Respecting the Elements at We Are One Farm

Happy New Year!

 

January 1st dawned clear and bright over We Are One Farm, and was lovely “sweater weather” for a few hours midday as we went to a friend’s cottage for a bit of a new year’s levee. On their south-facing porch we sat basking in the sun until some wind picked up and it was time to go in for a hot bowl of beef bourgignon...mmmm.

 

Our first real snow had only arrived last Monday, the 27th of December, and by our return from the visit this afternoon much had melted away leaving the tops of the lavenders bare but the roots well covered. Already it feels quite different from last winter although I can’t honestly remember how it was at the end of 2009, only that by Jan 3rd 2010 our hill was blanketed by a blizzard and I have the pictures to prove it! 

 

For those who have wondered what this place looks like I am finally including a link to a Web Shots photo album so you may see the lavender fields and Angus the Wonder Dog on our woods walk, among other bits and pieces. It’s not comprehensive coverage but is what I decided to include from 2010, a very busy year that wasn’t as well documented as some. 

 

It was so mild today that Edward let the chickens out of the coop to roam around, they might even have been able to uncover some grass under the snow as it melted. Edward had to rearrange the coop yet again the other day. He had organized it so that the fat Silver Lace Wyandott (sometimes known as Mr. Big Butt) was the “man” for the Barred Rock gang of hens (Button, one no-name girl, and the two young black ones who seem to be hens). It has become very clear that the lovely looking white-with-black-spots bird which was born of Button this fall is indeed another rooster...so beautiful, but so disappointing, as roosters tend to have a shorter shelf life on this farm, usually because they start getting nasty and beating each other up.

 

However the latest reconfiguration of coop dividers was due to Mr. Big Butt’s incessant boinking of the hens, to the extent that they had begun hiding for most of the day in their nesting boxes, not running around and scratching for food as they should be. So now the two white-and-black boys, plus the young red one which was hatched this fall and is also a rooster, are segregated in one part, while the year-old Rhode Island Red rooster gets to head the household of all the girls now, 4 reds, and 4 Barred Rocks. Edward says the Red is a “sensitive New Age rooster”. We can only hope. I hate seeing the back feathers worn off the hens, especially when the winter cold is coming! Sometimes I feel I should be knitting little sweater vests!

 

Of course whether the winter cold is coming may be debatable. I read that there were record highs of 10C in parts of Ontario today and we read 10 degrees or more on the thermometer at the cottage today as well. The sun was a nice change from the many cloudy, very windy and very rainy days there have been throughout November and December. I have worried a bit about the lavender getting too soggy with the ground so saturated, but it is beyond my control. We built friable, raised beds, the rows running downhill for drainage, and the rest is up to Mother Nature.

 

I am so especially grateful for our mild weather here, the more so as I read continuing reports of extreme weather disasters the world over. 2010 has been a year of fires, droughts, floods and wind storms and thankfully we have been spared any damage or difficulty in our little hamlet. 

 

The floods in Pakistan, the US, China, Eastern Europe, fires in Australia and extreme floods in Queensland happening right now, tornadoes in the US south, extremes of heat then cold and snow in Europe...what a crazy weather year. And even around our own province and Atlantic region there have been repeated floods, storm surges, and wind damage, just in December alone. I guess our biggest potential danger on our little hilltop is wind. As Edward says, “if we get flooded out here then the rest of the area is in reeeeallly bad shape!”

 

On this first day of January 2011 I stop to say a few prayers for all those people the world over and close to home who are suffering losses, of home, of livelihood, of life and well-being, all due to weather and natural disasters, and remind myself how we are not the masters of the universe, or even our own backyards, by any stretch. 

 

May you be blessed in this year with peace, prosperity, good health and temperate weather.