Farm auction!

Yesterday, Tessa, Ellie (Tessa and Matt's little girl) and I went to our first farm auction!

As I got ready to leave our place, I looked outside: a little chilly, but it looked like it would clear up.  Excellent, I thought, it's time to welcome Spring by heading out without a jacket.  Well, it was quite windy at Tessa's, and as we were driving to the auction the wind continued to pick up and it started to rain.  Then it hailed for a few minutes.  Then we found some blue sky, and the sun came out.  We cycled through wind, rain, hail, snow, and sun throughout the entire auction.  But we hid in the outbuildings, and when the sun came out we rejoiced and ventured out of the pole shed.

Auctioning off items on a trailer, in the rain

 Jordan was just getting off night shift, so he wasn't able to join us, but I had brought home the item list for him to read.  He got all excited about the welder listed on the flyer, and said "Take the chequebook, I'd pay $400 for that welder, we need one."  I successfully won the bidding war, and got the welder for $210.

Our new welder :)

 I also got some fencing; there was a pallet with two rolls of chicken wire and two bigger rolls of plastic-coated chain link that I got for $35.  I'll use the chain link to build the chicken tractor in a few weeks.

There were some other great items: three tractors, a D6 Cat bulldozer with a blade (which went for $5100; the piling blade for it went for $1000), and a selection of scales.

This is a beautiful platform scale - I didn't catch how much it went for.  Unfortunately, I wasn't lucky bider 137.

The big machinery was all out in a row in the field

A potato planter on the left ($950), and a potato harvester on the right ($2500).

Tessa introduced me to one of our neighbours, Mr. Doug Milner.  He's just up the road, and has a herd of Belgians.  He used to hay our place years ago, and was able to give me a little bit of history on water runoff.  I was quite happy to meet him!

We all came home muddy, happy, and excited for the next auction in June.  It looks like both of the guys will be able to join us, and we'll both bring the trucks.

In other news...

We are working on the farmers forum - keep an eye out for an update on that soon.

Our snow is melting quite quickly, and it looks like we'll avoid any flooding.  There's some water pooling in the low spots, but I'd guess that it's no more than 3 or 4 inches deep, and it likely won't stick around for very long.  There's a chance that we'll be ripping up sod in the next few weeks!

Our seedlings are starting to sprout!  We started a few things last weekend: corn, tomatoes, onions and pumpkins.  There's little green things sticking up in almost each tray section - just a few of the tomatoes are lagging behind, but I'm sure they'll be up soon too.

Project season will be starting soon!  We'll kick it off by excluding the bats and taking a look at what's under the tin on the roof, likely next weekend.  I'll probably build some bat houses next weekend too - I'd like to keep the bats around, just not in our roof!

Creating a community

In advance - sorry for the wall of text!

As I mentioned in this post, I have been thinking about our community of farmers a lot lately.  We run in to each other at events, where we can chat for an hour (or more!) after the event, catching up and sharing information, ideas, and ideals.  There are a few organizations that want to help us new farmers who have our contact information, such as Jillian at Beyond the Market (who also has a list of local farms and an email list for their newsletter) and Garry and Wendy at Twin Meadows Organics.  However, there's no system set up for us to contact each other.  As I've been catching up with new and familiar faces at events, we've all mentioned a desire for more communication within our community, not just from third parties.  I do not want to replace what Jillian is doing for us, as she is a fabulous workshop organizer, a wonderful source of information, inspiration, and advice, and a tireless advocate for all farmers in the region.  What I would like to see is a way for us new and young (and experienced!) farmers to collaborate; there are certain things each of us needs to know (farm status info, where to find tractor implements, good fencing suppliers, etc), and certain things each type of farm needs to know (sources of seeds/breeding stock/young animals/feed, innovative designs for greenhouses/heated waterers/livestock pens and chutes, etc).  There are also some of us who have other time commitments that keep us from farming full time (for example, Jordan and I are both working full time), and also limit the time that can be spent researching.  If every farmer in the region who wants to do chickens this year has to independently find suppliers for chicks, feed, and necessary items, each one would be spending probably at least 4 hours gathering this information.  If 6 farms want to do chickens, that's 24 hours spent researching.  We could collaborate on this, and one person checks out chick suppliers, another checks out local feed producers, and a third stops at the farm stores in town to check prices of equipment, it would be less work for each farmer, and many other farmers could benefit if that knowledge is shared with the group.  If we build a repository of this information that each of us is collecting, we would all save time and money (fuel, phone bill, and we all know time is money) and we'd build a supportive community at the same time.  We could also get together for work parties, harvest potlucks, and other social events.  (Ideally, I'd love to see a makerspace or co-op workshop set up in the future, but that's a little extreme to be thinking of at this time.)

So, what I'm hoping to build is an online space where we can get to know each other, communicate amongst us, share information and ideas, and collaborate to develop innovative solutions.  There are two parts to this: communication and knowledge-sharing.  I've chatted with Tessa and Matt (another young farming couple) and Cam (a student at the local university where I work and a young farmer) about how we can best set this up.

Communication has a shorter lifespan than sharing; email works great, but it can be hard for each of us to build an email list of like-minded farmers.  A few ideas:

• Develop an email list - I've thought about this one pretty extensively.  I can easily build a Google form to capture information from each of us, and then email the link to the results to everyone who submits their info.
• Listserv - similar to the email list, but we wouldn't get as much any info about the subscribers, and the sender has no connection to the receivers
• Forum - captures the conversations, and allows anyone else to join in
• Google groups - in my experience, they can be a bit clunky, and end up being similar to a listserv
• Facebook group - like this one (it's a closed group, but I requested to join and was added with no problems); creates a neutral place for people to post and discuss things, and allows others to join in, can be public or private

Sharing knowledge requires a stable online space that is easily organized and fully searchable.  Potential solutions:

• Forum - like this one; can be public or private, easy to set up, organize, and search
• Wiki - like this one (good find Cam!); easy to organize and search, must know a bit about wikis to add or edit a page; can be public or private
• Co-op blog or website - like this or this; more difficult to organize and search, must know a bit of website coding, can be managed by one person or multiple people, or allow posts from many contributors
• Google docs - like the ones on my Resources page; harder to organize (unless there is a doc for each sub-subject), can be edited by one person or by many, can't search across multiple docs

In my opinion, a forum might be the best way to go; Tessa, Matt and Cam seem to agree.  It is easy to set up an area for communication (with a thread for introductions, gathering the info I would have asked for in the Google form when I was thinking of an email list - good thought Matt!) where people can chat about anything by starting a thread.  There can be another area for knowledge and ideas, which can be organized into subcategories (suppliers, plans and designs, events, resources, etc) and into threads (for example, in the suppliers section, there can be a sub-forum or a thread for chickens where we can post about the best local organic feed producers).  We should be able to make the introductions thread members-only, so our email addresses and whatnot wouldn't be out there for spammers to access.

So, fellow farmers, what say you?  Are you interested in being part of this community?  What do you think is the best way for us to accomplish this?  Comment below (please sign your comment with your name so we know who you are if you are commenting anonymously!), or email me at lonepinefarmbc[at]gmail[dot]com.

Please send this post out to all of the farmers you know, so we can reach everyone - just grab the link from the address bar in your browser :)

Joel, visiting, and predator-proofing the seedlings

It's been another busy few weeks for us.  I'm starting to notice a theme here, what about you?

A few weeks ago, we attended a live streaming of a talk by Joel Salatin (of PolyFace Farms) called You Can Farm.  It was an overview of his ideas, his farm, and the reasoning behind the systems he uses.  It was great!!!  All the notes I took can be found on our Resources page (up in the top right).  I really liked that he explained why he farms the way he does - I often come across great ideas, but I have a hard time figuring out the logic behind them.  Joel explained things clearly, so that it made sense to the rest of us.  He also reminded us to stop thinking "Well that's great for them, but it won't work for me" and start trying to apply ideas to our farms.  Sure, we don't have 100 acres of cleared land to do pastured cattle followed by chickens, but we do have about 26 acres that we can use for a smaller setup.  It was a great talk, and I'm sorry we couldn't make it to his other two about pastured chicken and pastured beef.

Almost a week later, I was packing for a trip (more on that in a moment) and I noticed water leaking through the walls.  Oh joy, I thought, another leak.  So we headed out at 7 at night to try and clear the ice off the deck.  Jordan got what he could using a sledgehammer, and the next day I cut some drainage through the ice using the hatchet.  By the time I finished an hour and a half later, I was getting pretty good at aiming that hatchet!  Not the best circumstance to get familiar with our tools, but it worked :)

I cut the ice along the logs so the water could run below the seams between the logs.  Then I cut a channel to drain it out to the deck.

Closeup of the ditch along the wall.

This worked perfectly, and we'll be keeping a much closer eye on this next year.  I was worried this would happen, but I'm glad I noticed it before there was any major damage done to the bedroom or the kitchen.

With that done, I could finish packing for my trip.  Kim invited me to come along to visit her grandparents in southern-ish BC, so I packed up Zim and off we went.  They are raising cattle, and also have horses, ducks, chickens, and a garden.  Being much farther south than we are, there was no snow, and everything was already turning green!  We hit 23C on Sunday while we were fencing - what a treat!  Kim has a family of great people, who have experience with agriculture and lots of great ideas that they were excited to share with me.  It was a weekend of amazing food, hard work, wonderful conversations, and fabulous company!

The cows, complete with calves

Zim and Doodle playing with a stick near the cattle

Part of the fencing team, tightening the wires.

This is the view the cows will have once they are put up in the top pasture we were fencing - lucky cows!

A few weeks ago, my friend Liz offered us her old oven - it works great, she said, but it didn't match the fridge they bought when theirs died over the winter.  Of course, I said "Sure, we can take the oven off your hands," especially as it's a full-sized one.  Great!  We've got apartment-sized appliances because the kitchen is so small, and we find both the fridge and the stove too small for our liking - the oven couldn't fit some of our baking sheets, and the stove had only one large burner.  so we swapped out the stoves, and this new (to us) oven is FABULOUS!  I can bake two dozen cupcakes or muffins, all on one rack, and each of them comes out perfect.  This, friends, is bliss :)

Perfectly baked Banana Chocolate Chip muffins

The big project this past weekend was to set up the seed-starting station.  I picked up a little greenhouse at a garage sale two years ago, and I used part of it to build the station.  Of course, this required swapping this piece for that, moving this shelf, and removing the top completely.  Once I developed a setup that would do what I want and fit in our tiny living room, I moved on to the next stage: predator proofing.  What predators?  Who would harm the tiny seedlings springing to life to provide us with nourishment?  These two: 

Yes, they look cute, but don't let them fool you: these are plant-destroying machines.  They don't hesitate to dig in the dirt, gnaw on leaves, and knock pots off windowsills.  So, to protect the seedlings, I needed to cat-proof the seed-starting station.  After a quick discussion ("Do you remember seeing any chicken wire?" "Maybe..... but I know there's some of that rabbit wire out in the pole shed.") I traipsed across the top of the snow (hint: this only works in the early morning!) and found said rabbit wire.  It's 2" landscaping wire, and it should work to keep the cats from laying on top of the seedlings.  I put that around three sides, and used screen for the fourth side, so I can roll it up out of the way easily.  This ended up taking all day (leaving me to franticly throw supper together and hope I didn't burn it - success!).  And the end product doesn't look so bad:

I decided to experiment with heat tape to increase the soil temperature without having to buy a heated pad.  I had it plugged in all night and did some quick testing this morning: Tray with heat tape: 14C.  Tray without heat tape: 16C.  Ambient temperature: 18C.  Hmmm, well that didn't work at all.  I might have to break down and buy the heated seedling pads.  I'll see if I can come up with something else.  Or maybe I'll just wing it - we're only growing for ourselves this year, so perfect seed starts is not a requirement.  The money would likely be better spent on the roof or the root cellar or the car or...

And, you guessed it, it will be another busy few weeks.  I'm heading to a root cellar workshop tonight, then I'm out of town for a few days.  When I get back, I'm hoping to start some seedlings (if the setup can survive the cats for the next week, the seedlings should be fine in there!) and begin fixing the roof.  We're still just itching for the snow to melt - we have so much to do, but we can't start on any of it until the snow is gone!!!  Jordan typically loves winter, and even he is tired of the snow.  Be gone, white stuff, you've overstayed your welcome!