Fall weather has arrived and Henry is leaving us

Our Grandson happily took home cabbage,egg plant, squash,tomatoes, zucchini, and an ever prized first pumpkin. He was indeed a happy little boy. When he arrived home he presented his Mother with a lovely savoy cabbage in its entire beautiful leafy brilliance.
The nights are cool and the woodstove now feels welcoming instead of smotheringly hot. Our trees are turning wonderful colours and I look forward to my favorite time of the year. A time to put down everything we can to enjoy for the winter months. A time to relish the smell of the wood stove as we stand outside in the cool weather.Smells wonderful to me .
I look forward to hand sewing and long stewed meals. As we prepare to hunker down for the winter. We have decided to add on to the chicken coops and runs this fall . In order to ensure lots of excercise space for our ever growning flock. Speaking of chickens , sadly we are losing our origional Henry. Our Beautiful Bard Rock rooster is old and dying . he follows me around like an old man and has lost his shine.I am sad that he will be leaving soon , but he has  had a wonderful long life . He is 4, has had his own personal harum and has lived an entirely free range healthy life. For a mistake he has done very well indeed. I say "mistake" because I had ordered this lot of chickens from the hardware store in town. I asked for a dozen chickens. When they arrived they were all a few day old chicks, I soon discovered that one of the "chickens" was indeed a rooster. jokingly my next trip into the hardware I said to the clerk. " I seem to have a problem with one of my chickens" He said "oh what is the problem?" I said "t has a penis"
He asked me if I wanted to return the bird and I declined. Henry has been a fantastic member of our chicken family and has been a wonderful protecter of his many ladies. I will miss him indeed.
Our runner ducks are turning beautiful colours, there heads are turning greens and purples. And they are developing lovely wing feathers of assorted colours ..we will have to take photos.
Well I will go for now , we are working on the cold cellar this week so wish us luck .
Until next time
Margaret

We are so blessed

There are some people you meet who you soon learn are just meant to be in your lives. I could hardly wait to write this to you and tell you how blessed we are . We haven't written much this summer.Partly because we have been so busy and partly because with the humidity in the air we could not get our laptop to connect properly. But we are not at home today, in fact I am sitting at a Tim Hortons writing this.
We are on our annual treck to the Windsor, Lemington area to get , sweet potatoes , apples and any other deals we can find to get us through the winter months. And to make up for the fruit trees will not give us fruit this year. We found some beautiful apples at $10 a bushel , and many other delights. Still havent found sweet potatoes.
But let me tell you why I asked to stop here and write this..
We stopped at a garage sale sometime last year and met a lovely lady named Sue. We bought many lovely items and could not get over how inexpensive everything was. We chatted about our love of history and soon learned Sue was a lover of history too. So we told her about our little lifesyle experiment and directed her to our blog page..
Today we stopped at a garage sale again , and you guessed it , over came Sue and her Mother welcomed us by name and we continued with the conversation we had started last year. We were a little surprised that we had been remembered and that they were following our blog.But not only that , Sue has created a beautiful memory book with each of our blog additions in it . A beautiful antique book . She has followed us right along. Imagine how touched I felt looking at this book and hearing her words.
Sue and I will start writing to each other and hopefully she and her husband will honour us with a visit.
Margaret

Ken here, I'm all about buildings if you haven't guessed by now. I'm also about dreaming and making the dreams happen. We have been blessed this year with chicks from our own birds and some lovely kittens as well. I have been cleaning up areas on our property with a mind to get some major capital projects completed. The challenge here is to build the things we need built for as little money as possible, none at all is the ultimate goal. I have now collected most of the mareials for these building projects and have spent less than $300. This will give us an enlrged storage area for Margaret's catering equipment and all of our camping gear etc. It will also finish our west walkway, a step for the green house, a new vestibule for the chicken coop (cuts down the wind in the winter) and a foundation for the garden shed. I'd like to get all of this done before the snow flies (read "must" get done). We also have to get our cold room finished so we can store all of our vegetable wealth. Sounds like a lot of work and it is but it will be well worth it in the end.

We will live off the fruits of our bounty, chemical and corporate free, all the while building and planning for next year. Speaking of next year,Next July we are holding a weekend event to showcase what we are doing and to teach others what a modern Victorian lifestyle can look like. We will have other like minded people join us to teach their skills so keep next July in mind and we will follow with the date. Sorry I ust cannot remember what we decided on .oops!

That's all for now,
Margaret & Ken

We think we can add pictures

Greetings all, we recently moved  up to the 21st century with a couple of Samsung Galaxy SII smart phones. Victorian? Most definitely not. Victorian in spirit,very much so.They  loved new technology. We are going to try and upload pictures to the  blog with  our  spiffy new tech. We have taken quite a few pictures and want to share them with you. Wish us luck as we endeavour to make our available for all to see.
That's all for now,
Margaret &Ken

Summer glorious summer

It has been a  while since we have posted and there is much to tell. We have been very busy indeed with gardens, grandchildren and new lives at our farm.
We have 2 lovely sheep , Emily and Charlotte. New to our farm and they already think they own the place. They were very intrigued with the cats and I was wishing I had a camera when they met one of the very small kittens only to get a smack.Shocked them for sure and gave me a chuckle .
We have 11 new chicks, went out one morning to let the birds out and there they were. We have had so many hens lay on eggs only to result in us throwing them away months later that we were nicely surprised that this crop actually hatched . They are lovely black and yellow.
We have more ducks in two varieties Runners and muscovies . So it is noisy and busy at our house . Sounds beautiful. We are digging a pond out back but will keep the canoe as everyoen seems to love swimming in it first thing in the morning . Especially the runners , they come out of the pen and jump right in . Delighted our grandchildren to no end. Lastly our gardens are doing wonderfully.Wow this has been the summer for gardens and I have been busy canning and drying . We should have a wonderfully full cold cellar this winter.The only crops that we will not have is our apples ,plums, peaches and pears. Sadly the frost took all of our fruit.So we will have to either buy or do without.  You may notice we have  bought smart phones, seems pretty modern but we need something portable and something we can post photos with. Not to mention our children finally broke us down. We use internet access to do research and these seem to be a good tool so far. We will see.
We are planning a weekend next July o hold an event inviting anyone wishing to attend to come and visit the farm and learn what we are doing. We are looking for anyone who wishes to participate. So artisans or teachers willing to come set up a booth/tent and help people learn they can indeed learn new things. We hope to educate people to what we are trying to do and what we will be doing in the future. We have enjoyed what we are doing very well and are perfecting what we are doing so when we retire in a couple of years we can do this full time and with more passion. So if you have any ideas please pass them along to us . It is still in the planning stages so ideas are more than welcome.
Well I shoudl go for now . Thank you all for reading this and keeping up with what we are doing enjoy the rest of this lovely summer and we will see you soon.
M

Rain glorious rain

It has been raining all morning and that is just fine with me.Our rain barrels and everything else are filling to the brim and that too is wonderful.The sheep are enjoying being wet and they and the chickens are running around the yard happily.The ducks, well wow they are happy happy happy.
Our gardens are doing well but I must confess I am watering them and not relying on rainfall to keep them going. We have plenty of water in our barrels so this is not a problem.I am sure in period they would not have waited but watered.Their lives depended on their crops doing well.If our grapes survive we will have plenty to dry and put away .They are growing nicely.
I will be back later I just wanted to tell everyone how lovely the rain is today. With the drought conditions all over we are lucky, The USA is having terrible heat and drought and they will have increased food prices .It will be very hard for many people to make ends meet . See you soon.
M

Grandchildren,broken arms and sheep

It has been a busy few weeks and we have attempted to post numerous times. We see a squirrel and oops another day is gone.
I am sure you are wondering about the title of this post. We have had 2 of our grandchildren here to visit.Zoe and Jude. They have had a wonderful time and ill be back to visit us more in a week or two. Unfortunately Zoe who is our dare devil was jumping on the large round bales missed and broke her arm near her wrist.So we have been back and forth to hospital for check ups  and such.Poor little bugger was so very brave and now has a well autographed cast to show off.
It has been unbelievably hot and humid here , and I have been paying special attention to our crops.Our newspaper with cut grass on top around the plants has worked very well to keep moisture levels up . Our plants seem to be doing wonderfully. A nursery I frequent gave me free about 30 more tomato plants and that many onion sets so wow we are going to be busy canning ..
We have bought 2 beautiful sheep and they are adjusting very well, we also bought more ducks and heritage chickens. Very lovely stock .If anyone wishes to come and visit us to see our growing brood please feel free. Some of the ducks are called runners, Ken describes them as teenagers in a mall. If one turns one way so do all of the rest,and they hardly stop moving. These ducks are standing rather than waddling. Very fun to watch, SO now we have chicken and duck tv here at the farm.I must run as I am heading to see the grandchildren and heading to Toronto tomorrow. I am not looking forward to the trip at all. We live a quiet life here , everything smells like it should , there is beauty to look at . Toronto represents at least for me noise,heavy air,smells that are not natural and noise...I absolutely hate the noise. Oh and the harsh lights. We live with the gentle light of candles.I find anything else hard on my eyes . Oh well our trip into the city is for a christening and a birthday. So we will survive and soon be home to our lovely home. Until next time stay cool and hydrated.
M

I wonder if they might have compromised and slept naked

Almost everything we do, we keep in mind what would life have been like if this was indeed 1865. We find ourselves talking about  fruit shortages and what that would mean to the average family.Our fruit trees are almost all bare. Where we normally have hundreds of pears we have counted less than a dozen. Our apple trees have no fruit at all. That would mean no apples going into the cold cellar, no cider,no apple sauce and no canned apples slices for pies etc.I use a lot of apples.Most pork dishes I cook have apple in them of some kind even if it is just an apple stuffing. I use many many apples throughout the year. We have no plums,peaches,  cherries at all. Raspberries are looking good so I will have to waste none. We live in a world now that even with shortages we will have apples and pears, they will come from far away , we may pay more but we will have them.In my opinion it is no wonder we are all so wasteful.
But the gist  of my post has to do with this heat. While I do sleep in period night wear which is wonderfully fine cotton I still am sweltering . We have wonderful cross breezes through  our home but wow it has been almost unbearable to sleep. So I am kind of wondering if you think perhaps they might have said"what the heck,no one will ever know" and slept naked? Any opinions based on anything you have read? I have not read anything referring to this other than having cool water and cloths beside the bed to wipe ones self down  in the heat.So any opinions would be a good conversation..see you soon
Margaret