Xmas Week, Old 99 Farm

A quick note to remind and state the obvious, will not be open for pickup on Thurs tomorrow. But will be on Saturday 4 to 6pm, for your usual orders. Special arrangements can be made.

Here’s our Year in Review at the Farm.

Old 99 Year in Review.

A friend sent me her 2014 yearly letter with a xmas card and it made me decide to do one too.
The mindmap brainstorm Cami and I did over breakfast yielded these categores: visitors and interns, health and personal, new plantings, rootcellar, kitchen projects, critters and the major building projects.

New plantings
The obvious addition is a polyculture garden beside the new in 2013 farm store planted over several months, mainly by most helpful intern, Janine S. It now has fruit trees, blackberries and raspberries, (watered by swales moving rainwater from the store roof ); currants and kiwis, in addition to the peach, and nut trees already there. We got most of the tree cribs in the 10 paddocks planted and mulched, finishing the work that started in 2013 with the French visitors. Tree cribs,will keep the cows away from about 60 saplings for the next 10 years, while them mature. We planted lots of garlic and squash on ‘Berry Hill’ which early in the year attracted in succession, geese, chickens, sheep and cows to nibble. Still got a crop! Both greenhouses were in use all year, as poultry coop, lambing shed, winter greens, summer tomatoes, and now carrots and greens.

Visitors and Interns
Unlike 2013 when we had about 15 young people come stay with us for weeks at a time, we only had three visitors this year and our intern, Janine S from Ancaster. Thanks to these people a lot of projects advanced faster than they would have. I have many fond memories. We put 800 bales of hay and straw in the barn with help of Old99 customers and friends, mostly women I might add! Friends came from Toronto, and some family help all the way from the UK, thanks Carsons! Michael L from Germany stayed for two months and ran the farm with Cami while I went to a week long permaculture teacher training. Mike could handle milking four cows by hand all alone after a month’s practice. Nicolas from Toulouse stayed for two weeks this very month, helping with chores and harvest.

Kitchen projects.
Cami loves to cook as many of you well know. In fact the feedback in the guestbook from visitors says it best. This year she started making conserves, fermented vegetables and jellies for home and sale in the store. Not so much got canned this year, as the fruit crop was insignificant, but we do enjoy her whey fermented pickles. We got the new rootcellar stocked with bushels (that’s 35L = 1 bu) of carrots, celeriac, beets, potatoes, leek and onions, and squashes of various sorts.

Health and personal
I’ve been putting up with a sore back for years now, but his year it came to a crunch and I went to see various practitioners for relief. Good I did, because an x-ray showed a pinched nerve in the lumbar region which could only get worse.
Cami was ‘stampeded’ by a few sheep last April when we were putting the new lambs out to pasture, knocking her off her feet and breaking a bone or two in her leg, It seems minor at the time, but she was off work for two months and still in a foot cast in July.

Critters
The population swells to about 450 mouths to feed at mid summer. We had 17 lambs, 6 calves, 6 Maremma pups, numerous chickens, ducks and geese all born here. Three piglets had a good life for 6 months before butchering day. I helped a local young farmer get started with her herd of heritage Lynch Lineback cattle, which is gratifying because there are only about 30 known females alive.
The chickens did well pasturing without fences under the guard of the Maremmas, Rama and Sheba and 150 ended up in various ovens, as well as 50 stewing hens and roosters.

Building projects.
The big one this year was a wonderful arched cover over the barnyard for the cows in winter. My friend, Robert vanZanten, a Vineland, market gardener, greenhouse erector and craftsman, designed a unique solution in time for the fall bad weather.
The Hobbit house, a greenhouse built into the side of a hill facing south is now equipped with an underground heating and cooling system, passive sola,r and will soon become the site for growing woody plants, and perennials, as well as a sauna!

Cami and I are enjoying as much time together as we can manage, with her school teaching in Mississauga and my being ‘harnessed with a saddle’ as Robert Lynch likes to say about milking cows. We enjoy the life, believe in the future of local self-reliant homesteading and look forward to more years of doing permaculture here at Old 99. Come by and visit when you can.