Candlelight Walk 2016

Hello!

Every year on May 5, children in Holland decorate the graves of fallen Canadian soldiers as a way to remember their sacrifice and to give thanks for their help in the liberation of Holland during World War 2.

Here in Canada, candlelight walks have begun to take place as well to remember our veterans and our lost Canadians...

Last evening in a silent tribute walk, Erin, Sammy and Krista walked with the Girl Guides, laid a candle at the Cenotaph and gave a paper tulip to veterans who were present.

Nicole marched with her cadet troop, laid candles and saluted the veterans. Nicole also spoke on behalf of the cadets and recited a poem called "The Train Whistle".   I was teary eyed before this moment and a complete mess during her reading.  My pride in my daughter overflowed as did the gratitude for the life that I have been blessed with.

The candles stayed lit all through the evening and night hours.

May we always remember the high cost of conflict and find paths of truth and peace instead.

xo
Jeanette

Veggie patch dreams...

Howdy!

Two months back our little patch of paradise was looking like this:

Cold and icy.

But indoors, things were green... green with thoughts of a vegetable garden full of delicious food to eat!  The idea that we could have a veggie garden that you could walk through!  A veggie garden that you could feed your family meals from really were thoughts that brought us excitement!  Before our move we had a cucumber plant, a bean plant, a tomato plant a few pepper plants in our container gardens.  A great way to dip our toes in but also a taste of what we knew we really wanted on a larger scale!

Last autumn we had chosen a plot and covered it with manure.

As the snow blew outdoors we set to drawing up a garden plan and making a list of seeds to order.  How happy we were to see this box in our mailbox only days later!  (Thank you Vesey's seeds for the speedy delivery!)

As we are trying to use the idea of companion planting, designing a garden layout was an evening in itself.  Figuring in the furrows and walkways we decided we needed to make our plot just a little bit bigger.  :)

When we were happy with what we were seeing on paper we turned to the real life outdoor garden patch.  All of last fall's manure was pulled back; cardboard was set down and the manure laid back on top of the cardboard layer.  The cardboard will keep down any grass/weeds as well as retain moisture.. AND it will naturally decompose!  Layered on top of the manure was some clean fill - mostly sandy soil from the tree line that Derek has been clearing behind the barn.  The last bit to go before seeding will be some nice dark moist topsoil.

All hands on deck to help.  Our hens were great at turning over dirt in the garden as well as turning over the manure in the manure pile...

 What a place to dust bath??!!

Though it feels as though winter will never let go and the last frost may still be weeks away, we began our celery, peppers and tomatoes indoors.  Nothing happened for almost two weeks after we planted them!  Then a lucky trip to TSC found us in the clearance section where electric heat pads for seed starting were on sale.  Within days we had sprouts and now a few weeks in, our plants are well on their way to being ready to be planted outdoors after Jack Frost's departure!!

 Green thumbs up!  :)

Jeanette

SPRING developments

Well hello...

Okay so I told myself I was going to be better at sitting and updating and well I didn't.  This is exactly why I don't make New Years resolutions either.

The month of March and part of April saw us teeter-tottering between bought of blizzards and ice and MUD.  Nothing brings down a person's mood or energy like acres of mud let me tell you.  I was prepared for mud when we made the move to rural living but seeing horses knee deep in mud; losing your rubber boot to sticky mud holes while moving horses and buckets and the constant mopping at the front door just depletes ones stamina.

Thankfully we had  a full week of sunshine last week and my internal energy is replenished!

I think it may be safe to say its spring, so here's a quick spring update.  There have been lots and lots of babies!

The first baby chicks hatched here at SchnickAcres... in the midst of ice storms that saw us losing hydro in the wee hours of the morning and running the gasoline powered generator (NOT quiet).

Baby ducklings... four for Krista's kindergarten classroom and nine for the neighbour down the road.  Though I am a self confessed "Crazy-Chicken-Lady" even I have to admit these guys are sweeties.
And once again, please let me tell you just how COOL small town people really are - I mean, DUCKLINGS in the KINDERGARTEN classroom!  What an amazing experience for the children.  :)   I love the names the kids gave them.. "DJ, Daisy, Fluffy and Fudgey".

And Smores brought four little fuzzy babies into the world at the end of March.  Two little grey tabbies (named Jasper and Edgar), one little Torti-shell that the girls named Stevie after her daddy and finally a little orange tabby that Krista named "Mr Orange".  For being a young mommy, Smores is an amazing mother.

And with the sunny weather it was time for us to get started on our outdoor to-do list before the mosquitoes make their appearance.  We began by trimming all the pine trees out front and trimming back some overgrowth at the roadside.  Our garden plot has been dug, and layered, and this past weekend, Derek began the big job of painting the barn roof.

The metal sheets were rusted but solid... after much research it was primed and painted...by Derek... I just held the ladder and held my breath.  Yikes...

Our 2016 goal list is ever growing.. the things that must be done and the things that can be done to move us towards a life of self sufficiency.  Even the mediocre jobs such as tree trimming and raking fill us with such a feeling of satisfaction and pride.  Life is good.

Happy Tuesday.

Jeanette

Schnick Snow Days

Good morning!

I was reading through Twitter this morning and came across some heated 'back and forth' between parents and area school boards that have decided to cancel all school transportation but keep schools open.  Because I have been faced with the decision of whether or not to drive TWO Wednesdays in a row due to inclement weather, I wanted to share my position.

First, to all the wonderful teachers I am blessed to know who have most likely made that drive into school today... thank you.

I do worry about my girls getting behind or missing key lessons and my first instinct is to pile us in the van and drive the 9km on the side roads.  However, what stops me is my safety concerns.  Poor weather conditions do not need one more mom in a minivan.  (NO, I am NOT trying to say us moms cannot drive safely...)

My biggest pet peeve when living in the subdivision was the number of parent drivers!!  Our school boundary encompassed an area under 2km square, and yet even on the sunniest of mornings, there was the perpetual line up of vehicles waiting their turn to 'kiss and ride' at the school.  This in turn had vehicles stopped on sidewalk crossings and sometimes causing drivers to make poor decisions such as passing stopped school buses!  One of the biggest advantages to city living is the ability to walk to where you want to go!

There were some working parents, but there were a lot that would whip back home again for that quiet morning coffee - after 12 years of living there, I sadly realized this was the majority of the 'regular'  morning drivers.

Right now I am in a very blessed situation.  I do not work outside of the home; I can spend the day with my children and work on Girl Guide badges, play in the snow and yes Sammy - study for that upcoming fractions quiz!

And I know there will be times when the drive to school will be necessary - late arrivals, project transportation; but for today, if the school buses aren't driving, neither am I.

Enjoy your day - and to my friends on Twitter... be kind to one another.  xo
Jeanette

February Developments

Happy Leap Year!

It is hard to believe that today is the last day of February!  While we humans spent more days sick (colds and flu) than in any month I can remember, we had magic happening in our nursery.

Remember my craft room turned poultry brooder last summer?  It has once again been made into a baby bird nursery though on a smaller scale for now.

Last November, Derek met the father in law of a friend who aside from being just a real neat guy, happened to have an older style, large scale incubator he was willing to sell.  Though a little older, the  technology is the same and the wooden panelled unit was in phenomenal condition!

So, in the last days of January, Derek and Nicole moved the incubator into the craft room and Derek set to tinkering and  calibrating and on January 31 we set our first five duck eggs into the incubator.

What  a learning curve... learning to candle the eggs to ensure they were indeed fertilized and growing,  reading the humidity and temperature and adjusting as needed and finally, learning to recognize distress in hatching.

By day five we could see that we indeed had four growing embryos and one unfertilized egg.

Day five

And once those blood vessels stretched out, the embryo seemed to grow so fast!  For videos, be sure to check us out on instagram!

Day six

Day ten

Day sixteen

Day twenty-five

Newborn "Acadia" Day twenty-seven

Learning on a farm is not always easy and our girls are handling the ups and downs phenomenally.  Our first egg 'pipped' the outer shell almost 24 hours earlier than the others and knowing it can take a day for the duckling to emerge we did not panic.  Unfortunately, the little duckling passed while trying to hatch.  :(

Our little duckling Acadia emerged on her own moments after we sadly realized the passing of the first.

Worried about the progress on the final two ducklings and seeing similarities in the 'unzipping' progress we attempted to assist.  Knowing that the umbilical is attached until the very end we were very careful to assist only with some of the shell along the air pocket.  Sadly one little duckling perished shortly after getting its little body most of the way out of the egg and our final little duckling was quite weak from the hatching process.

We set this final little duckling into the brooder under the heat lamp to dry and keep warm and would you believe, little Acadia would not leave his side?  As we checked in throughout the night, Acadia had moved the little duckling away from the heat and helped him roll.  

By morning, the little duckling was up and exploring!

Nosy little duckling.  :)

The hatching process can be influenced by many factors - humidity being a big one.  As the incubator was reset, Derek spent the day reading up on the different situations that can arise and tweaking our original thermometer calibrations.  Our girls spent the day loving our new little family members.

 "Taylor (left)  and Acadia (right)"

Our next trays are in the incubator and include chicken eggs for me, the crazy chicken lady and ducklings for a neighbour down the road as well as some duck eggs for Krista's kindergarten class who would like to welcome them into the classroom for some learning adventures (can I say again how much I LOVE our small town? How cool are classroom ducklings??)  

New babies... all just in time for the Easter weekend.  :)

Jeanette

{{WORDless Wednesday}} February 10, 2016.. BEST FRIEND CHICKEN

We are half way through the week and on our way to MINUS CRAZY temperatures.  Here is a photo that is getting a lot of love on our instagram page.  Last weekend's lovely weather had us out in the wagon... Krista took lots of time to love and cuddle her favourite hen... A hen she calls "best friend Chicken".

Happy Wednesday!!

Jeanette

I am a homesteader. Because we all need a label.

Wow.. Okay, so I need to get better at carving out time to sit here at the blog... I've got tons to get written down...

Rewind to the Christmas holidays.

A family member was inquiring about our move and our property and asked me "is it a hobby farm or a working farm?"

The question stopped me in my tracks and my answer was disjointed.  Ummm... well its not our main source of income but we are selling produce but that goes back into helping pay for the pleasure animals - horses...  what am I???

I chewed over this for about a month.  And then I took a look at our goals here at SchnickAcres:

Its really only one goal:

To be as self sufficient as we can be.  In our food, household supplies and one day energy production.  (renewable wind and solar..  just in case you pictured us erecting a nuclear power plant in the back 40.)

Vegetable garden mapped out under manure

Okay so where does this fit in with the farming definition?  The more I thought about it, the clearer it became to me.  We enjoy doing for ourselves and receive great satisfaction in our successes - such as enough extra eggs to share with friends and neighbours.  We are not survivalists but feel assured that we can process our own poultry and eat should we need to.  The growth we talk about, whether it be a vegetable garden, a wind turbine or a dairy goat and a few sheep all comes back to goals of providing for ourselves.

What can we build/make ourselves today that will sustain our family tomorrow?  Basically we enjoy living a pioneer life... but with electricity, high speed internet (which is coming) and NETFLIX.

Haha... seriously though.  I really feel that the label (because we all need an important title) of homesteader fits us best.

Thanks for catching up with us,
Jeanette