visit from Paul and Maria and kids

Paul and Maria have stayed at our inn many times over the past years and indeed have become good friends. Maria is Dutch and they live near Strathroy,which is where so many of our Dutch family and friends ended up, instead of in the rocky hills near Brudenell! Easter weekend, we had a visit from them along with Maria's on Terry and his five kids. They live in Barry's Bay where Terry has a natureopathic practice. The kids enjoyed visiting the baby pigs and lambs! Should be some Dutch farmer blood in there somewhere.

sheep in the pasture, clothes on the line

Lots of spring work to do at the farm and gorgeous warm sunny days to do it. Leaves, buds, flowers, green grass, everything is a couple of weeks ahead of schedule this year.
Lulu's twelve piglets are doing well and had their iron shots and needle teeth clipped when they were a couple of days old.

The uproar in the henhouse has subsided a bit with the pecking order restored to normal after the addition of 15 new layers. Egg production certainly drops when the girls are squabbling!

And a surprise lamb with Brownie girl, who is the youngest and smallest of last years ewes, having one single little black and white lamb out in the stable where she and Alfie have been living. Everyone together now, once again, out in the pastures, roaming the farm and bleating piteously at the gate whenever they suspect there is grain to be had anywhere. Blaze in particular, has clever ways of getting into the yard, going directly to the henhouse and if the door is open, going in and gorging on laying mash from the hopper. Beastly sheep!!

Tom moved the chicken run and is roto-tilling so we can sow oats in the patch and so keep rotating the run for fresh feed. I love having the chickens loose but must admit that they do create an unholy mess of chicken shit all over the yard, not to mention, eating all the flower shoots.

Roto-tilling for the new chicken run

A

Easter, Navajo Churro lambs

Quiet week at the cafe and still busy cleaning and painting and rearranging for the upcoming season. Eggs in the incubator are hatching, although not as many as I had hoped. A few cafe visitors for Easter breakfast and Paul and Maria brought the kids over for Easter eggs and pancakes and to see the baby chicks. Home to the farm and on Monday, Paul and Maria and the grandchildren came to visit the lambs and the piggies. Oma and Opa also came for a visit. Lots of excitement in Wilno re upcoming visit of the Polish Prime Minister next week. We are to host a lunch for the visiting media.

Took Dad for a drive to the salesbarn on Tuesday as I had to go to Reiche's to pay an abbatoir bill and then on to M&R Feeds to pick up our chicks and fifteen new laying hens. Lots of squabbling going on in the henhouse when the new girls arrived. Our goose is sitting on eggs and we have four new lambs, Aretha had twins and Anastasia had one single and lastly, Brownie had one tiny black baby. The sheep are thrilled to be out in the fields, so green and so much room to roam about. Let Alfie out also and he was lamblike in his leaping and cavorting.

April news, sixteen piglets, new hens, chicks

An eventful couple of weeks to put it mildly!!!

End of March we had a gathering to celebrate Henning's 60th birthday...a pleasant Sunday afternoon visit with Len and Robin and Pete and Ritsuko and Mike and Liz...everyone trooped out to the barn for the de rigeur visit to the lambs and pigs, hoping that Lulu would have her piglets today. No signs of impending birth however, and after a delicious pot luck dinner, Henning went back out to the barn and returned to announce that there were 16 piglets...one born dead but the others alive and well and busily nursing. They have their heat lamp and their cozy spot in the piggie nursery and spend most of their time safe and warm...however, sadly, over the next few days, Lulu managed to step on three of them, leaving us finally with twelve happy healthy reddish hued piglets.

Second weekend at the Red Canoe Cafe and still cleaning and polishing and sorting and moving things around. Tom is refinishing a set of twin beds from the family home in Elmira and they will go into the "nun's room". The "nun's room" is our term for the bedroom at the rear of the main building which has twin beds and an almost austere atmosphere. Nuns have actually slept there also! But mostly it attracts sisters or friends travelling together who want a simple inexpensive room they can share.
Chilly weather today. I am using up the wood in the greenhouse so there'll be room for planting seeds later next week. Am going to try the hotbed technique with composted manure from the chickenhouse and then a layer of organic growing medium on top.
On the farm front...we're waiting for Lulu to give birth to her piggies. Henning worked in the barn for two successive nights until well after midnight finishing off the farrowing pen. It's a fortress like work of art built of reclaimed lumber from the old granary with a creep along one side and clever side benches to provide a refuge for the piglets when good old Lulu flops her 400 lb self down for a nap. She's one giant sow at this point...the other morning she just lazed around in her hay nest completely uninterested in getting up to start her day...all she needed was a tv and a box of bonbons...