Well it is almost time for our second delivery of the season. Yesterday we had a small amount of hail come with the storm that pounded the surrounding areas. Some of the tender plants have a bit of damage. The rain was coming so hard and fast that it did as much damage as the hail. Nearer to Threehills there was quite a bit of hail damage, Shaun had baseball and the teams hid in the dug outs watching the baseball field flood and the fields be damaged. Our hearts go out to those who sustain great losses because of this storm.
 This week my husband Shaun returned from Nova Scotia with our boys. We have two sons, Tyler 11 and Dallas 7, that live with their mom in Windsor Nova Scotia. We go to Nova Scotia 3 times a year and they spend the summer with us here at the farm. They sure love all the animals and space. They help us with chores and love all the different things they can do on a farm.  On the day they arrived one of our ducks came out of her nest house with 13 brand new ducklings. They are so cute and everyone enjoyed watching the new babies follow their mom around.
Jeans Peter also went back to Denmark this week. We were sad to see him go and we are so thankful to have had him here. He does so much for us and we cannot thank him enough. His mom Bergita and Brother Hans Henrick go back in another week and we are dreading the day. They are such a great help and fantastic company that they will be sorely missed. Bergita and Dad cultivated the potatoes and it was great seeing Bergita work the oxen she takes care off.
Dad has been busy sheering trying to get all of the sheep sheered. He has been working on the rams and it is hard to watch him work with some of the larger rams. The dorsets rams tend to fight being sheered and when they throw there 320 pounds around they are very hard to hold. I feel so helpless at this time because being pregnant and holding Olivia in a back pack I cannot help at all. Tyler my 11 year old we actually more help then I was because he watched for trouble and turned the sheerer on and off for his grandpa.  My mom gathered the wool
and cleaned the sheering floor for dad, this is called rousieing. A rousie also  cleans the sheering head for the sheerer and helps catch and turn the sheep. Dallas my 7 year old enjoyed standing in the wool stand stamping the wool down into the burlap sack. 
Berigita and Hans Henrick have been picking strawberries and helping my mom make them into jam. It is so fantastic to have jam through the winter that we produced. It gives us a small taste of summer through the long winter.

Today was our first delivery into Airdrie. Tomorrow we will drop off in Calgary!! It was exciting harvesting the vegetables. The sky was over cast this morning and as we harvested it started to rain. Hans Henrik, Jeans Peter  and Bergitta got very wet carrying the last of the beets in to the vegetable rooms to be cleaned and sorted. My mom, Phyllis, Olivia, Irena and Hansa kept dry weighing rhubarb and making boxes. Dad wasn’t too wet because he was moving trays into the greenhouse for me where I was washing vegetables.
This afternoon the sun came out and Dad, Hansa, Hans Henrik, Jeans Peter and Olivia planted out tomatoes into the green houses. Hopefully we will be able to extend the season for the tomatoes this year. 
We are very happy that we now get to deliver to the people in our
CSA program. We hope you enjoy the first
delivery!

We spent this weekend weeding the carrots. As we headed to the carrot beds a few people were doubtful there were carrots in there but there where many inch high carrots growing very well.  We leave a weed cover over the carrots to protect them from the sun and wind till they are strong enough to handel the elements and the disturbance of the soil the weeding causes. After the weeding was finished we watered and covered the beds with row cover to help ease the carrots into the elements. The trick to this is to weed the beds when the weeds are big enough to pull easily but not to big that pulling them causes to much soil disruption. This year we can proudly say we were on top of this job this time, there have been years when we have delayed and caused stunting or trama to the carrot plants. We hope that each year we so a better job and when it comes to keeping on top of the weeding I think we are doing a much better job then we have ever done!!

Well finally we have a new computer that hopefully will continue to work for us. Mom jokes that perhaps we shouldn't have got a laptop because it is to easy to throw in frustration. haha.
We have had beautiful weather this past week and the garden is growing beautiful it looks like our first delivery will be next week! Last wednesday one of our geese emerged with 3 small goslings and they sure are cute to see. The 8 goslings that hatched earlier are now white and big so the new babies sure are nice to see.
Jeans Peters brother and mom have been here for a week now and it sure is good to have them here. We have a bit of an overlap in peoples stay so there is 8 people staying with us on the farm. We are getting lots acomplished and dinner time brings really interesting conversations.
In the garden we have been doing a lot of hoeing and cultivating to keep the weeds under control. Dad has had Clair out a few more thimes and she is starting to walk inbetween the rows and not on top of them. Our small strawberry patch is looking good and we take breaks from weeding to eat a few. My daughter Olivia thinks that the strawberry patch is the most awesome spot in the garden, and is often there with her grandpa finding ripe strawberries!
The heat has been keeping us out of the garden in the middle of the day so we have been finding other jobs to do that keep us in the shade a bit more.

Hello everyone. First i would like to send out a big Thankyou for the comments of encouragment over our little piglets and lambs we appriciate the feed back and thoughts. Our new computer will be here Tuesday so blogging and pictures will return to normal and I will have no excuse not to blog a couple times a week!
Last weekend my dad was surprised by the arrival of a good friend from Denmark, Jeans Peter. Jeans Peter has been on our farm for the past two years first on his own and then last year he brought his younger brother Hans Henrick. This year his mom, Birgitte and brother are planning to come out in July but Jeans Peter was not sure if he could come but as things turned out he could manage to come earlier and stay for a month. We kept his coming a secret till he walked on to the farm, dad was very happy to see him. The two of them have spent the first week catching up and learning in the garden. Jeans Peter is very intrested in learning to grow a garden on his own to provide him and his family with fresh garden produce and he is always very eager to learn, which is perfect because dad is always eager to teach!
Last week we had some friends from the Philipeans over for a day. They are waiting for there work visa's and as such can not work for wages ontil they arrive. They told us they were getting pretty board and asked if they could come and help in the garden. Bed making and the squash transplanting was done in a quarter of the time with 5 extra people to help. We sure apprieciate the help and visit!
Johannes a wwoofer Germany left this week for Alaska and we hope he has a great time up there. We have 3 wwoofers on the farm right now, Jerome from France, and Irena and Hansa from the Chezch Republich its great having people from all over the world and it is very interesting learning about places I have never been. Dad and Jeans Peter joined Irena, Hansa and Jerome in the our personal strawberry patch and finished weeding it for me. I was doing a row a day with the help of my little Olivia but in one day they finished it off and I can't thank them enough!!
This week we have two friends from Olds over to show our young wwoofers how to hand shear sheep. Everyone gave it a try and we now have a great appriciation for the strength it most have taken to shear thousands of sheep in that way. Thankyou Abe and Randy!
Dad has been Shearing about 14 sheep a week and we are hoping now with the sunny weather we can get more sheep sheared so we are done shearing before the middle of July.
Bella and Stanton, the mare and colt, were picked up by there owner, Jeff, this week as his children really wanted to have the baby horse at there house. It was sad to see the little guy go but the kids sure were excited watching him play and load up into the trailer. Jeff left Clair here for dad to work in the garden and Jeans Peter and Dad did just that. It would be good if Clair would learn to walk between the rows and not on top of them or in a zig zag pattern.  Dad has patience for her though and I'm sure befrore the seasons up she will be plowing perfect straight rows!! I will add a bunch of pictures on Tuesday night of

 

Hello everyone. I am so sorry for the delay in blogging we are having computer problems and the laptop is still not fixed so I am writing to you on a friends computer. Hopefully we will have this problem solved soon but if not I will try to borrow a computer more often. A lot has happened in the two weeks since I blogged. Mostly it has rained, and rained. We are wearing out our rubber boots here and hoping that the sun comes out to warm up the garden so the plants can grow and the animals can dry off. The garden has plenty of water in it, there is actually standing water in the middle of the garden which I don't ever remember happening before, not for this length of time any ways. The plants have plenty of water and we are now needing warmth so the garden can grow. We have been able to do some transplanting and direct seeding in the breaks in the rain and weeding is much easier with the soil being so saturated.
The pigs have been hit hard with all the rain. The large pig pen is a large puddle with only there sleeping area still dry. One of our sows, White Ear, was very close to farrowing and we put her in one of the farrowing pens, but on the night she farrowed it rained over an inch of water and drained into the hole she had made for her babies and 6 of her 8 piglets drowned. We were devastated to go out in the morning to check on her and find that. On a good note her two babies are doing really well and they have been moved to a higher dry hay shed till everything can dry out.
We have been working with the sheep and sorting out the lambs to put in a pen to feed grain to. Over the winter we sent 3 of our Great Pyrenees, Brandy, Hector and Dolly to a new home as we were cutting down on sheep and one of our old ladies Iris pasted away so we only have 3 adult dogs looking out for the sheep. With the pasture grazing the lambs tend to wander off and the dogs stay with the herd. We have had a large amount of coyote hits because of this problem. There seems to be a larger amount of coyotes each year and they have been pushing our dogs hard. It seems when it rains it pours. Pun intended.
On a happy note the only ones that seem to be unaffected by all this rain are the geese and the ducks. This morning we went out to find 10 happy ducklings. Our one brown duck hatched out 9 little brown ducklings and one yellow duckling. They sure are cute and we love watching them discover there new world. We have been a little concerned about the megpies as they have been perched on the fence watching the ducklings as well. The mother duck is pretty protective though so we hope the megpies leave the duckling be.
I can not put pictures up with this computer but I will try to get to a computer I can upload some pictures of the new sights here at the farm.  S

Today we are transplanting and rotor-tilling. Dad has all the plants out on the table ready to go and it looks so lush and beautiful. My mom, Olivia and I broke up and re-planted our garlic so this year we will have fresh garlic for our CSA which is exciting!!

This morning our old horse Sky Faithful passed away at 33 years old. Dad buried her at the top of the hill over looking the pasture, a beautiful place for a beautiful soul. Sky has been given free access to the farm the past couple of years and it will be sad going out and not having her come nickering at us. She loved her sweet feed and she would follow you around nickering softly till you filled her bucket with a scoop or two. She was smart in who she cuddled up to because she often got extra feedings through the day. She was a gentle and sweet horse and we will miss her.

We are back in Alberta and much has happened in the short week we have been home. First in the early hours of the morning of Friday Bella, the Clydesdale/Hackney Cross horse, we have been boarding for a friend gave birth to an adorable colt we have decided to call Stanton till his owner gives him a name. He sure is all legs and it has such a treat watching him learn to walk and discover his new world. Stanton is the first colt born here in over 8 years so we have all been enjoying the sight!
 Dad and his dog Tess have been using our newly fixed tractor to rotatill the garden so it is easier to make the beds.  The freshly worked soil smells and looks so good. I love watching Dad and his dog there is such a great bound there. For Tess the world revolves around dad and nothing makes her happier than her person giving her a pat, true unconditional love something dogs could really teach humans!
 With the help of Olivia, I have been cutting the
remainder of the potatoes we hope to plant them this week! Olivia seems pretty interested in eating them so it takes a little longer then it should.
 Andy and Blanche, two of our woofers have been fixing up a fence to keep two wayward geese under the trees but out of the garden as the geese have decided to nest there and will be a little hard on the newly transplanted vegetables.  If you can’t beat them join them! 
Yesterday we had 13 volunteers here at the farm. They are with a program called Katimavik that takes youth from across Canada and places them in different provinces to live and volunteer in a new place. It is totally bilingual and it is great to see youth working together to close the gap that language can create even within our own country.  We would like to thank them all for coming for the day. With the help of these youth we were able to walk the pastures and hill sides and clean up all the debris and garbage blown into the brush over the winter!
I have to apologize for the lapse in blogging. We have been having issues with our internet so I will do my best to blog more regularly and put pictures on but it may not let me.

Well My Husband Shaun and I have been in Nova Scotia for the past week with our daughter Olivia visiting our two sons, Tyler and Dallas, that live here with there mother. It has been great to spend time with them. We can't wait to have them out for 6 weeks this summer! Shauns mom and our niece Delaney will also be coming out.
I have been talking to my mom and dad while we are here and they have had great progress with the garden while we were away. They have transplanted over 1000 plants into 9 beds out in the garden and started over 20 trays of herbs. The Beds are covered with row cover to create a subclimate to help extened our short season. I sure dad would love the season here in nova scotia they already have cattle turned out on 9 inches of green green grass and there gardens are in.
At the farm we have had our fist hatch of goslings. I can't wait to show Olivia, if there mom will let me get near them!!!
I will post pictures when I get home to Alberta as dad says he is all thumbs when it comes to the computer.