Death with a purpose

Almost a year ago we butchered the first animal on our farm. It was a sad day for Jacob the Ram and honestly it was for me too. Jacob had been on the farm for about three months to do-the-deed for our ewes - and his owners didn't want to take him home and feed him over the winter so we struck a deal. We would pay for the butchering and they would split the meat with us. Now - meat and Jacob just didn't go well in the same sentence for me at that point. Of course I KNEW what had to be done but the thought of the actual DOING was another story. It hit a home run into the knowing-where-your-food-comes-from field.

The night came when he needed to be delivered to the butchers barn and I was dreading it. The weather was terrible when his owner came to pick him up but I felt like I needed to do my part. I helped load him into the back of the van. Just to draw the picture further that's a passenger van - not a truck - and poor Jacob was squished between the back seat and the hatch so he couldn't run around. (Can't you just imagine a Children's book title to tell these stories: A Sheep in a Jeep - A Ram in a Van) I was troubled but prepared to go with him to drop Jacob off but he said: The roads are terrible - stay home. He didn't have to twist my arm. I waved goodbye and guiltily went back into the house.

About a week later we went to pick up the meat. We met up at the butchers shop and I remember staring down at little brown packages in a big clear plastic bag and trying to figure out where to put this new experience in my mind. It felt weird. That was Jacob. I had known that animal. I had fed him and cleaned up after him and scratched him under his chin. He was probably going to be the father of my baby lambs. All these thoughts rushed through my mind in a mad scramble with no where to go.

The Jacob-meat was in the freezer for almost two months before we got up the courage to eat it. I guess we needed time to adjust to the reality of how the cycles of life really worked. When the kids began to ask if we were having Jacob for dinner I knew we had all crossed over some invisible line into being keepers of animals and not just keepers of pets.

We made another trip this week to bring our 47 "meatie" birds, 7 roosters and 10 ducks to the abattoir. The day started at 4:45 when we crawled out of bed and had a quick cup of tea. Four of us rounded up the animals and shoved them squawking and quacking into specially made crates which we had picked up the night before. They were then loaded onto a trailer and delivered by the three sleepy men to the loading dock of Morrisons in Omemee. Then they went out for breakfast and I went back to bed! I guess this is the part where they aren't the happy chickens and ducks anymore!

Morrisons is the only place around that can process poultry and it's a busy place. Trucks and vans and trailers are lined up waiting their turn to load or unload. We saw one open tailer being loaded with what must have been 100's of birds ready for the freezer. In comparison our piddly 65 didn't seem like much at all in the parking lot although when it came time to deliver them and put the rest in the freezer they seemed like plenty!

This process was another great example of paying for your education with real-life experience. We figure we'll be lucky to break even this time around - here's what I learned.

1. Getting meat chicks in September is later than I want to do this next time.
2. I don't like cornish cross birds. They grow so quickly they can hardly walk by the time they are full grown, they eat a LOT and don't move around that much. They are completely different from our other chickens who wander the farm and range much farther. I'll be looking for a heritage meat bird for the next time.
3. We've tried everything with the waterers - we just couldn't keep them full and finally went with a swimming pool in their pen. A disasterous choice for keeping the pen clean and dry. I'm looking into a drip system for all the birds for next spring.
4. Ducks cost more than twice as much to butcher as chickens because their feathers are waterproof and they take much longer to pluck.
5. We should have let the ducks get bigger before we butchered them - they ended up kinda scrawny and far too expensive for the size!
6. We have to find another source or another way to deal with bedding in their pens - so much got wasted.

That's life at Shalom Engedi Farm and the continuing adventures of a small city girl becoming a small country farmer - who will perhaps one day actually make some money at this venture.

How to stay motivated and keep moving forward...

My DH and I have a fair bit on our plates like most other people.  We live out here in heaven with animals to care for and 10 acres & a 150 year old home to look after but there are also the realities of working from home (that's the business that makes the money so we can live on the farm), family - including more than a few semi-grown-up young adults - friends, church activities, prepping and more.  Life at warp speed is complicated without some way of keeping on top of things.

I was finding that we were having a hard time focussing on what needed to be done next, what needed to be purchased next and what we could do ourselves and where we needed to hire some help.   Somehow moving out to the country also added the pressure of the seasons to our lives in a way we had not experienced before...consequently we also needed to find time for some rest in our crazy schedule.   It was certainly no fun to be doing everything at the last minute under pressure when it HAD to be done or missing opportunities because we didn't plan ahead.

I am blessed to be married to my best friend and abundantly blessed that we are both headed in the same mental direction the majority of the time - if you knew my DH some would say the direction of the crazy-train.  Even so the following has helped our marriage to become even stronger and reduced the frustration of unmet expectations of the Honey-Do list. 

I'm the nerd of the family.  I love lists and I am pretty organized so since it was bothering ME that we were not getting as much done as I thought we could I developed a series of LISTS.

The first is anything and everything to do with our business which we run from our home. 

The second is our finances and purchases. 

The third what needed to be done around the farm and in what order. 

The fourth our living healthy goals - family relationships, eating well, exercise and rest. 

The fifth the part time/fulltime job we have working with teenagers and young adults. 

These 5 major areas encompass almost everything we do even though life rarely fits neatly into catagories. 

Along with these lists I learned two lessons a few years ago that have become the boundary lines that frame the HOW-TO part of what we call the Priority Meetings. 

The first lesson I call the Lesson of the Green Fence.  When we lived in town we had a short section of fencing that ran between our house and the neighbours at the end of the driveway.  It needed staining.  It had needed staining for several years.  I got around to buying the green stain one summer but winter was here before we got the job done.  I was too busy discussing how I would do it and which brush I needed.  I was concerned about the weather being right and the time it would take to dry.  I talked about that fence a lot.  For a long time.  For at least a year and a half.  One bright sunny day I FINALLY talked my daughter into helping me stain the fence.  In 20 minutes we were done - that's all it took.  I had pondered and worried and talked about the fence 10x longer than it actually took to do the job.  Lesson 1: Seriously - Just Paint the Fence!  Whatever job you have on your list won't get done by staring at it and mulling it over and over.  Good planning is essential of course but there's a point where it becomes analysis paralysis which can prevent you from moving forward at all.

The second lesson I call the Lesson of the Red Couch.  We were redecorating the family room in our old home.  It was a very tiny room so there wasn't room for much in there but we replaced the flooring and were ready to put the old and sad looking TV stand back into the room and purchase a new couch.  Everything was going according to plan when when I found THE TV cabinet.  It was the perfect color and size and style and it was ON-SALE.  The problem was it was going to eat up the entire budget for the room AKA the new couch.  I made the VERY WISE and MATURE decision to buy the cabinet anyway.  Our puppy had destroyed the couch so we had already taken it to the dump anticipating it's replacement but we would just sit on the floor… it would be fine...  Well that lasted about two weeks.  It was a really dumb idea and very uncomfortable!  I had previously picked out the couch I wanted.  It was the most beautiful couch I had ever anticipated buying.  I had sat on it numerous times. It was RED. (If you know me at all you would know that was the deciding factor!)  It was also a pullout bed so it made good-practical-sense as well.  It was also expensive...and there was no way to squeeze that much money out of the grocery budget any time soon.  So we went to the furniture store (the one that has the huge headlines and colorful flyer) and bought the front-page-on-sale-special-pricing brown couch.  It was cheap.  It IS uncomfortable - almost as bad as the floor.  I HATE it.  Being a practical girl I can't buy another couch - I have a perfectly good uncomfortable couch.  I'm stuck with it until I can foist it off on one of my kids when they leave home - that would assuage my practical-but-guilty conscience and allow me to buy another one but not until then.  I still walk by that red couch on occasion.  I shoulda waited.  Lesson 2:  Wait for the red couch!  Quality is worth the extra money.  Waiting is an exercise of self-control and worth it every time!

We then chose Monday nights to conduct our PRIORITY MEETINGS. Each week we cover these 5 topics as best we can and make a detailed plan of what were doing that week and how to keep all the "balls in the air". We use the previous list and update and print it so we both can have a copy on our desks for reference. We were both surprised at how much of a difference this made in our productivity. It reduced stress too and that has been good motivation to continue meeting and discussing. The fact that we make these date nights on occasion and head for a local coffee shop is a great help as well. A bit of advice: if you choose to try-this-at-home -start small.  Somehow on Monday nights you feel like you will be able to accomplish much more than is realistic and by Friday that becomes apparent when you need to reside the garage, hoe (by hand) the back 40, stack a years supply of hay in the barn and provide dinner for 53 guests all on Saturday night. 

My list doesn't seem to get any shorter but we're getting a lot of it done.  Looking back over the year and a half we've been here we've actually accomplished a lot but most of it is quickly forgotten until Mr. Farmer the Previous Owner shows up to exclaim (or perhaps shed a few tears) over all the changes and progress we've made. 

Communicating about our goals means I know where we're at with our finances, what I need to save for and buy, what's going on this week with the business or the kids and what needs to get done.   I have a list - so now it's time to get off my uncomfortable brown couch and go out and paint another fence!

Green eggs - no ham.

The Kawartha Lakes Co-operative Auction Market or just-plain Woodville for short is the not-so-close-by place to go if you're looking for livestock animals.   I've only been there once.  My daughter and I were overwhelmed with the sights and sounds of animals, cars and trucks backing up filled with cages, people and farm equipment. We had only been living at the farm a few weeks and at that point our livestock consisted of all of 6 chickens - if you don't count the barn cats and the city dog.  I was so intimidated by the auction process that we didn't even get a number.  I could only imagine ending up with a cow for scratching my nose at the wrong time.  We decided to just stand and watch and hopefully learn.  Like any other auction - things moved along really fast and I wasn't quite sure how much things sold for or if it was a good deal or not.  We took the wimpy-route and headed for an area of the property where you could buy chicks and ducklings without the auction process.  We just went to look...and walked away with 4 Muscovy ducklings.  Cute little balls of fluff that we didn't have a clue about.  We went back to the car with them in a cardboard box and then scrambled to figure out what to do with them on the way home.

They lived in a hamster cage in our very-back-room (that's the addition to the addition) until the smell necessitated their removal to a more permanent home in the barn.  These ducks have been a great asset to our farm.  They eat an incredible amount of bugs, they are very entertaining in their strange head-bobbing sort of way, and they have provided us with fresh eggs and recently baby ducklings.

Sometime early this spring we were thinking about getting some more chickens but somehow a trip to Woodville just wasn't making it into the schedule with all the other things to do.  Our neighbour Ray was here rototilling the garden when he mentioned he was headed for Woodville the next weekend.  I think going to Woodville is his Saturday morning tradition and one he rarely misses.   Well the two thoughts converged and I asked him if he would mind looking around for us to see if he could find a COUPLE of Ameraucana blue/green egg laying chickens for us.  Somehow he thought "a couple" was 30 chicks.  Mercy - what was I going to do with 30 more chickens?!!  At that point we already had 40 or more.  We were really in the chicken business now!

It takes 18-22 weeks before chicks get big enough to lay eggs so we waited and waited...I had just given up on ever seeing a blue/green egg when finally we had the Dr. Seuss moment I had been waiting for.  GREEN EGGS - no ham.

Most adults would play this cool -  we have increased our egg production.  NOT ME!!  Yippee we have green eggs!!  It was worth the wait just for the coolness factor.

Almost everyone who hears about these new-fangled-eggs (that are actually old-fangled if you think about it) asks HOW COME?  So here's your birds-and-bees moment for the day.  Chickens lay eggs according to the color of…….. their EARS.  Really. Betcha didn't even know chickens HAD ears (yeah - me neither) White eared chickens like leghorns lay white eggs.  Brown eared chickens like our red-sex links lay brown eggs and black chickens with green ears (I have not personally ever seen their green ears) lay green or blue eggs.  Just for the record the roosters only part in this is fertilizing the eggs so they can hatch into chicks - he doesn't influence the color of the eggs.

So what do green eggs taste like?  Well - like an egg.  Nutritionally all the eggs on our farm would have similar nutritional quality because they all eat the same bugs, green stuff and feed. The color of the shell is just an interesting side bar.

Most of the eggs currently sold in supermarkets are nutritionally inferior to eggs produced by hens raised on pasture. That’s the conclusion that Mother Earth News has reached following completion of the 2007 Mother Earth News egg testing project. The testing has found that, compared to official U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrient data for commercial eggs, eggs from hens raised on pasture may contain:

• 1/3 less cholesterol

• 1/4 less saturated fat

• 2/3 more vitamin A

• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids

• 3 times more vitamin E

• 7 times more beta carotene

Mother Earth News also reports: We think these dramatically differing nutrient levels are most likely the result of the different diets of birds that produce these two types of eggs. True free-range birds eat a chicken’s natural diet — all kinds of seeds, green plants, insects and worms, usually along with grain or laying mash. Factory farm birds never even see the outdoors, let alone get to forage for their natural diet. Instead they are fed the cheapest possible mixture of corn, soy and/or cottonseed meals, with all kinds of additives.

Happy Chickens and Ducks at Shalom Engedi Farm -  free ranged chicken eggs - now in three colors to choose from! (that's my commercial) 

There you have it.  Green eggs - no ham - and I like them Sam I am!!  Move over Dr. Seuss!

Urban Chickens

The Cost of My Education

When I was in high school I was a mostly average student except in Math - were I was a complete dunce.  My grade nine advanced math teacher gave me and F+ - the plus for trying really hard and still not getting it.  Having to go through life and not understanding the intricacies of higher math didn't really impact me at that stage of my daily life - and I have so far managed without it more or less. Practical math was more my forte - but then again - you be the judge.

My DH and I have a philosophy in life. We are of the mind that a non-traditional financial educational system can be very effective.  Some people have another name for our philosophy - they call it paying Stupid Tax.  We've paid stupid tax many times over our lives and this was no exception - perhaps we should have had a little more input from a professional about building the coop...

Our first chicken coop was some mathematical equation that reversed all the known rules of our Universe or at least everything we had ever learned up to that point in our lives about financial wisdom.  On the whole we're a frugal bunch but somehow it all went out the window when it came to housing the girls.   I'm sure it was OK/LM x BH=UCC which means Overkill over Lots of Money x Big Headaches = Ultimate Chicken Coop

Our chicken coop was amazing!  We started out with our children's playhouse (long outgrown) and turned it into the Most Expensive Backyard Chicken Coop on the planet.  It had to be perfect.  I didn't want my chickens to live in squalor - they were going to live in a Fort Knox safe, Martha Stewart organized, Better Homes and Gardens beautiful coop.  Oh it certainly was.. We designed and painted and fiddled and had Handyman Lew come and make changes till we got it perfect. We even laid sod in the covered outdoor run. It looked so cute and adorable…

 

...until our 6 red sex link chickens arrived.  Darn things pooped everywhere and ate the grass down to mud in less than two weeks.  It seems they were much less concerned about looks than I was. I'm not sure that they appreciated anything since they are rather bird-brained.  They just pecked and scratched and did chicken-stuff while making some quiet clucking sounds now and then and a few loud squawks when laying eggs.

We worried about them being cold over the winter.  DH won't admit this in public but he woke me up several times on cold and blustery nights just to ask if I thought the chickens were warm enough.  My sleepy and half coherent reply probably went something like - if you are so concerned why don't YOU go an check on them and LET-ME-SLEEP!  Ok - I worried too - a little.  But I had been reassured by many others online that they would be fine even in sub-zero weather and it seems they were.

Our coop was not insulated but it was small enough that the body heat of the six girls did add up to raise the temperature a few degrees from the outside.  Of course without the wind it really wasn't unpleasant at all but then again the hens declined to give me written statements.  We installed vents near the roofline to deal with the "fumes" and in nice weather we left the windows - which were covered with hardware cloth - open.  Air quality is of great concern for birds.  A dry and reasonably well ventilated space is more important than a closed up tight and warm one.  One of the challenges of any chicken farmer is keeping the water from freezing.  We used the simplest method - we had two waterers and brought one in to defrost and fill while the other was in the coop.  We changed out the water several times a day if it was super cold but usually once a day was enough in good weather.

The outdoor run caused us the most trouble.  We built it to withstand an army.  We went overkill on the size of the wood we used but it was good and sturdy - you could walk on the joists.  We used hardware cloth - not chicken wire which is far too flimsy and not enough to withstand an attack by raccoon or neighbourhood dog.  We also added polycarbonite panels to the roof so the run wouldn't get so muddy in the rain - that was a luxury I'm not sure was worth the money.  We made one huge design flaw that we were unable to fix and that was the height of the run.  It matched up to the roofline but it was a very VERY unpleasant job to clean out the run while bent over - make the run at least 6 feet tall!

For the record we used chicken egg layer pellets from our local co-op store for feed.  That's pellets instead of crumbs - much less waste with the larger pellets.  I am in the process of finding a more sustainable feed option but it has been problematic for several reasons I won't go into right now.  At that point I was more concerned with learning how the whole farming process worked while not killing the chickens with my lack of knowledge.  Time for getting creative comes with some more experience.

Starting out with any new project means there needs to be some money involved.  I consider it money well spent when I learn from the challenges and mistakes I've made.  When I added up the expenses and divided by the number of eggs we got in the one year the coop was in use I think the eggs came out to about $6.00 a piece.  A great deal don't you think when you consider it also made a chicken farmer out of me and that was priceless!

No man is an island...

I was considering what a typical prepper family might look like and I couldn't really come up with an answer. I suppose if there was one we-wouldn't-be-it. All I know is that I have no illusions about being an independent survivalist happily living in the back woods eating squirrels and sleeping in a lean-to. I'm not even preparing for that and I LIKE camping.

We're here for better or for worse and so we're going to make the best of it.

My DH has Muscular Dystrophy. He's mobile but hindered by his condition. I live with diabetes. My son has a learning disability. We've all learned to adapt to our collective situation. My DH cuts down trees sitting in a lawn chair. He has a most awesome cane made out of shovel handle that he uses for wandering the back paddock and getting around the farm. My son and I have learned to rely on each other to handle everything from lugging heavy bags of feed (which I could hardly do last year - this year=muscles!) or chasing wayward animals back into their pens. That means the big lifting jobs and chores are left to my son and I and any extra kids I can rope into coming over to stay for awhile and help out (thanks to Jacquie, Sarah, Danny and Courtney who helped out in the past few weeks!) Some of my own kids are married and moved out, some are away at school so even though I am prepping for a crowd most of the time it's-just-the-three-or-four-of-us.

I am preparing to live in community. I know that regardless of what happens in the future the answer is to be part of a community. I have a relationship with Rebecca the sheep shearer, Lew our handyman, Karen the donkey farrier, Dale the electric fence guy, my mail carriers Cathy and Dolly, my many and assorted country neighbours, farming cousins, church members, city friends, friends online and my immediate family. I will never be an island. I would be bored silly and I'd have to start talking to myself (oh- I already do that!).

I wonder sometimes if life would be simpler without all this community fuss. It means learning to communicate and have boundaries. It means accommodating people and dealing with problems when things don't go as planned. It means putting up with extra laundry, more mouths to feed, different sleep schedules, different personalities...and dirty socks on the living room floor. Deep down I know it's worth the effort but when I'm texting SHUT UP AND GO TO BED at 1am to my teenage house guests I have a few doubts - smile. In reality this IS life and it's exactly the one I want.

I don't know how to do everything but almost certainly one of my friends does. They aren't even necessarily preppers...yet. We help each other. I can be a listening ear or an answer to a canning question for a friend. They rewire my barn, help move heavy animal feeders or take my extra pumpkins (those are extra good friends!)

Who do you lean on? Are you in danger of becoming an island? No one can do it all even in the best of health. Reach out and start building community today. It will enrich your life now and most definitely be a blessing in the future whatever it brings.

Church Penny Sale

I had heard about the Penny Sale to raise money for the local church but I didn't know what it was...until a few months ago.

Last year My-Friend-Donna-who-lives-in-town called to give me the dates for the Penny Sale and I was really disappointed that I couldn't make it.  For me moving to the country meant getting involved in the local community and this was a great opportunity and I had to miss it.  Well - I guess I went on and on about how sorry I was to have missed it because Donna decided that they would change the night - just-for-me.  I felt so special! 

I didn't realise at the time that she had ulterior motives…(smile). 

Planning work began in October.  She and her DH tried really hard to explain the whole thing to me.  I must have looked as confused as I felt because she suddenly had a bright idea.  Come with me and a few friends to the Seniors Penny Sale the next town over and you'll get to see it all in action. 

After a full afternoon with someone giving me the tour I finally understood - my visual learning style came out!  It was a great community bonding event and a lot of fun. 

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about here's the basics.

1. A wild and varied assortment of gently used and new items are donated to the cause by community members who set things aside or make beautifully handcrafted items all year long just so they can donate them.
2. All the items are set out on tables - much like a giant bazaar room  - and each item has a cup attached to it.
3. First you pay a $2.00 admission fee that gets you coffee, tea and goodies.
4. Then you buy penny sale tickets - One big ticket stub with 25 little stubs - all with the same number on them. (It used to be 100 tickets for $1.00 - now it's 75 - inflation I guess - thus the term "Penny Sale")
5. You cruise the selection and drop your tickets into the cups of the items you are interested in.
6. After a set time everyone settles in to hear the numbers being drawn and the winners have the items delivered right to their seats.

My biggest hint is to start ripping apart your ticket stubs at home - it took much longer than I thought it would and by the end I had the whole family furiously ripping stubs as the time to leave to serve the coffee drew near! 

It was a fantastic night.  Aunt Ruby's canning, Donna's quilted pillows and stockings and the bake table were among the highlights.  If all goes well you end up with the things you wanted - like the 100th anniversary commemorative plates and mugs from the local church or some quilted stockings! 

I spent the first part of the night serving coffee and tea and trying hard to remember everyone's names.  At least the faces are getting more and more familiar! 

DH and I sat with two of our kids and Mr. Farmer - the previous owner of Shalom Engedi Farms.  I was feeling sorry for him because none of his numbers were being pulled but then I found out he had placed ALL his tickets in the baking area.  When the numbers were called for the bake table he had a big grin on his face - I think he bought lots of tickets!  He really likes baking.  He even accidentally won a jar of jam which he promptly traded someone for more baking - guess I know what to make him for Christmas! 

It takes time to build relationships but it's worth it.  I love my small community...and I'm already looking forward to next year - besides I need to win a match to my quilted pillow! 

Mistakes I've made...

Before our big move to the country I did a lot of reading.  I read every book I could get my hands on that had anything to do with homesteading, hobby farming, livestock animals, self sufficiency etc. because I wanted to learn as much as I could to avoid the painful learning curve I knew was coming when we finally got here.  I have shelves of books, stacks of books and piles of books falling off my desk. Well - it helped - a little bit…but none of it completely prepared me for our very own reality. 

I had read many times that book learnin' and actual real life 'perience were two different things.  Now I know it to be truth by my own hard-won experience.   

I did so many things wrong.  Some things went wrong despite my best intentions and sometimes I just didn't think things all the way through.  Thankfully no animals were harmed in the making of this farmer. 

Chickens got left outside the coop at night.

The sheep and the donkey got loose more times than I can count.

I fed the ducks chicken-feed because I was told it was almost the same - one duck got crook neck but later recovered.

We closed up the chicken coop nice and tight so the girls would be warm and nearly killed them with kindness from the ammonia.

We lugged water from the basement for 33 hours in the rainy springtime because we didn't buy a generator as soon as we should have. 

My blooper list goes on and on. 

I've also had to get over the fact that I can't control everything - well that was a surprise!  Animals died from unknown causes. Raccoons broke into the feed room and ate us out of house and barn.  The eavestrough 30 feet above our heads sprung a major leak right above the main entrance to the barn creating our very own outdoor shower.  I asked a neighbour to find me a few heritage breed chicks and he came home with thirty - that was my mistake because I shoulda clarified "a couple". 

But I have had more successes than I deserve for only being at this for a year and a half.  My garden didn't do too badly but I have my first List-of-things-I-will-do-differently-next-year.  I learned how to install electric fence to keep in the escapees.  I learned how not to wrestle sheep and donkeys - they follow the shepherd just like the Bible says.  I learned to count the chickens before I shut up the coop for the night.  I've learned the different sounds of contented animals and the ones that make me drop everything and run to see what the problem is. I've learned how to deal with pressure tanks, sump pumps, water softeners, wells and lots and lots of chicken poop. 

There is no book on earth that can teach you everything I've learned in the past year and a half and I am no where near done learning.  You just have to dive into your own experience - whatever it brings - and learn to live with the fact that you're human and you will make mistakes. 

Don't wait till the last minute - till things really count.  Make your mistakes now when it's not the end of the world.  Figure out how the kerosene heater works now.  Get backyard chickens.  Start gardening and canning now.  Store food. 

...and hurry up and make some mistakes before I cover them all by myself!

Boys - OH Boy!

We've had a rather exciting addition to our farm in the past week - Mr. Sheepie.  We did try to give him another name but we called him Mr. Sheepie while we were thinking about it and the name has just-plain-stuck.  Mr. Sheepie is a Shetland Ram - a beautiful light and dark brown mix of kinky hair with curly horns. Remember the horn part - that will be important.

He arrived via an ad on kijiji and was delivered by his owner who was a wonderful wealth of information of which I took full advantage.  In our conversation I also found out he was a long lost relative of the previous owners of this farm - insert - very small world - here.

Mr. Sheepie has a purpose on the farm like all the other animals we raise.  He's here to make babies.  Hopefully really cute babies that will one day provide us with pasture raised lamb.  He quickly made himself right at home and met the girls and Maybe the donkey without incident.  All was well in my little corner of the world until two days later.

The phone rang.  It was my neighbour.  She had never called me before.  A sense of dread came over me...oh are you missing a sheep?  I sure hoped not but after a description I recognized the escapee - Mr. Sheepie.  At this point - no worries - he was safely tucked away in a pen in their horse barn and I could come and get him whenever I was ready.  I don't know what we were thinking but we grabbed a halter and leads with the thought that we would just hook him up and walk him back home.  Oh how naive!

The neighbours took pity on us for underestimating how difficult it was going to be and offered to put him in the back of their jeep and transport him home.  All went well.  We were feeling like real farmers.  We had a problem and we had a solution...until Mr. Sheepie jumped out of the back of the jeep in between 4 adults and took off - towards the stallions.  Sigh...this is where things really go downhill.

We circled around seeing that he was headed for the field of 8 of the hugest horses I have ever seen.  Somehow to him they looked less scary that 4 adults with a bucket of feed so in he went.  The horses sensed the presence of the devil himself and set out to eradicate him.  They grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and swung him around like a dog toy.  They kicked (and thankfully missed) him. Meanwhile I stood back praying he would live while simultaneously calculating the cost of a new Mr. Sheepie.  My neighbours in a show of what it means to be the most-awesome-neighbours-in-the-whole-world went into the field to try to ward off 8 angry stallions.  After what seemed like an hour but was probably ONLY 5 very-long minutes they managed to grab Mr. Sheepie from the jaws-of-death and drag him - still unwilling - under the electric fence to safety.  Mr. Sheepie lived to see the inside of his own stall in his own barn that night. 

Now back to the horn part.  Yeah - you would think he would have been grateful but OH NO.  He has escaped his pen more times than I can count by pounding the walls with those lovely horns.  We have reinforced and repaired every-single-wall.  We would think THAT-SHOULD-DO-IT and he would bust out another wall, jump the interior walls of the barn and head for the open road.  So we've now chased him all over the property, down the road and back into the pen over and over like a repeating nightmare.  Yesterday he was standing at the back door when we came out to do chores.  That was the last straw! 

Tomorrow Mr. Sheepie will meet his match - Mr. Electric Fence.

This is my very first post on the Canadian Preppers Network as a blog author... you can find the official version here.

http://www.canadianpreppersnetwork.com/2011/11/hello-from-ontario.html

I live on a farm. When I read those words a few years ago I would be awash with a longing that almost hurt. I wanted to be able to say that! Now I can.

Self-discipline is remembering what you really want. That was the mindset that got us from the city to the country - we had a goal in mind and we kept working towards it - little by little every day. We have been preppers for 8 or 9 years now - slowly coming to the conclusion that life as we knew it was perhaps not even the life we wanted. It sure didn't have much in the way of security. If the power went out I figured we had about 6 hours in the winter and we'd be forced to leave our home. Never mind the lack of lights and the freezer defrosting. We came up with ways to avoid most of those issues temporarily but the longing remained to have a place to call our own where we could live more self sufficiently. It was many small decisions and steps that got us from that place to this place and there's many steps to go before this place is all that we dream it can be.


I live with my family on a small farm surrounded by conservation lands. We raise chickens, ducks for meat and eggs and sheep. We also have a donkey, 6 barn cats and a spoiled city dog.


Life here is an amazing adventure of FINALLYS. We finally had room for a huge garden - that had lots of weeds in it this summer but actually produced quite well. We could finally have more animals than the 6 urban chickens of our city life. We could finally sit in our "backyard" and hear - silence... We could finally run out of the house in our pjs to feed the cats or get the mail! Well - it doesn't take much to make me happy!


I hope to share some of my adventures with you in the coming weeks. From food storage and canning to backyard chickens and beyond. I'm not an expert - just someone who loves to learn and happily lives on a farm.

Solar - if this is a test I hope I passed.

Cam Mather's friend is Bill Kemp who wrote The Renewable Energy Handbook which is printed by Cam and Michelle's Aztext Press.

That book like a textbook for people like me who don't know the difference between an amp and a watt. I am a plug-and-play kind of girl BUT I am willing to learn and I am determined to learn more so I am going to study the book - not just read it.

Cam believes that peak oil is the major event that will change our world. Whether it is or isn't really isn't important because the current events are leading many of us to the same conclusion: we could be put into a situation where we need to find a way to heat and power our homes without the power grid.

He has a thermal hot water system - basically a solar panel that hooks up to his hot water tank. Between the thermal system and his solar system and heating water on top of his wood stove they will never run out of hot water!

Their solar array is capable of producing 15 kilowatts of electricity a day if there is good sun for 5 hours - that's a pretty conservative estimate for most times of the year. They use about 5 kilowatts so they often have "extra" power which is stored in a battery bank and used for days when production is limited by lack of sunshine. The average homeowner uses 35-40 kilowatts a day and at our property last winter we averaged a whooping 81 kilowatts. Our 150 year old farmhouse that uses oil heat - not even electric- and our need for running water in the barn made it very expensive to run. (I hope I got all the details right.)

Of course the best course of action is to make your home as efficient as possible because the cost of a solar power array large enough to keep up with us would be astronomical! (Hydro One sized!)  So - read up on all the ways to save energy - switching lightbulbs to energy efficient ones - there was some talk about $9.00 LED lightbulbs that are available at WalMart that I want to check out. Insulation and all the other stuff you've probably heard of already - power bars on electrical equipment etc. Saving energy is good for all of us - whether you want to reduce your consumption to be able to use solar exclusively or just to save money!  Thankfully we've already done many of those things so hopefully our electrical consumption this winter will be reduced a lot - a really big a lot!!

This area was by far the most interesting topic and new to me. We don't have a woodstove but it is within the realm of possibilities to get one installed. Solar seems a little more out there but an answer that totally makes sense to me. Of course I am not a millionaire so this will be a long term project but you need to aim for something!

The Renewable Energy Handbook is available through http://www.aztext.com and any major book store - totally worth the money!!