Author: Marieclaude

We’ve been busy. Start of the school year is hectic at OPUS Academy. Registrations coming in, kids to schedule, new teachers to train…We even had a choir concert this weekend! Busy is good, but it does mean that I haven’t found a quiet moment to blog.

Okay, so I guess I didn’t create the quiet time. There is always enough time in a day to get everything done. Don’t let anyone try to convince you that there aren’t enough hours in a day for them to do everything they need to do. You just have to be organized, make lists, adapt to your situation and keep keeping on. But sometimes, I forget that.

All to say, that with our heads at the music school, a bit less has been done at the farm, by choice. If we don’t prioritize and just push ourselves too hard all the time, the joy of this place will soon wear out. So Katie and I try to take some time everyday to do nothing. Hence, no blog in the last few weeks.

But we have some news. We went to fetch our meat chickens. They are so cute!! Hopefully they will grow to be plain and ugly, cuz right now I just want to cuddle them. They will be ready to process in just 9 weeks. That’s crazy to me. I feel sorry for their short lives but it will be nice to have meat in the freezer.

The girls went to pick up Captain Chunk! So he is the sweetest guy. Lumbering, inquisitive and easy to manage. Doesn’t like being in the car much but apart from that, he is falling into a routine very well here. He will be a very large boy!

We’ve harvested our potatoes. Again, the earth was not optimal but we still got quite a lot. Our garden pasture has a large area that’s mostly sand, so we shovelled a load and dried it on the floor of the hothouse. It’s the warmest, driest place around and I want to make sure that when I store the potatoes, they don’t get damp and rot. So we buried the potatoes in it and will now move them to the cold storage.

My beets are on the small size so I am enjoying just boiling them. I think I’ll go to a farmer’s market and get a good amount to pickle. We had a large family meal with our corn and some potatoes as well as a large salad. That felt good. Then later in the week, we got to eat our beets, carrots, potatoes, broccoli and onions! Awesome.

Brian has a beautiful apple tree at his cottage and he collected them for us. Since I still have a lot of my apple marmelade from last season, we dehydrated these. They are chewy and tart. Healthy snack for the winter.

I’ve got lettuce, tomatoes, kohlrabi, spinach and cucs growing nicely in the hothouse! They are doing really well. I will be adding more things regularly. It would make me very happy to have fresh food throughout the winter. I even transplanted some of the herbs!

The girls worked on building nesting boxes for the soon to be laying hens. We are getting some eggs everyday but not all of the girls are laying yet. We get tiny pink eggs and large brown speckled eggs. Fun! One of the hens lays them in a bush by the house. Hopefully she’ll learn to do it inside the barn come winter! If she’s one of the chickens that will go in the turkey pen then it shouldn’t be a problem.

I’ve also taken time to trim some trees. It was fun to pull the cart behind Alice (our Allis Chalmers mower).

All in all I guess we got stuff done! September has provided us with particularly good weather and good times together. Who couldn’t ask for anything more 🙂