge one at the old house and I've been gardening since I was a wee little girl LOL.

All the rows are organized by plant type, all the peas and beans are together, with the raspberries etc. at the bottom of the garden. All cabbage like vegetables go together, Cabbage, Brussels, etc. and so on.

Plus the big plants are seperate, like cucumber, squashes, zucchini, pumpkin, watermelon.

Then I also have to plant the corn, that'll be in the old hay field with the other fruit trees we have to buy. LOTS of work, and thats just the sale/freezing garden. Most of that will be either sold at the market in Marmora or frozen for the winter. I also have to do the knot garden at the front of the house, I'm looking at buying 40 rasp/blue/black berry bushes for along the fenceline (we need a garden fence lol, its very bare out there...) which will start giving fruit next year. It also seems we've discovered a massive outcropping of wild raspberries by the barn, HUGE ..probably a 20x20 area of them, and someone planted a grape vine down there sometime as theres at least 50ft of grape vine that is actually producing...though it had to go because it looked like it was getting infected with some sort of bug, and it was in the way of the excavator that came to trench for the new well lines lol.

EEK.

Oh and in other news, we're not going to take boarders until spring cause mum sprung the fact that I have yet to finish the tack room on me LOL.

Dad called today to say he may have more work than he can handle LOL. My dad is a contract computer consultant, works for the major financial houses maintaining their computer systems etc. Right now he's in the middle of filing taxes for HSBC (across Canada) using PDF's etc. He got an email today from a potential client him and his business partner had been trying to nail for almost 6 months and were convinced nothing would come of it. Well the bank emails to say they want him for the original job, plus another one. Now he's afraid he might have TOO much work Which is a very good thing in a very odd way.

I bought my OSC seeds today, I'm still missing a couple varieties of peas and beans but I think I've got everything OSC wise so far. I planted up 4 pots of brussels today (4 seeds to a pot, will need thinning) and 8 pots of Broccoli (3 seeds to a pot, will also need thinning). My sugar snap peas that I had seeds left from last year have sprouted. I've got lots to start, and we're sending off the order to Vessey's Monday I think.