Mulhaven

Meet Leopard aka Leo, one of the “pet” chickens on the farm.

For the last few years all the boys have asked to get for their birthdays has been silkie chickens - they have been obsessed since first seeing them at the years ago. This past year I finally caved, adding even more chickens to the yard. The boys worked to build them their own special run to keep them separate from the “regular” chickens and are responsible for taking care of them - which clearly means talking them for walks on their shoulders around the farm 🤦🏼‍♀️.

They are already planning on taking them to show at the fair this year (since they were still only chicks and too little last year) - if only there was a category for calmest chickens, they would win that for sure!

Tell me it’s been a mild winter without telling me it’s been a mild winter…

While it’s been a wet one, it hasn’t been that cold yet this year. As of January 5, these are the flowers that are still holding on to their blooms.

I usually don’t cut down the last of the blooms in the fall and typically just let them die off with the cold and clean them up in the spring, but this year I’m still waiting on that first part to happen.

Who knows, maybe my strawflowers will turn into perennials this year and not need to be reseeded!

Happy new year!

The sun is shining and I’m taking my coffee outside for a greenhouse cleanup!

The rain and flooding over the past little while have left quite a mess. And while I know winter is far from over (and there will likely be more) it’s almost time to get this garden shack back in action for the season!

It’s funny how the morning after a storm can be so beautiful and say nothing of the night before

Ho-Ho-Holy cow it’s almost Christmas!

This is our last week for custom wreath orders before we shut down for a little winter break. I will taking orders until Dec 10th, to be ready for pickup by Dec 12th.

So if you are still looking for a little (or big) something for your door, let me know and we will see what we can do.

The boys made some new friends tonight, and we found a place that felt like home.

When we first moved to the farm we inherited some alpacas, so finding a farmstay in New Zealand with them just seemed appropriate. Originally, one of the conditions of sale of the property was that we kept the 4 camelids (two llamas and two alpacas) that were already living there. We naively agreed and spent the next several years highly entertained by the personalities of these adorable animals. Unfortunately as our use of the land shifted, it became harder to keep them while keeping them out of the growing orchard and gardens. They ended up finding a new home in mill bay with another family with two boys who cared for them as their 4-H animals.

Seeing the little alpacas tonight made me miss our old animals and made me want to find a way to keep a couple on the farm again - now to just continue Adam of my latest plans… 🤪

Well we did it! We got all the remaining 26 apple trees picked for storage and juice. A big shout out to .rd for the help with the processing this year - sometimes you have to know when to step back and outsource some of the jobs when you’re short on time. While I love our annual apple juicing day, there was also something satisfying about dropping off 160lbs of apples and picking up 45L of juice a few hours later 😁

Now it’s time to relax and enjoy the literal fruits of our labour and some well deserved time off!