What a hack job

Hey so its nearing the end of febuary and that means it is time to prune the fruit trees. My main goal for this years pruning is to trim back the mature macintosh tree that has been on my parents farm since i was a kid. It has never really produced a large amount of fruit so i decided to really prune it back hard to encourage it to grow larger fruit for this coming summer and to increase its fruiting over time. I managed to thin it out a lot as the before and after photos above show. My next major job will be to go down to my grandmas place and thin her small grove of mature apple tree more. They have been the main focus of my pruning efforts during the last few winters. I hope to better illustrate how to properly shape and prune apple trees but i am definitly not a expert at it yet more of a well intetioned novice.

puppy

Here is the surprise i mentioned in my last post. Last weekend i got to meet a friends new puppy it is a mini dachshund the name is Lola. I thought it was funny because this is basically a spot on match for the dog that me and my girlfriend would like to buy in the future. She is about four months old and seemed like a pretty nice and well behaved puppy. That is the key thing that i am looking for in a dog as i do not want an overly rambunctious pup like my brothers dog. I might try to get a dachshund this year but it is more of wish than reality right now but hopefully sooner than later i will be able to get one.

special delivery

So on Friday i received a welcome package in the mail my seeds for the upcoming season. Also i bought a few tropical plants an herbs that i want to try grow indoors until i can safely plant them out for the summer months. The tropical plants are more of an experiment to see whether i can actually get them to fruit properly. The first picture is of a barbecue rosemary plant. The second is a passion fruit vine . The third is a Goji berry plant which is a Chinese plant used for a variety traditional Chinese medicines.. The bottom one shows the majority of the seeds that i will be attempting to grow this year. Hopefully in a few weeks i will be able to start providing some pictures of some seedlings as i begin to start more seeds indoor for later spring transplanting. Watch out for another post coming soon it will be of something small cute and furry you have to guess what it is.

the veggie patch

So i figured it was high time to start outlining the plans for my fruit and vegetable garden this upcoming growing season and the possible directions i will be taking to establish an grow my farm business. Currently i have two different areas that i will be focusing on to begin to get my produce into customers hands. The first will be a informal CSA ( Community Supported Agriculture) program that i will begin to develop this year that will mainly be for friends and family for this season. The second focus will be upon directly selling produce at community farmers markets within my home region of Durham. I will likly paticipate in two markets so that i can begin to gain needed experience in how to properly market and supply my produce over the summer. This will allow me to begin to understand what works and does'nt work so that i can focus my energy on what will provide a meaningful profit for the labor involved. This is because for now i will be the one doing most of the labor and i want to develop a keener understanding of the timing reguired and the variety of fruits and vegetables that will provide a decent profit. As of right now i am planning on growing about fifty or so different crops this growing sason. This year is going to be more of experimental year as i am trying a number of different variety's of both traditional staple crops and a number of non traditional crops that i believe could have a much higher profit level once i learn how to grow them efficiently. This is an area i would like to become a major part of business and revenue stream as the local supply of many highly sought after ethnic crops is usually extremely limited in Ontario because of the climate. This allows me to fetch a much higher price for my produce and will hopefully provide the revenue that i need in the first few seasons to help me establish more long term crops such a berries fruit trees and asparagus. I took these pictures of my currently snow covered garden i will be using this garden for my more delicate and finicky crops as it has a more developed soil. In the spring though i will taking over a couple acres of my fathers fields to plant out most other crops. I will post more frequently about my garden and plan for it as spring comes ever closer.

free food well only if your a chicken

So i had a strange but lucky situation occur this winter that has allowed me the opportunity to save some money on the cost of feeding my poultry and possible pig for the coming summer. My parents currently rent out the majority of their land to another farmer who usually grows hay. In the last two summers he has grown corn and when it was finally harvested this winter i discovered when walking the field that he had missed a lot of corn and over the last few weeks i have begun to bag as much of it as i can so that i can supplement my regular feeding regime with full corn cobs as this should help me to cut my feed costs somewhat for a few months which is always a good thing. The pictures above show me in the fall before the corn was harvested and more recently performing my unofficial second harvest.

A coyote has to eat to

So i was out for a walk today and my brothers dog Levon who i still have to formally introduce you to decided to run about halfway down the field. At first he was chasing a truck on the side road but before he got to the road he did a complete u-turn and ran into the middle of the corn field and started circling something. So after some good yelling at Levon to come back and the jog to go out to where he was i discovered what scent had caught his nose. It was a fresh deer kill by most likely coyotes owing to the number of tracks. Wolves do live in are area but are much shyer about living near humans and i dont think there is that many of them around uxbridge. I provided pictures of my find i know they will not be for everyone's viewing but i think it is important to understand and when possible display the key events that help to maintain the natural ecosystem that farms exist within. The first picture is of today's sunset it has been a rather grey winter and any sun has been very welcome. The second and third pictures are of the carcass the deer seems well fed as there has been plenty of left over corn in the fields for them to eat this winter.This i hope will help me in my quest to view some fawns in the spring. While the coyotes have cleaned the carcass pretty well the last picture shows dougie still trying to get her fair share of some tasty venison well at least tasty for a dog. I know it is sad to see any animal meet this fate but this how a properly functioning ecoystem works as the deer population has grown quickly in the last few years because of all the corn being grown for biofuels in ontario. This has led to a major increase in coyote numbers and helps to illustrate how predator and prey populations follow similar trends of incease and decrease. I hope to post further on this and similar topics in the future an hopefully always with some photographic evidence.

Dougie the super dog

Hey i thought i would introduce you to my dog Dougie. She is a mutt but is overall a very smart and independent farm dog. She is about 13 years old and is beginning to show her age a little bit overall though for her age she is very healthy for a farm dog and only suffers from poor eyesight but judging by how many critters she catches her nose is still working great. As dogs go she is a great one and is always very loyal to me as she follows me where ever i go on the farm even if i don't realize it which can sometime be a real pain as she follows me when i go biking on the road. I will post more about her as time goes on as she is always getting into something and keeping herself busy chasing after animals to her hearts content.