Treating animals for illness is part of farming. Livestock producers have been taught to medicate their animals with awareness that whatever we do to them can affect the health of others when they consume our livestock. Although this is a valid concern it is also important to remember that some of the drugs we are […] Read more
Safety First When Administering Drugs
Too Busy To Celebrate Valentine’s Day?
Whoever decided that Valentine’s Day should be in the middle of February didn’t live on a farm. To be honest, my husband never used to be a supporter of the occasion. He called it a “Hallmark Holiday,” so we didn’t really celebrate it. But as the children got older and public school started making a […] Read more
Rediscover What Real Food Is All About
A friend, who wishes to be anonymous, forwarded me this tweet before Christmas. “The most powerful resource in the future is not coal, oil or minerals: It will be food! America, wake up and prepare. Can you grow food?” We, as farmers, have vast opportunities just outside our doors to take up this challenge and […] Read more
Tips On Training A Guardian Dog
When our Akbash/ Maremma-cross livestock guardian dog Buffy died in June it left us very worried about the summer pasture season. We managed to get through the season with no death losses due to predators but we could hear/see the coyotes getting closer. When my daughter’s friend’s guardian dog, another Akbash/Maremma cross, had puppies, we […] Read more
Holiday Season Celebrated In Different Ways
Christmas is always a bustling time in our house. We love to cook and make a lot of our own presents. It seems like the second a snowflake hits the ground the cookbooks leap out of the cupboard and preparations begin. There are things we tried when our children were smaller that didn’t catch on, […] Read more
A Plan For Organized Accounting
ANYBODY CAN START FARMING One chore that no one on our farm enjoys is bookwork. After spending the better part of two days on our quarterly GST return for March and July (I was late), I decided we have to come up with a better system. I have also decided that we simply cannot be […] Read more
Lessons Learned From Starting A Farm From Scratch
Our family moved to Narcisse to start farming in 1994. We have been asked many, many times if we are ready to move back to the city yet and the answer has always been “No!” Our main motivation to start farming was to have a safe environment to raise our family and to raise the […] Read more
Let The Carving Begin
Growing up, my children greatly enjoyed the carving of their Halloween jack-o’-lantern. When they were very small, Daddy used to have to use the sharp knife to carve out the face that they drew with felt markers on the front of the pumpkin. Then all four children would dive in with their little hands and […] Read more
You Too Can Make Your Own Cheese – for Sep. 6, 2010
Imagine being able to serve your guests a cheese platter made from cheese you made yourself in your own kitchen. That is exactly what we do on our farm and it is time to get started because for really tasty Christmas cheese it needs to be aging by the end of September. The lack of […] Read more
How To Make Black Salve – for Jul. 23, 2010
I am sure that everyone has animals on their farm that are more close to their hearts than others. We seem to have a farm full of them, and once again had to say goodbye to one of them. But through her illness and death we have learned a lot about the natural healing powers […] Read more
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
