Your organic farm in the Eastern Townships
The first fall frost welcomed us in the fields this morning. You know there is no turning back to summer once frost has hit, even if, as they are forecasting this Thanksgiving weekend, it is followed by a balmy Indian summer spell. While some vegetables resist, and even relish, frost (brocoli, jerusalem artichokes and lettuce,…
We are often asked how our eggs get their color – so thought it would be nice to set the record straight: our white hens (Leghorns) lay white eggs, our others (Plymouth Rocks and Rhode Island Reds) lay brown eggs. When young (i.e. 18 to 24 weeks), hens produce smaller eggs; older hens produce larger…
We’ve spent the past three months carrying water from house to barn for the four sheep we bought from our friend André last December, feeding them hay and grain. Three months of effort that have paid off big – in the guise of the recent arrival of three lambs, with a fourth expected any day.…
It is time to overcome our writer’s block. Two months have sped by, far from the computer, but never far from the farm and farmwork. We had left off at fieldwork to be completed…We never did get around to mulching the garlic with straw; it will have to wait until spring. To avert boredom during…
We finally succumbed to the subtle pressure of friends and family for whom a farm without farm dogs is not a farm. Allow us therefore to introduce you to Maggy, a two-year-old black Labrador retriever, and her five pups, now four weeks old. We would have liked to know the father, but what matters most…
As March ends, it is time for us to order our laying hens to ensure they arrive towards the middle of May. Hen selection seems easy enough, but it’s more complicated than it appears. Unlike broilers that arrive as one- or two-day old chicks, layers come aged 18 to 19 weeks. They usually start to…
Preparations for the 2010 season are in full swing. We are busy completing our warehouse, the cold storage area and our chicken coop. The warehouse is an old barn which we have converted into an all-purpose building, re-cycling old barn planks from the self-same barn to create a cold storage area, a vegetable work area,…