Merry Christmas 2022
Sitting down with the day planner and calendar getting ready to review the year to write the Christmas letter is always a fun way to spend the afternoon. It’s definitely been a whirlwind of a year, between the atmospheric rivers and the heat domes, farming this year has been very challenging.
January - Morgan had her 1st birthday, Micheal and Emily were living full time on Texada, falling trees and operating a food truck. That seems to have come to an end and Michael and Morgan will be coming back to live on the farm. Because of the flooding the previous month, half the garden washed away to the neighbors. At least the part where I has planning to plant the garlic. Watching my cows standing at the fencing eating the missed potatos as they washed on by was very interesting… so when Darryl came home from refit on the Skeena Queen, we replaced the soil with compost and finally planted the garlic. The barns quickly filled with momma goats having kids and pigs having piglets.
February – Tasha one of the jersey cows gave birth to a little bull calf with the facial markings of a giraffe. Discussions were held and a facebook post later we had a decision of the 7 dwarves for calf names and airplanes name theme for the lambs and goats. So, Tasha’s calf was named Sleepy, being a bottle calf he needed barn buddies so I picked up Bashful and Dopey, 2 little Holstein bull calves, Lambing started on the 18th and Darryl and I celebrated our 23rd wedding and 29th together anniversary.
March brought renovations, apparently there is no such things as a little renovation. I decided to repaint, replace the windows because all the seals were blown, replace the kitchen cabinets because they were too skinny you couldn’t even fit a plate in them and replace the flooring to something more suitable to having bottle lambs in the house. I had a tiny little budget and I made it with a few grand to spare. The windows were ordered June 2021 but with covid they didn’t get to the island until December and then it rained and rained as we shrunk the two on the front of the house we had to wait until May for 2 consecutive days of dry weather for the install. What an amazing difference. The old windows were almost opaque and the view from the house is actually quite spectacular…. especially the sunrises. The house had been freshly painted before we moved in, 13 years ago, but it desperately need some freshening. The old color was minty/olive green walls with cream ceiling and trim. The new colors are white ceilings with alternating white and wolf gray walls with black trim. The amount of dirt I washed off the walls during prep was phenomenal. The new kitchen cabinets are 15 inches deep instead of 10 and go allllll the way to the ceiling. No more cleaning the dusty, grimy shelf on the top. YIPPEE!! We live at the end of a gravel road and all the dust seems to funnel into the kitchen. The new flooring is the biggest change. We had orange 70’s lino in the kitchen, bath and hallway and click together laminate (that had all separated) in the living room and bedroom. The new flooring is 12 foot wide vinyl sheeting resembling gray wood planking, so ¼ inch thick and very few seams. It makes the house look so much bigger and is much easier to keep clean. Because of the reno most of the inside of the house spent the summer in the driveway, a lot of which did NOT come back into the house.
April the sheep were sheared and the baby laying hens and pekin ducks arrived. Unfortunately due to the avian flu in the lower mainland our first batch of meat birds didn’t hatch. I entered a pile of weaving into the 5 guild sale at Artspring and sold a few pieces. Juniper and Bubblegum (beef cows) had Doc and Happy and Martha a jersey had tiny little Grumpy. She was small enough we raised her with the bottle lambs.
May we slowly started planting the garden but it was still raining a lot. We also had more piglets, I am beginning to understand why they call pigs “mortgage lifters” as they are more prolific than bunnies!!
June we started at the Tuesday market and I was able to finally insure my 1970 Mercury Cougar. Darryl has painted her Sapphire Blue = bright purple so she is very easy to find in a parking lot. She still has a few bits to sort out but she is definitely fun to drive. The Avian flu started to settle down and with special permits I was able to finally get a batch of meat birds and thanksgiving turkey poults.
July we had a visit from cousin Lee Anne Heimueller while her husband Gorman was training baseball players in Nanaimo. Haying finally started but with the water table so high the fields were still fairly wet and tractors were getting stuck. . It was very frustrating although the yield was great this year.
We had a friend, Brad, come down from Nanaimo to help on the farm, mostly with the haying and all those millions of 5 minute jobs that no one has time for, he got a lot of them done.
August the beef and pork started going to the butcher. We tried Lester’s in Duncan (used to be Brauns) and were happy with the results. Baby Christmas turkey poults were picked up and most importantly the grandmonster Munchie aka Melissa turned 8!!
September the inside of the house was finally out of the driveway. The ram “King Charles” was in with the sheep in the bottom field. “Galaxy” the buck was in with the goats and I picked up Bourbon – the fattest cow I have ever seen! She had rolls on her rolls. She has great manners and is a Red Angus heifer. She has finally lost enough weight (probably 200 – 300 lbs) and is ready for a date with Dartanyan the bull.
October rolled around and we finally finished haying with 320 round bales and 4000 squares, we were all grateful when the last piece of equipment returned to the farm. It was also the last weeks of an amazing market season. The last of the lambs went to the abattoir and the cows came home from the neighbors. Chicken covid/avian flu has started up again so its back to getting permits for baby meat birds again. Kayla switched from catering to deckhand in a sea-time accrual position so both her and Matt are working full time on the ferries now. Matt on the Skeena here in Fulford and Kayla on the Quinsita/Quinsam in Vesuvius. We had our weavers guild sale over the Thanksgiving weekend at Artspring and I did really well.
November has been nuts. The piglets have been popping like popcorn. Blanche has 5, Ginnie has 8 and Hermoine has 11. Because of the cold weather we have been playing musical barns. The sheep barn got renovated into two big stalls for Blanche and Ginnie so I can have heaters warming up the piglets, the ducks got moved in with the laying hens, the meat birds got the duck coop so that Hermoine could have the meat bird coop. Miss Deliverance is going to end up in a horse trailer as it closes up completely, enough I can put a heat lamp into it and park her by the shop. Poor Lancelot our 10 year old Border collie developed liver and kidney failure and his time had come for a peaceful ending. As the weather has been so nice the garlic got planted on time with hay barrier for protection in case we have yet another amazing rain. I bought Miss Bess a 11 month old jersey/brown swiss/black angus heifer and turned her loose with the jerseys.
December 2nd Darryl starts his new job on Thetis Island as Chief engineer minor vessel. This is an amazing opportunity for him (and his pension) and no more graveyard shifts!! With all the travelling involved his bossy wife declared he needed a truck that would actually pass vehicle inspection, so he broke down and bought his “pavement princess” 2000 F350 dually 4x4 crew cab. Who puts carpet in a pick up?? When I lived in Europe there were people across the hall that had a bouvier des flanders named Kavak. She was a huge bundle of fur that would bound from one apartment to the other with all us little girls squealing behind her. Since then I have always wanted one, “Holly will be 10 weeks just before Christmas and will definitely bring some excitement into the household.
As much as its been a crazy year, it was also a greatly productive one. I want to thank everyone who supported the farm this year, even with all the ups and down, the learning curve still being steep, it is still very rewarding to look back over the year and see what all we have accomplished.
All the best Darryl, Sheila and Britty – Windsor Farm
Sitting down with the day planner and calendar getting ready to review the year to write the Christmas letter is always a fun way to spend the afternoon. It’s definitely been a whirlwind of a year, between the atmospheric rivers and the heat domes, farming this year has been very challenging.
January - Morgan had her 1st birthday, Micheal and Emily were living full time on Texada, falling trees and operating a food truck. That seems to have come to an end and Michael and Morgan will be coming back to live on the farm. Because of the flooding the previous month, half the garden washed away to the neighbors. At least the part where I has planning to plant the garlic. Watching my cows standing at the fencing eating the missed potatos as they washed on by was very interesting… so when Darryl came home from refit on the Skeena Queen, we replaced the soil with compost and finally planted the garlic. The barns quickly filled with momma goats having kids and pigs having piglets.
February – Tasha one of the jersey cows gave birth to a little bull calf with the facial markings of a giraffe. Discussions were held and a facebook post later we had a decision of the 7 dwarves for calf names and airplanes name theme for the lambs and goats. So, Tasha’s calf was named Sleepy, being a bottle calf he needed barn buddies so I picked up Bashful and Dopey, 2 little Holstein bull calves, Lambing started on the 18th and Darryl and I celebrated our 23rd wedding and 29th together anniversary.
March brought renovations, apparently there is no such things as a little renovation. I decided to repaint, replace the windows because all the seals were blown, replace the kitchen cabinets because they were too skinny you couldn’t even fit a plate in them and replace the flooring to something more suitable to having bottle lambs in the house. I had a tiny little budget and I made it with a few grand to spare. The windows were ordered June 2021 but with covid they didn’t get to the island until December and then it rained and rained as we shrunk the two on the front of the house we had to wait until May for 2 consecutive days of dry weather for the install. What an amazing difference. The old windows were almost opaque and the view from the house is actually quite spectacular…. especially the sunrises. The house had been freshly painted before we moved in, 13 years ago, but it desperately need some freshening. The old color was minty/olive green walls with cream ceiling and trim. The new colors are white ceilings with alternating white and wolf gray walls with black trim. The amount of dirt I washed off the walls during prep was phenomenal. The new kitchen cabinets are 15 inches deep instead of 10 and go allllll the way to the ceiling. No more cleaning the dusty, grimy shelf on the top. YIPPEE!! We live at the end of a gravel road and all the dust seems to funnel into the kitchen. The new flooring is the biggest change. We had orange 70’s lino in the kitchen, bath and hallway and click together laminate (that had all separated) in the living room and bedroom. The new flooring is 12 foot wide vinyl sheeting resembling gray wood planking, so ¼ inch thick and very few seams. It makes the house look so much bigger and is much easier to keep clean. Because of the reno most of the inside of the house spent the summer in the driveway, a lot of which did NOT come back into the house.
April the sheep were sheared and the baby laying hens and pekin ducks arrived. Unfortunately due to the avian flu in the lower mainland our first batch of meat birds didn’t hatch. I entered a pile of weaving into the 5 guild sale at Artspring and sold a few pieces. Juniper and Bubblegum (beef cows) had Doc and Happy and Martha a jersey had tiny little Grumpy. She was small enough we raised her with the bottle lambs.
May we slowly started planting the garden but it was still raining a lot. We also had more piglets, I am beginning to understand why they call pigs “mortgage lifters” as they are more prolific than bunnies!!
June we started at the Tuesday market and I was able to finally insure my 1970 Mercury Cougar. Darryl has painted her Sapphire Blue = bright purple so she is very easy to find in a parking lot. She still has a few bits to sort out but she is definitely fun to drive. The Avian flu started to settle down and with special permits I was able to finally get a batch of meat birds and thanksgiving turkey poults.
July we had a visit from cousin Lee Anne Heimueller while her husband Gorman was training baseball players in Nanaimo. Haying finally started but with the water table so high the fields were still fairly wet and tractors were getting stuck. . It was very frustrating although the yield was great this year.
We had a friend, Brad, come down from Nanaimo to help on the farm, mostly with the haying and all those millions of 5 minute jobs that no one has time for, he got a lot of them done.
August the beef and pork started going to the butcher. We tried Lester’s in Duncan (used to be Brauns) and were happy with the results. Baby Christmas turkey poults were picked up and most importantly the grandmonster Munchie aka Melissa turned 8!!
September the inside of the house was finally out of the driveway. The ram “King Charles” was in with the sheep in the bottom field. “Galaxy” the buck was in with the goats and I picked up Bourbon – the fattest cow I have ever seen! She had rolls on her rolls. She has great manners and is a Red Angus heifer. She has finally lost enough weight (probably 200 – 300 lbs) and is ready for a date with Dartanyan the bull.
October rolled around and we finally finished haying with 320 round bales and 4000 squares, we were all grateful when the last piece of equipment returned to the farm. It was also the last weeks of an amazing market season. The last of the lambs went to the abattoir and the cows came home from the neighbors. Chicken covid/avian flu has started up again so its back to getting permits for baby meat birds again. Kayla switched from catering to deckhand in a sea-time accrual position so both her and Matt are working full time on the ferries now. Matt on the Skeena here in Fulford and Kayla on the Quinsita/Quinsam in Vesuvius. We had our weavers guild sale over the Thanksgiving weekend at Artspring and I did really well.
November has been nuts. The piglets have been popping like popcorn. Blanche has 5, Ginnie has 8 and Hermoine has 11. Because of the cold weather we have been playing musical barns. The sheep barn got renovated into two big stalls for Blanche and Ginnie so I can have heaters warming up the piglets, the ducks got moved in with the laying hens, the meat birds got the duck coop so that Hermoine could have the meat bird coop. Miss Deliverance is going to end up in a horse trailer as it closes up completely, enough I can put a heat lamp into it and park her by the shop. Poor Lancelot our 10 year old Border collie developed liver and kidney failure and his time had come for a peaceful ending. As the weather has been so nice the garlic got planted on time with hay barrier for protection in case we have yet another amazing rain. I bought Miss Bess a 11 month old jersey/brown swiss/black angus heifer and turned her loose with the jerseys.
December 2nd Darryl starts his new job on Thetis Island as Chief engineer minor vessel. This is an amazing opportunity for him (and his pension) and no more graveyard shifts!! With all the travelling involved his bossy wife declared he needed a truck that would actually pass vehicle inspection, so he broke down and bought his “pavement princess” 2000 F350 dually 4x4 crew cab. Who puts carpet in a pick up?? When I lived in Europe there were people across the hall that had a bouvier des flanders named Kavak. She was a huge bundle of fur that would bound from one apartment to the other with all us little girls squealing behind her. Since then I have always wanted one, “Holly will be 10 weeks just before Christmas and will definitely bring some excitement into the household.
As much as its been a crazy year, it was also a greatly productive one. I want to thank everyone who supported the farm this year, even with all the ups and down, the learning curve still being steep, it is still very rewarding to look back over the year and see what all we have accomplished.
All the best Darryl, Sheila and Britty – Windsor Farm