Category Archives: Tour de Farm

What have we been up to?

… or what have we NOT?  (That might be a shorter list)

Here’s a short photo-tour of the happenings this spring:

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First bunny harvest.
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We lay in the foundation for a workshop and covered meeting space.
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EPIC work party installs vast amounts of fencing.
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POWER!!!
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We get a transformer box to go with our power, with our very own Lightning Guy.
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Our new building takes shape.
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A cow-watering solution that works for longer than three days without rain! There was great rejoicing.
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Bacon seeds arrive. So cute!
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Fencing runs to the greenhouse, preventing the goats from eating all the rhubarb leaves (argh!), and allowing us to put in a garden. And have a place to eat lunch without being mugged by chickens or goats. Again, Much Rejoicing!
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A duck, with Too Many Legs. (ok, so they’re baby ducks. SO CUTE.)
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Baby ducks got older.
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WE FIXED THE POND!!! I hope to write in depth about this later.  It was pretty simple to do, and involved cow poop.
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Canela had a baby! This is Zeus, born over Easter. He’s a couple of months old in this picture.

 

That’s it, pretty much.  We’re growing bunnies, ducklings, piglets, and a calf, besides our regular posse of children.  Babies all over!

Summer in pictures.

Summer has been very, very busy.  I write something in my head, and before I have a chance to sit and write it out, something else happens that is Even Better, and causes the previous thing to be uninteresting.  Right now, chickens are The Thing, but we’re hoping to get the cows moved in before the end of the month, and maybe ducks next week.  Goats need to be here before the end of the month.  And everything takes longer than we expect, and requires at least twice as much talking as we anticipate, but the things we do are so much better together than they would be if we were making decisions individually.  Here’s a few pictures of what’s happened over the summer:

Roger Hodgkins cutting the hay
Roger Hodgkins cutting the hay – our first crop!
D.A. Smithson and Sons Well Drilling
D.A. Smithson and Sons Well Drilling
Jasmine creates beauty  (and dust) using heavy machinery
Jasmine creates beauty (and dust) using heavy machinery
Outhouse, half done, and plants (thanks, Nanette!)
Outhouse, half done, and shade plants (thanks, Nanette!)
Handwashing station that will wash your feet if you're not careful.
Handwashing station that will wash your feet if you’re not careful.
Jasmine makes amazing roads
Jasmine makes amazing roads
Kids have a play area
Kids have a play area.  Thanks for equipment, Grandma Gail!
Food Digester, before we had CHICKENS.
Food Digester, used a great deal before we had CHICKENS (and before the bear knocked it over).
Our first livestock!
Our first livestock!  Thanks, Ellen and Adrian.  They got out three times, one overnighter, but we’ve still got both.
Cistern.  Now if we could get electricity, we'd have water!
Cistern. Now if we could get electricity, we’d have water!
The Transition House, knocked together to house chickens until we have something better.
The Transition House, knocked together inside the ‘barn’ to house chickens until we have something better.  I used your fancy tool belt, Uncle Rod, but still managed to drop a hammer on Tony’s head.
CHICKENS!!!
CHICKENS!!!  They have already earned their purchase/feeding in eggs, took less than a week.
An Actual Haystack, hay scythed by Sweaty People because it was faster than weedwacking.
An Actual Haystack, hay scythed by Sweaty People because it ended up being faster/quieter/more-fun than weedwacking.

 

And now, I think you’re mostly caught up.  We are having Such A Good Time.

On making the property ours…

I was going to call this “On Construction” but we haven’t really constructed any buildings yet.

But we are getting things done! Really!

With Jasmine’s help we have moved our Big Steel Boxes that I mentioned here back in May when we got the property (Wow! Only 2 months!) onto our boneyard. (Erin already covered this, but still! Berm, yard, gravel pad for the boxes. Plus, our stuff!)

Containers, snuggled into gravel behind the berm.
Containers, snuggled into gravel behind the berm.

 

Now, the first pic in that post was the Sunriver sign at the gate. Well, we couldn’t leave it like that, so with some chalkboard paint and chalk, and a ladder, and Christiana’s artistic flair, now that sign looks like this:

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But wait, that’s not all! We need roads to get places, and we have a creek( really just runoff flowing down a trench) which means we will need a bridge. So, prep for a road and bridge:

Road area cleared down to hardpan for the road base.
Road area cleared down to hardpan for the road base.
Road leading to the creek, down to clay. Room for Roadbase plus room for the bridge!
Road leading to the creek, down to clay. Room for Roadbase plus room for the bridge!

Sounds like lots, and it is, but there is more! Those darn pesky fields keep growing grass! Oh wait, it’s a farm, that’s a good thing. If you can get it into bales. So, a quick call from Tony to Roger Hodgkins, who has been haying these fields for years, and the hay has been cut, dried, turned over and dried some more. Now it is in rows waiting to be baled. Which I hope happens today! To be followed by moving the bales (let’s see if I survive that!).

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Of course, we still have a farm with no hookups to power, gas, water or any of those things. But we do have the ball rolling on that. In fact, We have a well in the process of being drilled right now. The steel casing through the sand and gravel and clay is actually more expensive than drilling through bedrock!

D.A. Smithson and Sons Well Drilling
D.A. Smithson and Sons Well Drilling
20 foot drill extenders on the right, drill extenders inside the steel casing on the left
20 foot drill extenders on the right, drill extenders inside the steel casing on the left
The first steel casing, with a drive shoe, in case the drilling hits a boulder.
The first steel casing, with a drive shoe, in case the drilling hits a boulder.

There is also the barn which is being prepped to hold hay and livestock. (Will we have cows?) Christiana ran into a young couple that have done WOOFing, and they helped out by clearing the rotted boards from the barn floor, removing the bee nests, and leveling the dirt floor. Thanks Tomas and Naomi!

Naomi and Tomas, our (sub) WOOFers (since we aren't quite farming yet) helping Tony clean out the barn
Naomi and Tomas, our (sub) WOOFers (since we aren’t quite farming yet) helping Tony clean out the barn
One set of bees that were in the barn, now moved out under shelter from the rain.
One set of bees that were in the barn, now moved out under shelter from the rain.

The bees actually cleaned up, and you might not notice them now. Which reminds me, I have to flag that, so they don’t get stepped on!

That’s it for now, but more to come, as we get there. You know what I mean 😉

Scott.

The Bees have completely moved, so I don’t need to flag them.

Drilling still going, down to the 80-100 foot range…

(updated tags and Categories)

Heavy Machinery Makes Things Go

We’ve had the marvelous and adept Jasmine at our farm, for the past little while, and she drives Big Machinery.

She made us a road!
She made us a road!

Jasmine has scraped away the two inches of soil on top of the driest and least living part of our farm, so we can use the space for materials storage and parking.  She built an earth berm, filled with brush and old wood, so we have a bit of privacy and delineation (dogwalkers like to know where to go, and we made a nice path) in the short term and a decent place to grow things (hugelkultur!) after a wet winter.  We had our containers delivered, on to cement blocks on top of carefully leveled (by Jasmine) gravel.  Of course, the containers weigh an average of 15,000 lbs apiece, and so they crushed the cement blocks immediately and settled comfortably on the gravel.  Due to Jasmine’s expert leveling job, we didn’t need to do any adjustments to the ad-hoc, not quite-as-planned delivery.

Containers, snuggled into gravel behind the berm.
Containers, from the outside, snuggled into gravel behind the berm.
And from the front!
And from the front!

We’re planning to make a roof between them, for a workshop space and materials storage.  Solar panels on the roof, though that plan is still developing and may change.

Having some heavy machinery on site definitely makes things go faster.  We’ve discovered that the bottom-most field, where there isn’t much growing but trailing blackberries, patchy grass, and alders, was used as a dump site for excess rocks and gravel.  “Lots of road-base!”, declared Jasmine happily.

We’ve got a second berm underway, and a proto-goat-yard.  We’ve planned two minimalist access roads (though no road is minimalist with Jasmine around – she has to make sure it’s level, and won’t get potholey or mucky, and probably has to dig down a meter or so and add some of our newly uncovered road base to make sure it will continue to be a road.  “I’m just returning the land to what it was, before those developers messed around with it!”, says Jasmine, “And don’t you want it to look nice?  How about a nice road, here, and clearing out all that brush?”.  She’s an artist with a backhoe, and it’s awfully nice to have her, even if I have to keep convincing her that some of the plants are fine just where they are.

New Sign!

Great Things Are Afoot!

Sometimes it’s so hard to stop doing fun things in order to document them.. but now, we have a new format!

wherein we attempt circus tricks in order to celebrate
wherein we attempt circus tricks in order to celebrate

We painted over our “For Sale” sign in chalkboard paint.  Of course, for the reason enumerated above (also a distinct lack of ladder), we have not yet written on it.  But we will!

It’s All Ours!

What is ours? 2385 Phillips Road, Sooke, BC.

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You can use the CRD Atlas viewer (<-here) to check it out. On the left side, under the ruler is the World icon, which you can use to do a Search for a street address. Our 11.96 acres are east of Philips, and both north of Shambook Drive (3 acres) and south of Shambrook drive (the rest of it).

ALL OURS!

OK, so we might have to share a bit with dog walkers from time to time, but the paperwork is complete, and we have the key to the shared gate at the start of Shambook Drive.joshapr 041

Which of course, moves us onto the next phase. Building!

But wait! Build what? Where? And what do we start with first?

Will it be a tool shed that we can get power to, so we can run tools? Do we make use of the two structures already present? Or perhaps an outhouse like the one pictured below?  It will take time before we can hook up to the city, after all.

Outhouse westpeak-wood

What about the storage containers? Are they too ugly to have them be visible from the road? Or do we put them where we are most likely to be doing work projects, and have them convenient? We can always move them again later after all.Big Steel Box

Clearly, decisions need to be made. Stay tuned, and find out what choices we made!

Scott.

 

The Old Foundation – Pictures

Here’s the entry to the foundation off the road, on the west side.  This is the highest part of the property, with a big sunny field below.

Shady spot
Shady spot

The foundation is sturdy and whole, though full of junk.  There’s a spot for a door, windows, and a pillar-thing for a fireplace.  Someone wrote “Foundation” on it.

window holes
window holes

Here’s an image of the car for you, Ingo!

Car
Car

and another.

closer look
closer look

We have a fair amount of work to do, if we want to use the foundation for anything.  Years and years of random junk and rocks have been dumped here, including a big pile of broken glass, and there are a handful of mature alders growing inside.  Still, it might be a good place to start, during the early days when we haven’t gotten animals yet.  I look forward to getting some heavy-duty gloves (and perhaps a tetanus shot) and getting started.