September.
A time of endless possibilities.
Well…scratch that. I suppose a time for getting everything ready for winter, the last projects, the last of the summer garden, the last of the firewood stacked.
That was when we started.
Bringing with us a handful of goats and two loads of chickens in the back of my old Ford F-150. There was no fences, no buildings, no time really, and years of work ahead of us.
It’s been years since we took that first step onto this property. Years of changes, building, dreaming, and doing. My kitchen is the workhorse of our home. It’s where I make pasta noodles, butter, cheese, bread, chicken and beef stock, and all manners of meals to keep us going. I’ve spent days on end packing jars of peaches and tomatoes for the canners sitting on the stove, the water within roaring, steaming up the windows on an already scotching August day. It’s been where I huddled next to the stove in February stirring soup and nibbling on crusty bread. It’s been where I’ve stood breaking down whole chickens fresh back from the butcher, vacuum sealing breasts, thighs, wings, and ground chicken for the days ahead.
Winter is not something that most people stock up for. It’s just time. A season of complaining about cold, snow, ice, wind, and whatever else one feels is not right. But here, winter is a time for quiet. It’s for reading and I’ll say it, watching a lot of TV and playing a lot of video games. Winter is when I smother everything in gravy and stare endlessly out the window at the snow and cold while my home is warm and smells like pot roast. I don’t dislike winter, though it isn’t my favourite season either. The cold is hard on the animals, waterers are always frozen and the sunless skies drains my energy faster than anything. But it’s something I prepare for. So when I’m snow tired, joints aching from the dampness creeping in, I can pop open a jar of tomatoes or peaches and taste the goodness a little bit longer.
I can remember standing next to Dan packing jar after jar of peaches. Laughing at stupid jokes and singing along with the radio, barefeet on the sticky floor. I can remember picking tomatoes in the garden, with Cheddar, the baby duckling I hand raised last summer circling around my feet, dutifully following me down row after row.
I love grabbing a pack of boneless skinless chicken breasts from the freezer knowing that I raised that bird, it was healthy, well cared for, enjoyed days in the summer sun pecking for bugs in the grass, and I am the one who packaged each cut.
My kitchen is the workhorse of our home and the farm provides more than I ever dreamed it would. I work hard at it and in turn it feeds us well.
When I first started this blog I never saw us ending up where we have so quickly. From learning small things like how to make stock from a chicken carcass to now running a 200 hundred acre farm. It has bloomed in a way I honestly didn’t think it would.
We now run a breeding herd of 9 cows and 1 bull. Hereford mainly with a bit of angus here and there. In that herd we have 3 dairy cows that provide us with all our dairy needs. We keep a variety of breeds of chickens for eggs, as well a grow out meat chickens in the summer months for our freezer and for homemade stock that I make up by the gallons in the summer and pressure can. We also have ducks, which have been one of my favourite additions to the farm. They’re hardy, lay very well, and quite honestly just make me darn happy.
We also grow a large garden each year, preserving what we can from it. And if you were to walk with me through the barnyard, past the pond, and along the fields we are working to turn back into hay fields, you would find my favourite part of the farm. Because looming ahead like a giant shadow is the 100 acre wood.
It’s not actually 100 acres, maybe around 70, but I call it the 100 acre wood. It’s where I go to think, breathe, relax, and sometimes just wander for no reason at all. I forage from these woods all year round, enjoying things that many people have never tasted or even known to be food. There’s something about being deep in these woods that appeals to me. Like I could wander in and never come back out.
So here we are in May. The beginning of endless possibilities. Granted…this May is 6 years since that first September. We’ve been here for 6 years and have grown so much that I’m not even sure where to start again in telling you all. There’s so much to tell, so much to taste, and see, and do. So many projects still to go, and so many meals to eat.
Because while our farming style has grown over the years, the animals have changed, and our life is not the same as it used to be there is still one thing that has not changed:
I love to eat.
And we do a lot of that around here.
Amen.
