Happy New Year!

From Michael and I and of course all the animals at the farm, we wish all our customers, friends and family 
a very Happy, Healthy and "Green" New Year. 

We thank everyone for their continued support in 2011 and we look forward to providing everyone with "nutritionally dense food" from our fields to your table in 2012.

Hoping we are pregnant!

Don't get too excited about the heading especially family and friends!

Here we are 22 days after we bred Elly and for some reason we are all walking around on egg shells, hoping that she is not going to start flagging her tail and yelling like she normally does as she comes into heat!  So far so good!

We really do hope she is pregnant as the experience of arranging her date was a bit like e-harmony for goats! 

On the day it meant taking Elly on a short drive and she is the goat to take on a short drive, she settles quickly in her cage and you never hear a peep from her.  After our arrival at Spring Meadow Farm we had a few quick introductions with the owners of Aspen as we had only ever chatted on the Internet!  Elly was rather good about it all especially with having an audience for the occasion.   Not having taken a goat to be bred before (we have elected to not keep a buck at our farm, due to smell and housing) we were relying on information from goat books and they all say "attach a long lead to your Doe and stand in the paddock with the Buck and 15 minutes later you will be heading back home." Lets just say they really are not that far from the truth!

So here's hoping for spring kids and what will be the first birth at the farm.

Cedar Glen Elly & Cedar Glen Aspen

I have included a picture of the event, the "cleanest" shot possible!  Elly does not look that impressed about it all!  I think she thought she looked clean enough but Aspen felt she did need a little more licking!!

December is already here!

Not sure where the time really goes but we are already in December and counting the days down till Christmas.

This year has ended with lots of rain which is great as we have a full cistern in the basement heading into winter!  The water table is back to where it should be plus a little extra! But lots of rain and mud does make for some rather grumpy animals around the farm!

Life at the farm at this time of year is one of reflection of the past years growing season.  It's time for us to catch up on the comments from our CSA members about their experience, making plans and changes for next year, reading through seed catalogues and planning for next years garden. Taking reservations for pastured poultry, fattening up our Christmas turkeys, doing the accounts, winterizing the animal housing, taking a goat on a date, collecting more pigs and trying to fly one in from Nova Scotia. Getting hay and straw in for the animals, building the goats a permanent top paddock for winter, discing and cultivating the growing area in between several days of rain at a time, wrapping bee hives, cutting fire wood and also time to attend a few farm auctions, find a manure spreader and catch up with friends who we really don't get to see during the growing season.

Our new but old Cockshutt Manure Spreader

We can actually cross one item off the list which is find a manure spreader!  Ours finally came home this week after a long two year search we finally found one in pretty good condition.  Woo Hoo!!

Michael has a little bit of work to do on our  70 year Cockshutt relic but all being well we will be spreading our animals manure with our own manure spreader in the Spring!