Bob the Piggie

 

Meet Bob. He's a Berkshire pig, bred for fairly quick growth for meat. We picked him up about a month ago, to give us some bacon for this year's meat harvest. Bob was the runt of his litter and was malnourished. The prior owners managed to get him from a neglectful home into their own dairy farm, where Bob (then called Bones because he was so skinny) thrived on their waste milk. When we picked him up, he was doing pretty well.

Bob isn't alone now; we picked up a couple of pink piggies from a big growing operation, similar to Peppa and George last year (fast-growing meat pigs). When we got them, they were the same size as Bob. Now, however, they've both outgrown him by a significant amount. And I found out that Bob isn't eating the hog pellets we put in their pen. So, he's not growing at all. In fact, my wife thinks he's actually lost weight. That's not good.

So, we consulted with some friends, and we picked up some milk replacement. After some quick instructions on how to mix it and give it to him, we tried it for the first time tonight. Well, Bob definitely loved it, and gulped down quite a bit. We're going to give it to him a couple of times a day for about a week to see if there's any improvement.

You can't tell in the picture above, but Bob's spine is protruding; there's no back meat on him at the moment. So, we're hoping the milk replacement will give him a bit of an opportunity to catch up to the others, or at least keep pace with their growth so they don't muscle him out of the food altogether.

We're also going to be looking at a replacement feed; the other pigs all like it, but Bob's not thrilled with it; he barely eats it, which is the main reason the other pigs are surpassing him so quickly. We're not giving up on the little guy, though. We'll try the milk replacement and a new kind of feed and see how that works for him.

14 Years

The love of my life, now and forever.

Habemus Episcopum!

Well, that was quite the experience. Today was a huge day here on Prince Edward Island, at least for the Catholic part of the island. Today, our new bishop was installed. The prior bishop retired at the height of COVID due to age and cancer, and we've been without a bishop for over two years.

So, as of right now, that is over. Bishop Joseph Dabrowski is officially the Bishop of Charlottetown and all of Prince Edward Island. And my wife and I got to be there, with great seats.

 Bishop Dabrowski is Polish, and the mass was livestreamed so his parents back home could watch it happen. Here's the livestream replay:

How good were the seats? The video starts at 7:30; my wife and I are in the very first shot, behind the Filipino nun (there were two nuns in front of us, but one is hidden behind the man in the next row). Beside us is one of the deacons from our old parish in Ontario and his wife; they know the Bishop well, and wanted to be here for the mass.

The coolest thing about this for us is that Bishop Dabrowski was the auxiliary bishop in our old diocese, the Diocese of London, Ontario. In fact, he confirmed our oldest boy six years ago. So, it was great to see him attain this position; from what we can tell, he is definitely worthy of the post. I pray that our faith is not misplaced.

After the mass, we got to meet the Bishop, and while he didn't remember us (no surprise there), he was very pleasant and said he'd be happy to come to our farm (we grow potatoes, which apparently are a big deal in Poland). Deacon Richard took the picture below for us.

So, plenty of prayers for our new bishop; may God guide him and strengthen him in these trying times, and may he remain faithful to the teachings of the Apostles. We really, really need that today.

Transitioning From Planting to Watching

Finally, everything is in the ground. The garlic is growing well, and I've got potatoes, carrots, onions, beets, lettuce, tomatoes, corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, cucumbers, peppers, cantaloupe, watermelon, grapes, blackberries, elderberries, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, cherry trees, pear trees, apple trees, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, eggplant, celery, and peas in the ground now. And, as always, the rhubarb. Oh, and I just planted fifty pumpkin seeds this afternoon before the rain came down.

So, altogether, I've got thirteen fifty-foot rows, as well as a mounded area for the corn/beans/squash/ sunflower combo, four rectangular patches, and two rows for the fruit bushes and plants (not counting the trees). Not bad for our third year doing this.

Now comes the fun part: waiting, watching, and weeding. And killing potato bugs; that's almost an hour every single morning, just scraping bright orange eggs off the leaves. But it has to be done; I'd rather do that than spend two or more hours every day pulling full-grown bugs off the stalks after they've devoured all the potato leaves. This year, I'm going to win the fight. It's not perfect, but since we don't use pesticides or the like, it's the old-fashioned way. I'm working on some natural ways to beat them, but it really boils down to scraping off the eggs and grabbing any bugs that are still around to lay more.

And waiting them out isn't really an option; apparently, they can live a couple of years. So, I have to keep them from getting past the egg stage if I don't want them to overrun the row. I read last year that garlic was a good deterrent, but I'm realizing that I have to actually plant the potatoes in amongst the garlic to keep the bugs from getting at the potatoes; the garlic is in surrounding rows, twenty-four or so inches between the closest garlic and potato plants. So, it's not close enough to have any effect.

And so, after I feed the animals every morning, I spend time on the potatoes. The rest of the weeding can wait until later in the day, since my fifty-two-year-old back isn't up to doing more than that early in the morning. And the rest of the garden isn't really that bad, anyway; the weeds are pretty well contained so far. The grass, however, is annoying. To a gardener, grass is a weed. To a lot of college students, too, but that's a different kind of grass.

So, why do this? I live on an island that is literally the potato capital of the world, where potatoes are cheaper than air in some places. Why spend all this time growing some myself, when we can just buy them at the store? And I don't even like eating potatoes that much; I can't eat them mashed due to the texture, and other than fried, I rarely touch them. So, why go through all of this?

Because, like everything else we are growing, this is OUR food. We know what's going into it, and we know what's coming out. No chemicals, no sprays, no genetically-modified weird stuff. Fresh, healthy, natural food. That is the entire point of doing this. And with the latest news that synthetic, lab-grown meat is being rolled out for public testing in California, it's even more important that we do this. I sure as hell don't trust something grown in a lab, not after what the world went through over the past three years.

So, I'll continue this morning routine until I see no more bugs and no more eggs. And this time, I'm going to win the potato bug war. There may be casualties (my back, my legs, my sanity...), but that's the price to be paid when waging a war to the bitter end. And the reward at the end of it all? Real food, the way God intended it to be. That's worth it.

Why We Chose to Farm

Hello to any new readers who have stopped by thanks to the Big Based Book Sale. I'm honored that you chose to visit me here, and you're probably wondering what a guy who writes fantasy, sci-fi, mysteries, and steampunk superheroes is doing talking about living on a farm.

It's simple, really. When we moved out here in September of 2020, we had been living in a small town for the entirety of our marriage; our two youngest boys were born there, and raised in that same small town. But we always knew that wasn't our forever home; we just didn't know where we would end up.

The decision to move was an easy one; we knew that we weren't happy where we were, and we wanted to give our kids a better place to spend their remaining childhood years. But we were still thinking about suburban life, near a big city; San Antonio, Texas, was one place that we actively looked at, years ago. But moving to the States isn't easy, and during Covid...well, that was just out of the question. So, that eliminated Tennessee, Florida, the Carolinas, and a few other places we had been considering.

That left moving somewhere else in Canada. Again, rural life wasn't on our radar, but when we started looking at the Maritimes, the thought of living outside the city and out in the quiet land was more and more appealing. So, we picked a small hobby farm in western Prince Edward Island, bought it, packed everything up, sold our house, and trekked across Eastern Canada for five days to get here.

So, why farm? We're not doing anything commercially; it's a small, 20-acre farm, half of which is woods, so there's not a lot of room to grow anything significant, like wheat or barley. It's an old dairy farm, so there are buildings set up for that, and grazing fields for the cattle. But we don't have cows.

But we took a long, hard look at the economy in Canada, and realized that things were going to get much, much worse before they got any better. Inflation wasn't jumping up the way it is now, but the writing was on the wall for those who knew how to read it. Add to that the issues with the food in the grocery stores (overpriced, processed crap, for the most part, including the produce), and we decided that we'd have to learn how to grow our own food. And by 'we', it was obviously going to be 'me'. My wife is amazing at prepping food; she is a kitchen goddess, a living cheat code for cooking. And she even has experience working in her parents' garden centre when she was a teenager. But when it came to actually digging into the ground, planting stuff and making sure it grew, that was on me.

And it's a challenge that I have learned to relish. I've spent decades looking for some meaning in the work I do, whether it was working in retail, selling life insurance, bookkeeping, teaching...but none of it had the impact that this life does. It's an incredible thing to put seeds into the ground and watch them turn into amazing, delicious food. Not only that, but we've got plenty of meat as well: chickens, pigs, and possibly rabbits, if the ones we do have start producing young. I'm planting trees today that my grandkids will sit under and pick apples from. That's an amazing legacy to leave behind.

It's weird, especially for someone who grew up with a military father and a lifetime of city or small-town living. But it feels amazing. To get up in the morning and just breathe that fresh air (okay, it's not infrequently seasoned with fresh cow manure from the surrounding fields) is an experience in and of itself. And every morning as I step outside to go feed the animals, I thank God for giving us this opportunity. It's His farm, after all; I'm just tending it, like we were commanded to do all the way back at the beginning.

I've learned that this life isn't for everyone; there are a lot of people who would never be able to make the transition from city or suburban life to this way of living. And it is a fundamental change, something that requires a wholly different mindset. Out of the rat race, focusing on building something sustainable, something long-lasting, something my grandkids will be able to come home to someday. It's a challenge I never thought I could even contemplate, but it's a challenge I'm facing head-on. And with a beautiful, loving wife by my side, and three boys with their own unique contributions to make, I really believe it's possible.

And if the world really is going to hell and society is teetering on collapse, then we're giving ourselves the best opportunity to pull through it and make it to the other side. And if not, at least I'll eat better than ever before, knowing where everything on the plate is coming from: My own backyard.

Combining Two Passions

I have been quite focused on the farm lately; understandable, since it's finally planting season here on Prince Edward Island, so I've been doing a lot of digging in the ground to get the seeds and transplants in. And I haven't touched the writing side of the blog since the end of the April A to Z Challenge. But that doesn't mean I'm not writing anything.

I'm working on both the new Meterra book as well as another Cameron Vail mystery. But I'm also looking at doing something completely different: A children's picture book. Not with art by me, since I utterly suck at that. But I'm starting a book about a city kid whose family moves to a farm. It's a topic I have some familiarity with, after all. I've got some great ideas to work with, and it is starting to take shape. I'll have to find someone who can do the art, of course.

I'll keep this updated as I go along; it's an idea I've been toying with for a while, and now it's ready to go, writing-wise.

What a Crazy Week it's Been

Wow...I didn't realize I hadn't posted in a week. But then, I haven't had much time to actually do minor things like think in the past week, either.

After the rain finally finished, I got back out to the garden and worked on getting it finished. I only have eleven rows; I had originally planned to have sixteen, but I miscalculated and made the garden too narrow. For a guy who is pretty darn good at math, I screw up a lot of calculations. Maybe it's lack of sleep. Or getting old. I dunno.

Anyway, eleven rows. They are, in order of planting: garlic, potatoes, garlic, carrots, onions, onions, beets and red onions, lettuce and the rest of the red onions, and tomatoes in the final three rows. Almost seventy tomato plants, in fact. We are going to be swimming in pasta sauce this winter.

I sometimes feel like I'm not moving fast enough; it's mid-June, and I haven't planted anything in the other two gardens yet. Yes, we've added a garden in the front, shaded by a large tree so it's not in full sun all day long. This will make it ideal for peas and other crops that don't like being in the hot sun for hours and hours. Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower...all good.

And then there's the third garden, the original one I dug up when we first started on this incredible journey. That one is going to be an experimental garden this year. I'm trying the 'Three Sisters' method, which is actually indigenous to this island; the Micmac tribe used to do this. Maybe I'll end up teaching their descendants; who knows? Anyway, it's a mixture of corn, beans and squash that complement each other and grow together to create really nice harvests. I hope. We shall see; it's getting late in the season already to do this, so I'm not sure how it's going to go. But I'll be working on that tomorrow.

But today was a sort-of relaxing day. I decided that today would be strictly devoted to the animals, particularly since we added a few. We've got four baby chicks that were hatched by a friend of ours last week; they're in the kitchen, and they're all from our own eggs. We don't know what breeds they all are, though. Probably mixed breeds.

And last night, we went to a chicken farm near Summerside and met a nice couple who showed us their setup. I thought we had a lot of chickens; they've got several hundred. We were there to buy some of their Chanticler chickens. We have three of our own (the white chickens we received a few weeks ago), and while these ones are younger, we picked up sixteen of them. Some are roosters, but they make good eating if we have to cull a few of them. For those who don't know, the Chanticler is the breed that was developed right here in Canada; it's designed to withstand Canadian winters and still lay a bunch of eggs and produce great meat. And we now have nineteen of them. I'm looking forward to that.

But before we picked them up, we set up the outdoor pen for Samson and Delilah, our breeding pair of pigs. No, we aren't eating them; they're going to provide us with lots of bacon seeds next year. Here they are, getting accustomed to their new, green digs. Not that it will stay green for too long...

As you can see, they're only kept in by electric fence wire. I couldn't come up with a way to incorporate a gated fence into the setup without spending way more time and money than I had available. So, we went with this method instead. It was a bit of an adventure last night, as Delilah tried to crawl under the wire...which wasn't connected properly, so she made a break for it without being shocked. Samson naturally followed, and after we chased them down for twenty minutes, we had them back in. This time the wires were charged, and...Delilah crawled under anyway. She got zapped, but she was already halfway out, so she just bolted forward and out of the pen. But Samson didn't follow her this time, and she came back to be with him, only to be shocked again going through the wires again. Silly girl...

They spent the night inside this shelter (in a large dog crate, just to make sure). This morning, I let them out of the crate and watched them for a full hour to see what they would do. Samson got curious about the white string surrounding him, and sniffed at it. He then received a sharp lesson in how mixing electricity and biology is bad. It took him two tries before he decided he wanted nothing more to do with that nasty wire. Delilah, being female, was a bit more stubborn and needed another lesson in 'don't touch the white wire' before she finally gave in and settled in.

By the way, Samson is the one with floppy ears; he's a bit thicker, and he's got a rather obvious feature that's visible when he's upright or walking. Delilah's ears are straight, and she's skinnier than Samson. Otherwise, it's not always easy to tell them apart. In fact, I only realized the ear thing today.

Being pigs, they're rooting around in the grass and the bushes against the barn wall. The only thing I don't like about this setup is that it's behind the barn where we can't see them unless we take a long walk around. I'm hoping to install some cameras so we can keep an eye on them from the house, but that's not going to be happening any time soon. For now, we'll just do it the old-fashioned way.

Anyway, we moved them out because we had new guests arriving. Well, one of them arrived today. His name is Bob, according to Tanner. He wanted to name him Road Hog, but I nixed that on the spot. So, Bob it is. Here he is:

Unlike Samson and Delilah, Bob is destined for the freezer. And he won't be alone; we're picking up two more meat pigs this weekend past Charlottetown. After that, we're pretty much done with our livestock for this year. Within a week or so I plan to have their own outdoor pen ready; they'll be in the barn until then, and Bob's going to have to wait until Saturday to meet his new roommates. He had a bit of a rough day, with all the driving and moving around he had to do. But he's home now, at least for the next few months.

So, with today being dedicated to the animals, it was a more relaxing day. Except that the Chanticlers are small enough to fit through the fencing we had them in, so we had some fun chasing them around the yard to get them back. I'm going to have to build another coop just for these birds. Sigh...

In veggie news, we have our first crop of rhubarb in the freezer. We also have a lot of potato plants and onions sprouting up, as well as the first hints of carrots and lettuce peeking out from the ground. The beets haven't popped yet, but we'll get there. For now, I'm going to kick back and relax for the evening, then get back to planting and weeding tomorrow. Again, Sigh...

Enough with the Rain Already!

Okay, it's rained at least part of the day every day since last Thursday. That is officially overkill. We've had more than two inches of rain now, and it's getting ridiculous. I've only been able to get some of my stuff done in the garden; I've spent more time out in the barn and in the shop doing things that need to get done, but I really want to get the gardens finished.

Still, today wasn't a complete waste of a day; the weather was nice enough this morning (we even got some sun!) so I was able to get another garden row ready and full of beet seeds. I have another row just about ready to go, but I'm not sure what to put in there just yet. I'd like to get the lettuce in, since it grows pretty quickly. But we shall see.

Our next big project/purchase will definitely be a greenhouse. We're still looking at where is the best spot to put it, but we've narrowed it down to a couple of places on the property that get good sun throughout the day. Now we just have to actually get the darn thing. Greenhouses are not cheap.

In livestock news, we have some news from our friends who are incubating some of our chanticleer eggs: We have hatchings! At least two as of the last report I got, so that's great news. Unfortunately, we're having issues with the hens in our main coop: Some of them are eating eggs. That is NOT good news, but it's almost impossible to tell which hens are actually starting it unless we catch them in the act. I've already caught two, and they're out with the roosters waiting to be culled. If we have to, we'll cull the entire flock and start over with the babies that are hatching now.

We're getting three meat pigs instead of two, and you all know what that means: LOTS of bacon. We made good money selling pork last year from our two piggies, enough that we effectively paid nothing for the meat we kept. This year, we're going to make a profit. Samson and Delilah are growing, and I expect that within a few weeks they'll be able to go outside. I just have to get their pen built and ready to go.

And both our bunny-girls are pregnant! At least, we're pretty darn sure they are. Bugs certainly did his part to get them that way, and Artemis (the gray bunny-girl) has been decorating her new lair with fur and straw. We'll be selling baby bunnies by the end of summer, whether as pets or as stewing meat. I'm fine either way.

So, all in all, it's been a decent few days here on the farm. More stuff will be happening soon, but we'll have to wait for the weather to improve. Eventually.

What the Hell Was I Thinking?!

Dear God, that was a day and a half compressed into ten hours. I got a lot done, but I'll be paying for it in the morning.

So, Week One is done. Since I 'retired' from my job, I planted potatoes, carrots, and onions, as well as dealing with pigs, chickens and rabbits. And driving kids back and forth. I forgot about that part of the deal of being home. Well, it's time to be a dad, anyway.

So, today started bright and early; I was working by seven o'clock. And it was raining. Drizzling, really. Barely any precipitation until the afternoon. So, I got done as much as I could before the rains came. And here are the results of my efforts today:

You can see the garlic to the right; that's as far as I got as of yesterday. The heat was too much yesterday to do any planting, so I did other work instead. But today, there are carrots and onion in the garden.

The tall white stick to the left is the marker for the shallots. They go from the top of the bed to that post. Well, she wanted lots of onions; she's going to get them.

This marker is for the carrots that I planted today. That was from one packet full of seeds left over from last year; it wasn't even a full packet. But it made a lot of carrots. Or, it will. I'm going to stagger my carrot planting weekly; next Friday, I'll plant another packet. The following Friday, another one. I expect I'll be able to do four packets before I run out of space on that bed. I'll have to see if that's enough carrots to start; she might want more. If so, I've got plenty of other rows to fill. But staggering the planting means I can have a regular, continuous harvest throughout the summer. And once the first batch is out, I should have enough season left to get another batch planted. We shall see.

These two beds are full of onions. One hundred feet of onions. I mentioned the shallots; this is the other end of the bed. You can see our next-door neighbour's house in the background. The first sticks in both beds mark the boundary of the yellow onions. Both beds have yellow onions up to those sticks. That's a lot of yellow onions.

These sticks mark the white onions. The shorter brown stick on the right and the tall white stick on the left. Again, lots and lots of onions. I think I planted them five in a row for the most part, so they are close together. That's bio-intensive farming, where there's less space between the plants so as to help crowd out weeds. It works best for plants that don't have extensive root systems, such as carrots and onions, since their roots don't compete with each other. Everything I've planted so far is a root veggie (garlic, potatoes, onions, carrots), so they will all work for the bio-intensive method.

That narrow gap between the two sticks on the right is for multiplier onions. I have no idea what they are, but she bought a box of them, and there were only eight in there. So, they get a small area for themselves. Beyond them and all the way to the shallots' marker are the scallions, or green onions. On the left from the stick to the end of the bed are Spanish onions.

So, as I mentioned, that was a lot of work. Not only did I have the planting to do, but I had to get the beds ready. This is virgin territory; the big garden only saw limited use last year, and that was on the other side closer to the barn. So, I had to make all those beds. Snow shovels work wonders for making the pathways, and the rain helps keep the cardboard down. The cardboard acts as a mulch, eventually decomposing from all the rain but keeping the weeds out of the pathways. The weeds in the beds, on the other hand, I'll have to cull by hand. Still, it helps to have the cardboard down. Except when it's windy. And it's always windy on PEI.

The scary thing? I'm not quite halfway across the garden. And I've still got tomatoes, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, pepper plants, and more to go. Again, what the hell was I thinking? I gave up a comfortable, air-conditioned office job so grub around in the dirt and rain. I must be as crazy as everyone always thought.

If so, the world could use more of that kind of crazy. I wouldn't trade this for anything right now.

Alright, time for some bonus pics. First...a much clearer shot of Samson and Delilah, who have learned that when Daddy comes to the railing, there's usually food involved. Not always, though; this was just for a camera shot.

I have no idea which is which; unless I get a profile from a low angle, I'm not going to know, either.

Finally, here is some inspiration for us all. I mentioned last year that we suffered minimal damage from Hurricane Fiona. One of the things we lost, though, was the heritage apple tree behind the barn, the one we didn't even know about until last year. Fiona uprooted this old tree, which was rather disappointing. But this tree isn't done yet, apparently:

That is a lot of apple blossoms. Here's a closer look:

We're going to get apples this year. We thought we'd be cutting this tree up for wood chips to smoke bacon with (applewood bacon! Yum!). But God had other plans.

Here's the tree from the other side of the treeline. As you can see, it is definitely knocked over. No surprise we expected it to be dead, right? But take a look at the roots:

It's still in the ground, just enough that it's still drawing water and nutrients from the soil, enough to blossom like crazy. It's like the tree knew we'd given it up for dead, and was determined to prove us wrong. And I'm very happy to be proven wrong.

Dannielle wants to fence off this tree and call it 'the garden of Eden'. I can't blame her, really. This tree got taken out by a hurricane and didn't even slow down. There's a lesson there for us all.

The Changing Seasons

Good Lord, that was a hot one. The temperature around suppertime was 34°C today. And it's only June 1st. I thought PEI didn't get weather that extreme. Stupid Wikipedia.

Anyway, it's been an interesting week. I haven't got everything done that I wanted to do this week, but I've still got a couple of days left to accomplish a few things. I was supposed to be planting carrots and onions yesterday, but the garden needed a proper tilling first. I still don't have a handle on how the whole tractor thing works, so I had to wait until Ashton got home tonight. But it's done, so I'll be moving in on that tomorrow and Saturday. Along with corn, squash, peas, and beans. Yes, it's going to be a very busy weekend. And it's supposed to rain.

So, what do I think so far? Well, I've put new bunny hutch doors on (much thicker than they were at first), fixed a rooster coop twice, and brought our meat birds out into the fresh air for the first time. They're still young, only developing their feathers, so we didn't leave them out too long, especially in this heat. Still, they had a good time. At least, I think they did. They didn't tell me either way, so I'll assume on the positive side.

The piggies are doing well; they're eating pretty much anything I throw in there, and they're a lot less skittish than they were. It's a good start to their lives here. Oh, and Artemis, one of our bunny-girls, is definitely expecting. Good work, Bugs! Jellybean, on the other hand, hasn't given Bugs the time of day yet. I'm sure it's going to happen soon. The three of them are down in the chicken coop instead of the nice bunny hutch I built for them. Catching the girls isn't easy; they don't trust anyone. Bugs is used to us, but the bunny-girls? Nope. It's like chasing chickens. Except they're smarter and faster.

So, now that June has begun, it's time to really kick this into gear. The gardens are pretty much ready for planting; I've got a big day ahead of me tomorrow, and another one on Saturday. I hope to have at least half the planting done by the time the sun goes down on Saturday night.

Yeah, life as a farmer. What the hell was I thinking?