Wildlife abundant

Apologies for the lack of updates. Between the blueberry season and my trip to Edmonton with the kids, I have not had time to write.

The season is starting to draw to a close. We are coming up on the 20,000 lb. mark for berries. We have started to offer U-pick for the first time in a few years. There are just too many berries to pick. Our biggest challenges right now are finding space for freezer bags, keeping pickers on staff (as many are returning to school soon), and generally finding time to get everything done in a day.

This past month, we have seen an increased challenge from the wildlife. Prior to my vacation, we discovered a younger deer that was just curled up in our creek. It had clearly been sitting there for a few hours and it did not bolt when we approached. It appeared to have injured itself and it was unable to move. Several of us went down and we put it down and removed the carcass to a more suitable area so as not to attract the wrong sort of wildlife. Given the circumstances, this was the best thing to do for both the farm and the deer.

Last week, while I was away, Laura had to contend with a mouse, a bat, and a mink that all made their way through our part of the house. The mouse met an untimely end. The bat was captured and released outside. The mink was a whole other story.

Prior to our last batch of broilers going in we had spotted a few around the layer area. We were a bit surprised to discover that they had gotten access to the broilers and killed six of them. Fortunately, that was all they got.

While I was away, they got into the coop prior to it being closed up and took out two laying hens before they were startled off by someone hearing the commotion. We went out and picked up a trap and set it out. Within a day we had captured one of the mink. Knowing that relocation was not advisable, we put it down last night as quickly and humanely as we could. We expect to capture the second mink this week, with luck, and send it off to join it's companion in evil weasel heaven.

Farm life has it's challenges and having to take a life, even that of a pest that is preying on your livestock, is not something to be taken lightly. At the end of the day, we do what we felt was right.

A Stampede of Two

Cows are big animals. They aren't the most nimble creatures so we often take them for granted when fencing their area. Last night it almost cost us some blueberry poundage when our pair of cattle escaped their pasture and spent a bit of time wandering the blueberry field, whose rows are overflowing with berries and whose branches spill out into the rows.

The season is upon us...

Blueberries are coming a bit earlier this year. Traditionally, we have started our picking around the third weekend of July. The recent rain combined with the amazing sunshine this past week have given our crop the last boost it needed to ripen.

Picking has officially started today. Our storefront will not be open until next week when we ramp up into production. For now, we will only be picking for our markets tomorrow in Sidney and Saturday for Saanich Peninsula Market.

For those who did not pre-order, fear not. Stop by any morning for some of our blueberries picked from the previous day.

Now the work begins...

Easter Long Weekend

Happy Easter everyone. He is risen!

As per usual, we made the most of our long weekend with a flurry of work.

On Friday, Josh and Marc pushed to finish bucketing. Our tenant Grace surprised us by wrapping that up in the evening as Josh and Marc had to make a few hay runs on Friday. I was tied up painting at my rental.

Saturday morning, I popped out to wrap up bucketing and noted it was all done. I proceeded to show epic fire starting prowess and burned down the two remaining piles. Raking is done!

Saturday afternoon we all disappeared from the farm to attend the birthday party for Darren, who has probably been one of our biggest volunteers for our many work parties. I think he has been at every one except one day when he was sick.

Sunday was mostly church stuff, lunches and dinners so we did not do much that day. We need a day of rest you know...

Monday we plowed through shavings and knocked out a third of the remaining rows. We did most of them in the morning with all three guys plus my kids. In the afternoon, Marc and I returned to do another two rows. We called it a day for shavings as we were not sure where we were at on fuel.

We then went over to the area adjoining the cow pasture and pulled up an entire fence. The ground was soft so we made quick work of it. I now have 13 nice fence posts to use for blocking the cows from the pond.

No word yet on my funding. It should be coming soon. Work proceeds as expected.

I am looking forward to May. We are hoping to wrap up shavings soon. Then we can hit some fun stuff. We have a stall or two to repair, plus a chicken coop to build. It should be exciting.

Work Shift

Thanks to some hard work over the weekend, blueberry pruning is now complete. Marc and Josh finished off the last row and started into the remaining raking that needs to be completed. We still have well over half a field of raking, plus shavings for the remainder of field one.

What this signifies is a shift in the work focus on the farm. We are now winding down blueberry prep and are stepping into the spring work project season. We have a number of projects demanding our attention and the game now falls into my realm of prioritizing work based on need, cost, and time.

Work Party Update

I'm about a week or two late on this one. I kept meaning to post up pictures of our work party but I guess I lost track of time...

Way back in the days of yore, about two weeks ago on March 22nd, we gathered the fair folk of the community around us to rally towards one common goal...shavings in field one. Ok. I can't type the whole post like that...

One of the smaller piles at the start of raking.

The Birds

Walking through our fields makes one feel like they are trapped in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. The amount of robins is astounding.

As I mentioned previously, I was working to post up pinwheels on bamboo stakes to deter them. The method seems to work well in personal gardens, but we wanted to try it on a larger scale. The goal is to deter the birds from pecking and eating our berries.

One of my bird deterrents.

Moving in the mud

As I mentioned previously, one of our projects was to move all of the Patriots from the rows adjacent to our ditch system into the Patriot field to fill in the gaps. Over time some bushes get damaged and there are a lot of gaps. Moving them will be beneficial in a few ways:

• Being more susceptable to "mummy berry" the patriots along the ditch are the biggest targets. The lack of space on the one side means we cannot spray as completely for the fungus.
• We want to create a visible separation between the varieties for ease of pruning and organization.
• Getting them away from mixed rows with Blue Jays will allow them to thrive without being overwhelmed by the faster growing Blue Jays.

Blueberries on the brain

Time for a big work push.

Pruning is quickly coming to a close. Josh and I are putting in as much time as we can on the weekends to contribute, while Marc plugs away at it during the week as our full-time farmer. We have a few big projects coming up these next two weekends.

This weekend we are making the push to move the remaining 15 bushes from the row we started to move. The original goal of moving well over a hundred bushes was a bit too lofty given the time needed and the weather that has been slowing the moves down. We will aim to move another row in the fall. We should be able to get this done.

Next weekend will be a big work party. We will be raking, burning, and doing shavings all in one weekend (God willing). We have recruited our church's youth group for the task, as well as any friends and family who can come out for some hard work. We are only aiming to do shavings on one field, but raking needs to be done on all three.

The Sky is Falling

Victoria suffered a rather strange dump of snow over the weekend. It started coming down quite heavily on Friday night and has been coming down non-stop since. Needless to say, this is not normal winter weather. We are not foreign to the idea of snow in winter (we do live in Canada after all), but it certainly does not tend to come down so heavily.

Looking out from in front of the cow barn.

Workloads and Timelines

Spring is fast approaching and we are starting to feel the crunch to complete our annual season prep.

Just to give you an idea of how much work we do over the winter months, here is a bit of a breakdown:

Pruning season starts in November (or whenever the leaves drop off). Pruning season must wrap up by the end of February for Patriots and the end of March for Blue Jays.

In that time, we must prune over 50 rows, comprising of over 2000 bushes. Patriot rows can take 6 to 8 hours per row. Blue Jays can take upwards of 10 hours to prune a full row.

Once pruned, all (and I mean ALL) of the clippings MUST be raked up and burned. The reason is to prevent offshoot growth in areas where it is not supposed to be. This also limits the impact of things like mummy berry.

Once the clippings have been raked, we need to put shavings down, as well as fertilize. Some spraying is needed but it can happen leading into the season. Shavings have typically been done as a work party. Over a dozen people plus one tractor can do a third of the field in a full day's work.

This year we are laying coffee sacks over the shavings. We need to assemble 800 sacks into runs of 20 using small sticks of wood and staples/screws. These need to be assembled in place. Later we can roll them up and roll them out.

The impact of not finishing by the spring can affect our crop. If pruning is not completed, the bushes will not produce the optimal fruit. If trimmings are not removed, we could have offshoots and potentially infect the bushes with mummy berry. If shavings and sacks are not done, our weeds will start to choke out the bushes. If things run too late, we disrupt the bees from pollinating the bushes and risk knocking buds off the bushes.

Right now it looks pretty tight. We are on par to complete the Blue Jays by the end of March. We will need to plan a shavings/raking/burning work party soon. This will involve recruiting friends or possibly paying workers to come in and lend their muscles to make it happen. We have had mixed results in the past. Our first year we finished the one field in a day and left the other two for the next year. The next year, the shavings took a long time to complete and it definitely impacted our production.

It is a tight window but we are looking to make it...perhaps barely, but we will make it.

Blueberry Planning and Planting

This past weekend was the start of one of our longer term projects for the farm. Marc and Katie came up with a plan to increase production of the blueberry crop by 50% by adding more bushes. We have talked about adding more bushes but had yet to start on it. Blueberry bushes take a few years to start producing, so there is no better time than now.