Mid-summer Musings

     As I dressed Juniper the other day in a cute little t-shirt covered in raccoon faces after changing him out of his sleeper with foxes on it, I thought what a strange relationship a farmer has with these wild animals. We dress our children in clothes covered in the creature that just a few days before had killed an handful of our meat chicks and three of our hens before Chris shot it trying to get another dinner from the coop.

     On the road we take to get to the beach near us we often see a very tame fox along the roadside. It's always a treat to see such a beautiful creature up close. On one especially hot day last summer he lazed in the shade on the side of the road and didn't even move when Chris and Rowan pulled up right beside him (or her.) I think foxes are lovely looking creatures but that wasn't my first thought about the one that boldly stole one of our ducks not 50 feet away from where I was on the porch hanging laundry. We called her Mabel the wonder duck after that because as I sat outside waiting to see if that fox would come back before the chickens and ducks went in their coop for the night, I counted two brown Khaki Campbells. I couldn't believe it, she must have put up a good flight for the fox to have let her go. She had a minor cut on her wing from the foxes teeth, but made a quick recovery and continued to give us eggs along with her sister Hazel till their time to go to freezer camp arrived.

Thankfully we don't have dinos to contend with

     Foxes and racoons are curious and beautiful when they are not trying to steal food from my family. From a distance I love to watch them, but if they step foot on my property you can bet I'd shoot them on sight. That's the odd dynamic I found interesting this week. Thankfully we haven't had losses to predators every year, it seems to only happen every second year. The first year we lived here there were none, the next year was the one that gutsy fox failed to take one of our two ducks but succeeded in snatching a handful of our hens before we started leaving our dog Bear outside whenever the flock was free-ranging. Last year all the creatures survived the jaws and grasping paws of death, but this year again we've had casualties. Here's hoping next year they will be safe when we move to our little house in the big woods.

The triumphant chicken defender

Back at it!

          Hello Interwebs! I laughed when I read my last post on this blog about how I wanted to resurrect my failed blog attempt from aeons ago. I guess that didn't happen.

          But I thought since we are embarking on the crazy adventure of building an off-grid homestead next year I should start documenting our journey. We planned to list and sell our house and move up to our new property near Combermere this summer, but I finally accepted, at around 34 weeks pregnant, that it would just be too much to do that and build an house with a newborn. Everyone else had already assumed I'd come to that conclusion, but I stubbornly held on to that plan for a long time. 

          So this summer is being spent adjusting to being a family of four, growing a bunch of brassicas and squash, tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs, swimming, renovating the house, raising meat chickens and pigs and continuing to plan our future homestead with the goal of being ready to list our house late winter/early spring of next year and building our tiny house in a few weeks next summer.

Rowan Kalebane

So. Much. Kale.

Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and baby

Getting ready to tour the gardens and hang laundry on the line while Juniper naps in the wrap

Nothing like fresh air to keep a baby asleep

           Our meat chicks arrive on Thursday so look forward to cute, yellow fluff cuteness in my next post!