lamb, chicken, beef

Where does the time go? We are in full summer mode at the Red Canoe Cafe with inn guests and diners and shoppers and I'm lucky to get to the farm two or three evenings a week. We are doing a hundred mile menu this summer...more like a twenty mile menu really...featuring a lot of our own meat and vegetables. Ritsuko and I are at the Barrys Bay farmers market every Friday afternoon which is a lot of fun..we meet lots of people and its a great opportunity to promote the wonderful village of Wilno.

At the farm, the meat birds are growing and eating and eating and growing. They go out into their run and enjoy the great outdoors. The geese and ducks are a noisy bunch...lots of splashing and honking and quacking whenever someone arrives. The guinea fowl have hatched a passle of young uns and the whole troupe scurries to and fro in the yard. The sheep have decided that they must be with the cattle and there is no separating them. Even Alfie and the girls are no longer in the orchard and are in with the rest. So much for keeping our ram separated from the ewes!

Its just too busy for us to micromanage everyone at this point...sufficient that there is pasture and water and shelter for the night and no escapes down the Donegal road or forays into Wingle's hayfields. Dad usually comes up once a day to check on the cattle and Phill has been dismantling the granary so there's mostly someone around. Henning is busy working in Kashuby on a cottage and Tom of course is cooking madly most of the time.

Its been a rainy summer with very cool days...cool enough that the pastures are not growing as they should...the boys are feeding hay to the cattle and I just brought a round bale in to Wilno for Maureen's lambs who have eaten the lawn. We need heat for things to grow!!!

spring on the farm

June on the farm

Cheesemaking at Foymount Farm

ducks, organic feed, cool weather

It's been a chilly spring in the Ottawa Valley. We had a full house at the Wilno Station Inn on the weekend with a group of bikers in town to enjoy country night at the tavern. I took a rare Saturday off to attend a cheesemaking workshop at Foymount Farm. A wonderful day off...a great informative day with beautiful sunshine and interesting people...and a great variety of livestock...Katehdin sheep and horses and the biggest pot-bellied pigs I have ever seen.

Sunday May 31 with a lively fire in the cafe woodstove and snow falling outside on the lilacs. We arrived home at the farm by three pm and had to light the kitchen stove as well. The house is cold and damp without it. The sheep however don't mind the chill and the absence of black flies is a bonus.

On Monday morning we went for a drive all the way to Berwick to check out a place that sells organic animal feed. We are thinking of expanding our current retail business in Wilno to include organic farm and garden supplies and this is part of our research. It was a sunny morning to start off but clouded over by noonish and by the time we returned at four pm it was pouring rain.

The boys were here checking out their cattle and I put my sheep inside early as they were drenched in the downpour. One ewe with a prolapse...everyone else is fine.