Proudly Producing Organic Beef for Nova Scotia since 1996



September 15, 2011
Fall Frenzy


There's something about Fall. It's my favorite time of year; the light is beautiful, the nights are cool, not so many bugs...But it's also the most stressful time of year. Everything needs to be done right now! Much like Spring only in fall it's your last chance. You've sone all the work to make the crops grow so if you don't get them harvested, canned, pickled or whatever you've really blown it. So this morning I started with the onions:


It was really satisfying to have an onion crop this year. I haven't had much luck with onions ever but this year is the year for root crops! Voila my beautiful onions. I left them out to dry in the sun all day and got to work and realized they are still lying outside. A frantic call home and hopefully someone will get them picked up in time.Of course Danny is feeling frenzied about his hay and silage and he to is trying to race the moody looking sky.


Monday we headed down to the marsh and Danny started mowing second cut hay for the sheep and cows this winter; look he showed up and watched us from across the creek! William is Eben's big hereford bull , 4th from the right. I hope he's doing his job. He seems to need a lot of alone time and can often be found resting under an apple tree.


In the meantime here is some of the hay we mowed. You may notice the color is different  from the right and the left side. That's because the hay on the left was cut the day before. Danny mowed some of the hay on Saturday but ran out of time and had to leave it.

 In the meantime our farming neighbours are going through the same sense of urgency we are and yesterday we received a phonecall from Jim Inglis down the road. He has an organic orchard and is making cider; did Danny want a load of fruit pomace to feed out to the animals?


Early this morning Danny went to fetch it and feed it out; some to the sheep and some to the cows. The sheep loved it!


They wasted no time polishing it off.


Here's what pomace looks like close up. It's apples and blueberries with as much of the juice as possible pressed out of it. The cows and the sheep know they're getting a treat; we're thrilled because with the animals eating the pomace then the pomace does not have to be composted. Composting it properly would be really important; you'ld want to be absolutely positive the apples had reached a high enough tempature that the pathogens had been destroyed. Rotting apples are a beacon to apple moths and worms, not to mention fruit flies.. If the apples were composted improperly and then Jim spread the compost back on his orchard he would be spreading all these pests onto their favorite meal. Instead our animals are eating them, potential pests are being digested and we can recycle the manure without worrying about the vulnerability of apple trees in our neighbourhood. Woop! Woop!

In the meantime here are two sights (sites) I thought I would share.


Here is the site of next years garlic bed. It is at least 4 times  bigger than this years and, dare I say it, I'm really excited.


This is going to be the site of our Walk in Freezer. It's exciting but super scary. We are adding important infrastructure to our farm but we're both scared we're going to make several stupid mistakes along the way. Regardles, here we go! Now maybe you'll understand why the dance feels a little more frenzied than usual.

In the meantime let's all be kind to one another.

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Sep-15 7:47pm

Enjoyed learning about apple pomace. Your blogs are educational and I love them! Wishing you all the best of everything with the freezer. Good for you for being brave. We all want you to succeed.