Goats and Milk
We have three goats on the farm - Molly, Sanga and Busa. Only Molly and Sanga are producing milk right now, but man do they produce a lot of milk. The goats are milked twice a day at 9.00am and 9.00 pm (Elizabeth is retired and likes to sleep in so she has trained the goats to work on her schedule since she was on their 5.00am schedule for many years). The goats have a little pasture beside the house where they eat the bottoms of the trees and then also have access to their barn which was especially designed for them. The barn is quite novel with a swinging door that during the day time locks away the milking station and food, and in the evening will swing around and lock the goats into their pen where they get their food and have water. As I said, right now only Molly and Sanga are being milked, but this still produces about 4 - 5 litres of milk a day. That is a ton of milk and quickly takes over all the fridge space. So, the tennant living in the basement, Brian, has been using it to make cheese. Now for those of you who have never met my friend Bonnie, there are two things in this world for which she is crazy - cheese and cats. For this reason, Bonnie has slaved herself to Brian to learn and make as much and as many different types of cheese or milk products during her stay here. If Brian calls, I know that Bonnie will be out of commission for some hours.
The first night we arrived I did partake in the fun. Bonnie made yogurt and I made quark (mainly found in Germany and could be described as a medium between yogurt and goats cheese). The quark was easy to make and a success too! However, not all of the cheese ventures this week have been so. Bonnie and Brian undertook the challenge of making mozzarella three days ago, and on hour 7 of 8, a cheese failure happened. Cheese making is a very labour intensive and time consuming process. You have to babysit the cheese throughout its transformation from milk to cheese and ensure that the temperatures stay or rise at exactly the right amount in exactly the right amount of time otherwise, failure. This is where the mozarella went wrong. However, the next day Bonnie was right back at it and was pleased to report after 8 hrs that she had succeeded at producing the cheese.
Bonnie is already trying to figure out how she will be able to make cheese in Toronto. Here it is fairly easy because we have raw milk, lots of it and it is essentially free. Not only do we have the goats milk, but our neighbours have a cow which is also producing a ton of milk for us to use. I have told Bonnie that she should take up guerilla cheese making - where you break into cow pastures (or sheep or goats) to milk the animals and take their milk for the purpose of making homemade cheese. I think it would be a hilarious undertaking.
Compost and Manure
One of the jobs that Bonnie and I had to take care of was reorganizing the compost bins. We have six compost bins onsite all in different stages of maturity. Two were essentially empty from being spread on the garden plots, two are almost ripe and the last two we were told had died - this means that they no longer were composting. Our job was to move the to move the two dead piles into the almost empty bins thereby breathing new life into the stagnate process of decomposition, and then fill the bins they had occupied with the manure pile and bedding from the goat barn. This was a big project. First of all, the dead piles really did look and smell dead on the surface, but once we got the first layer off, we realized that they were as alive as ever! The bins were saturated with wriggling worms just munching away at the goodies that had been sitting there undisturbed.
Now I have always had a big fascination with worms - by that I mean I am captivated by them for some reason. In Vancouver, whenever I were to see a worm on the sidewalk I would without fail bend down to pick it up and move it out of harms way. One of my favourite parts about the rain in Vancouver is actually that it brings all the worms to the surface. Only a few times have I been lucky enough to be walking late at night and stumble upon hundreds of worms that have come to the surface to escape the rain that I imagine was drowning them in the soil and see them all recoil into the ground once they felt my presence. It might seem like an obscure experience to enjoy, but everytime I felt like it was a special moment. It could also be a scene from a horror pic, but I'd prefer to call it special.
Well it turns out that the chickens also share my fascination with worms, except for very different reasons. The chickens were going insane with envy that we were stomping around in bins teaming with worms, while they were stuck on the other side of a very thin fence. I took pity on them and did toss them a shovel of 'the good stuff' here and there for them to devour.
Since the compost was not dead in the end, we decided not to mix the goat manure and hay with it. Instead we started two, which turned into three, brand new piles for the goat barns waste. Bonnie and I made a good team throughout the project, but about a third of the way into the goats she was called to make cheese - so I decided to finish the project on my own. There is something therapeutic for sure about shoveling, using a wheelbarrel and seeing the results of your labour. Plus I knew the goats would be really happy they had a clean barn to sleep in that night. Still the smell was putrid especially because there was not way to allow for a cross breeze in the small barn. Of course I got used to the smell, but you have to wonder if it is at all toxic to your health. Hope not!
Chicken and Eggs
We currently have 24 chickens including two roosters. Almost all the chickens lay an egg every day which means, as we were quickly told upon our arrival, that we can "eat as many eggs as we can stuff into our mouths." We also package up dozens of eggs a week to sell at the local store about a five minute walk from here - we get $4.00 a dozen and the store sells them for $5.00. Food on the island is not cheap. There are a few special things about the chickens. First, we have one chicken that lays blue eggs. It is quite unusual and Elizabeth the farmer is hoping to be able to hatch some of this specific chicken's eggs in an incubator so that we can have more. To date no luck. Next, everytime I see the roosters, I want to kill them. Not for the reason you might imagine, which would be the loud crowing in the morning, instead because I want to make earings from their feathers. When in Whistler, I was captivated by these beautiful rooster feather earrings made by a local girl. I learned she got her feathers from a farm in Quebec. At first, I thought I would be able to get the feathers without killing the birds, but learned that that would inflict too much pain. So instead I want them dead - not really, but I am on the lookout now for anyone hoping to have some chicken for dinner and can pass me the feathers when they are done. Until then, I will see walking earrings everytime the roosters pass by.
Seeds and Weeds
The majority of our work this month will be getting the garden plots ready for seeding. This means a lot of weeding, adding peat and compost, testing soils to see if they need to have their ph adjusted, and reorganizing the spaces between the beds to facilitate the garden management in the summer. The soil is very sandy in Tlell because we are so close to the beach I imagine. So on day one, we started by getting the greenhouse beds ready. First we soaked and turned the soil already there twice. Then we filled the beds with peat moss and a layer of organic fertilizer then soaked and turned the entire mixture twice again. Last, we scatter seeded the beds - one with mesclun that I had brought with me an the second with arugula. We should see results very soon!
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