Goings On

Goodness this new blogger layout takes some getting used to!

Happy Birthday, Canada!  And to our American brothers and sisters, early Happy Independence Day wishes.

It's been a fairly busy month and a half since my last post.  I've been trying to find buyers for the small amount of beef and pork we have for sale.  You'd think this would be a very easy task in a fairly rich city like this but that is not always so.  I have been advertising primarily via Kijiji.ca and have had many responses asking for pricing, but I do not hear back from many people.  This is especially interesting as our prices are currently very low, lower even than most grocery stores.  I worry what raising our prices to actually profitable levels would do.

But at the same time, we have made some new customers and there ARE people who will pay good, conscientious farmers a fair price for well grown food.  Are there enough to support even one such farm?  I hope so.

One of our new customers are newcomers to the area, working here to try to raise some money towards building their own homestead one day.  Honorable intentions to say the least!  I have been really enjoying getting to know this young family a bit, and the female half of the couple is also an herbalist type who pointed out that we have a good amount of plantain growing in our lawn, garden and various other places around the farm.  It looks like plantain  really likes heavy, water logged soil.  Turns out that last two very rainy springs have left a spot in the garden where few things like to grow, other than weeds.  I have been wondering whether there is anything productive that I could plant there and now it looks like I could possibly be able to grow quite a nice plantain crop in this area.  For any readers who might not know, plantain is a very important  herb, known to some American Indians as "life medicine".  So how about that?  Kind of powerful to learn that life medicine grows wild in abundance on our little lake edge.

We have a new bull on the farm as of today as well.  The first Hereford bull on the farm in quite some time.  We have had Red Angus bulls the last several years and thought it was time to bring some Hereford blood back into the herd.  They aren't the neatest looking breed of cattle-beast but they tend to be very quiet, good milkers and have more recognizable markings which is nice in a hands-on herd like ours.  I am also interested to see how the coloring of calves from him with the Blonde sisters will turn out.  They may be pale yellow with a white face.  Kind of rare coloring if it manifests.  Now to most folk it is only the meat that matters, but we handle these cattle pretty much every day of the year so such differences are interesting to us.

I have also started a new blog that I wish to share with everyone, and that I hope everyone will share with the world.  Forever Ferguson Lake is about the lake our farm sits beside, the lake I have mentioned many times here, the lake that has been so much a part of who I am.  The lake to which I may not have such immediate and constant access for many more years.  The lake I know is such an important, but unknown, aspect of the local watershed and ecology.  The lake I want to see remain the amazing ecosystem that has regrown over the last two very wet years, despite the large amounts of garbage which have blown in from the also lakeside County Landfill site.  I`m hoping this blog will draw local and outside attention, putting some positive pressure on County and Provincial government to protect what I can`t help but feel as MY lake...but also OUR lake.  I will be trying to post to this new blog at least once a week.

Now this new blog does not mean the end of Soapboxtech.  I may not post much more often than I have been lately, but I will keep posting here.  I know there will be rants every so often, even though I`ve had difficulty writing them down over the last few months.  Just too many things to rant at sometimes I guess.  But is it likely to get better anytime soon?  I doubt I need to answer that.

But oh well.

Peace and comfort, brothers and sisters.  Be good to each other.