This is the true story of how I lost my lambs.
Let's start from the beginning. My lambs are Willie and Nelson (shhhh I know, we also have a willow tree called Willow Nelson, it is a thing), and we got them as bottle fed lambs because their mama passed away when they were three weeks old. Wilf and I brought them home in the dog crate in the back of the van and I started bottle feeding them three times a day. Gosh, thinking back to those early days, I would get so stressed with every feed because they would guzzle their bottles right down and then get so bloated. I would try pacing their feeds or spreading out their feeds, but they always got bloated. And for those that don't know, like I didn't before I had lambs, bloating can kill lambs because they can get so bloated that they actually suffocate. Crazy and scary. So of course I was a wreck about it on a daily basis, but they grew up and started to eat more grass and such and were off the bottle after a couple of months and were totally fine. Anywho, back to the story...
Read moreThe magic of the broad bean is something new to me. I had first learned about broad beans a couple of years ago, while living in Grande Prairie and obsessively watching gardening shows, when I stumbled upon a BBC show called The Edible Garden, with Alys Fowler (that you can/should watch here.) In the episode, she grows some broad beans and makes some yummy falafels with them. Neat. So when I was browsing my seed catalog for my first garden here at Ferngully, I obviously had to order some.
Read moreIt's late, almost my bedtime late; the house is dark, the dogs are asleep, and I can hear sawing downstairs. Yes, Cameron is in the basement sawing some handcut boards (made from trees on the property) to make a bench/shoe rack since the boots seems to be falling all over each other and driving him bonkers. Evenings now are so different from a year ago, when Cam would be coming home from a long day of work and we would have a few moments to chat before going to bed exhausted from the work days we had just had, now we have made it down to the property, we had so long dreamed about living on full time, and our evenings are relaxing and quiet, with the exception of the sound of a saw or a baby crying... right, yep, I said a baby...
Read moreA few weeks ago, I decided to make a last minute trip down to Vavenby; it was going to be a long weekend and the garden had just been weeded, so there was almost no excuse not to go. With the car packed and the dogs in tow, we said goodbye to Corbin-the-cat, and hit the road. I didn't realise until I got down there, that this weekend would be the one year anniversary of when I first visited the property.
Read moreYou don't even know it yet, but there is something missing in your life. Look around. You won't find it. You and probably your parents have been missing this vital thing in your life and you had no idea. And no, this isn't a marketing scheme where I create a "need" for you. This is actually the opposite: I am going to undo a "need" that marketers created in your life. That's right. I am going to fix your brain. Or maybe I'll just tell you about the Bag of Rags.
Read moreWe continue to toil away in the garden hoping to grow our as much food as we can to fill our plates and our cupboards. It was only a few weeks ago when I seriously thought all was lost in my poor city garden, as it genuinely looked like nothing would grow, then July came around and the garden started filling out as quickly as my pregnant belly. I mean it was only in June when the garden looked like it would be an absolute fail due to my poor soil quality and late starts on my seedlings, but somehow the gardening gods were smiling down on me and now the garden appears to be thriving. Sure, it isn't perfect, but we might just get a few dinners out of it and that is better than what I thought only a short while ago.
Read more