Heather McLeod

Tuesday, March 4, 2008 – Beautiful, beautiful sunshine

It is so spring-y today. The seeds I planted in trays last week have sprouted up — everything except the celeriac. All my tomatoes look identical, which I find odd since there are four different varieties. I just assumed that they’d be distinguishable as plants. Silly me.

We’ve been really busy this winter, despite my hibernation tendencies and the minimal daylight hours after a full day of work at an office. Brock and his dad, Randy, have dug BY HAND (and shovel/pitchfork) numerous rows, then lasagna-ed them up with aged sheep manure, compost, and other yummies.

Brock built his amazing greenhouse. I’ve learned how to start seeds, make mozzarella and ricotta (although, to be honest, the mozzarella has only worked out once. “Easy for seven-year-olds,” my ass). I’ve killed a rat. The bunnies have added another winter to their lives and become a little more feral, despite living a life of pampered luxury in their Villa. Brock has accumulated a LOT of old wood, hay bales, glass windows and tools at minimal to zero cost.

We’re excited about having our booth at the Duncan Farmer’s Market this summer! Our first day will likely be June 28, although we might “drop in” a few Saturdays earlier. I’ve been busy with the health and business regulations, forms, registration, etc. Also, we now have business cards.

Saturday, March 8, 2008 – Sweaty Saturday

Apparently farming is hard work. I know this because I spent an hour preparing the bunnies’ summer play area. This involved moving all the branches that Randy pruned off our apple trees — and not small twiggy branches, but huge limbs that I had to drag over to the wood pile. Then I raked the ground, to make it conducive to soft bunny feet. Then I re-dug parts of the ditch I made a few weekends ago, to clean up areas where the dirt had fallen back in. After an hour of hard work I am a sweaty, hot beast.

Next step will be to set up chicken wire and bury it in the ditch, so Delilah and Peter can’t dig themselves out into an open field and become prey.

Oh, as for Peter: he keeps getting poop clumps stuck to his bum. I think it’s due to the unsanitary Villa conditions, which is why I’m so very motivated to prepare the bunnies’ summer area. I hope it’s not just an old bunny problem . . . he hates it, and it’s unpleasant. For all concerned.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008 – Post-Easter Weekend

Our Easter long weekend was very emotional. We built and lost our deer fence/greenhouse. After at least three days of work (and $300 in materials), a HUGE windstorm hit Sunday night and totally annihilated our half-done construction. The 2x4s are salvageable, but the plastic is torn to pieces. (As is our spirit!) This is the 2nd construction that weather has destroyed, which is all part of this Year of Experiment but nonetheless is painful to endure. We surveyed the wreckage Monday morning: the 10-foot-post sections were flattened in place. It looks like they’re laid out for assembly. They’re even in a straight line. The two 8-foot-post sections (each 100 feet long) had already been sheeted with the plastic, so they were tossed around by the storm. Even the stakes Brock slammed into the ground were ripped up. We are learning to respect the power and impact of weather as farmers, and we don’t even have crops in the ground yet. I can’t imagine how traumatic it would be to lose a season of crops to a hailstorm or early freeze!

In other news, we had a great weekend. Four days of being farmers, doing farmy things on our farm. Brock spent most of the time outside, while I planted more tomato seeds and attended to my wee plants indoors. We visited with Kyle & Chrissy, Byron, Craig & Sharon & Gavin, Randy & Debbie, my Aunt Pat and Gramma Walker, and had a huge Easter dinner at the Cutler’s in Genoa Bay. Monday we ate crab in the shell for lunch (thank you, Jim Cutler!!) and steak and asparagus for dinner. (The asparagus was from California — we’re not eating Mexico-grown asparagus anymore. I’d tell you why but it involves fertilizer sprays and that’s unpleasant.)

Meanwhile: I am designing our Makaria Farm website in preparation for the spring/summer; our asparagus seeds have sprouted and look like tiny asparaguses; I’m growing salba thanks to seeds obtained via mom and am VERY impressed with how quickly they’re growing; our tomato plants (round 1) are 4-5 inches tall; we’re fencing our entire property to keep the deer out, using barbed wire; our annihilated deer fence/greenhouse is still lying in the field because it’s too heartbreaking to go clean it up; we’re having more crab for dinner tonight (thank you, Jim Cutler!!); and we’re both back to our day jobs after 4 days of farming adventures. Brock only has three weeks to go until he’s done being a government employee, and becomes a full-time farmer!!

Oh, and next Wednesday (April 2) is our two year anniversary. We’ve come a long way in two years, baby.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008 – Ah, stevia . . .

Part of the excitement of being newby farmers is realizing that we won’t have to buy groceries anymore. (Well, except for toilet paper, etc.) We’ve been trying to find a replacement for sugar, since we can’t grow sugar cane here. Honey is one excellent option, but it’s a few years away for us. Then we read about stevia, which is a plant – I think it looks like mint – and one leaf of that plant is equivalent to two teaspoons of sugar, when steeped in a cup of tea. Aside from the perk of being able to grow it ourselves, it also has zero calories, zero carbs, zero everything-else-evil, AND won’t ultimately give us cancer like aspertame. A diabetic coworker cautioned me that stevia has “a taste,” so I bought a wee box of packaged stevia at Country Grocer so we could try it out. I’m drinking a cup of tea now, with milk and one packet of stevia.

Findings include: definitely tastes more powdery than crystal-like; excellent level of sweetness; I could get used to this.

I’m not sure if it’d be any good in pies, but I’ll try it out eventually. There’s a whole conspiracy theory behind stevia. Since it’s natural and evil-free, it’s the obvious sugar-replacement of choice, and in Japan (I think) it really is the #1 product. The USA, however, has restricted or outlawed stevia from commercial sale, and I even read in one farm magazine that the gov’t is trying to outlaw growing stevia. Whatever. It suits our purposes nicely, and will provide an interesting product for us to sell. At Country Grocer, as a processed product, it cost me $12 for 100 packets. A box of 180g of loose powder costs $15. While we won’t have the resources to process stevia to its full strength (30 times sweeter than sugar), we can certainly sell the leaves.

Perhaps this would be a good time for my disclaimer: while I am an honest person, I also have a very “creative” perception of the world, and tend to misremember facts in order to make an argument or improve a story (like father, like daughter). This is generally a harmless habit, but please do your own research before basing a thesis on this blog.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 – I hate baby birds

I’ve had a very anti-animal day today (except for the bunnies, of course, love them very, very much). At 2am or some other ungodly hour I woke up to TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET directly overhead. At one point I thought it was just my nose whistling. But no, it continued for a very very long time, and my theory is that there is a nest of baby birds in our roof. (We haven’t put the soffits up yet, so it’s open season for any animal that wants to live in our ceiling insulation.) Stupid baby birds. Stupid us, for not putting the soffit up before nesting season.

In other news, our house is full of seeds. We’ve received our orders from Stokes (minimal, since they treat their seeds), Dominion, Salt Spring Seeds, Green Space Design, and West Coast Seeds (the majority of our budget, at over $700 worth).

For those of you wondering what we’re growing this year, the answer is: EVERYTHING. No exageration. We have seeds for: lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, beets, radishes (I don’t even like radishes), stevia (see above), peanuts, loofah (yes, loofah), wheat, barley, oats, peas, beans, squash, pumpkins, artichokes, potatoes, onions, chives, parsley, cilantro, mint, hot peppers, regular peppers, tomatoes, AND SO ON.

It might be excessive. However, we fully intend our farm and garden market to be a raging success, so we must be prepared.

Also: great idea of the week . . . I want to name our garden market The Garden of Eatin’. Ha ha.

Heather McLeod

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March 2008

February 2008

Heather McLeod is a mystery writer based in British Columbia, Canada.