Itsumo Mawaru

I promise I’m not rushing into the farm life too much… I mean, what kind of a farm would it be without animals? I’m not rushing in, I’m just making it more farm-like.

Pictured above from left to right are Maggie, Ginger Rogers, and an unnamed third one. Maggie and Ginger Rogers will be joining the Happy Panda Rainbow Farm in early March, along with Franklin:

Franklin is a strapping fine lad who is the father of Ginger and Maggie’s 2010 babies. He was a bit sad and frustrated at being stuck inside the barn (to protect the little goats who are frolicking around on the farm), so I’m happy that he’ll get to enjoy running around in my pasture in a month or so.

Their arrival in March gives me plenty of time to clean up the barn, secure the fences, acquire and transport some hay and other supplies, and learn as much as I can about taking care of them. These guys aren’t without risk, I’ve been advised that it’s not the best thing to jump into lambing your first year, luckily both the ewes are great mothers so it will hopefully be without much drama. As a plus for me, they’ll be shorn within a few months’ time, so I’ll have fresh fleece to play with during the summer nights!

I’m looking forward to their arrival on the farm! And I’m doubly excited for welcoming the little lambs into this world. I’m open to name suggestions, although I have to admit I do enjoy the thought of naming them after old painters, Picasso, Monet…

No related posts.

Today’s blog post is at Adventures with Yarn. I talk about my newest spinning wheel purchase, the John Bryce wheel pictured above. What a peculiar device!

I stumbled upon this book while browsing the 636.xx section of the library (the Animal Husbandry classification in the Dewey decimal system), and I’m so glad I did! Who would have thought that such an unassuming cover would contain some of the best information I’ve ever read regarding raising goats?

Raising Milk Goats the Modern Way is just shy of 200 pages of information, pictures, and schematics to help the newbie deal with milk-producing goats. It starts off with the basics such as how to acquire a goat, what to feed it and how to house it, and rapidly gets into the more advanced topics of breeding, record keeping, lactation curves, breakdowns of goat feed and how to make it yourself. It even contains a basic explanation of butchering and cheese making, as well as recipes for what to do with your meat/milk.

Pic 2, Example of lactation curves

One thing I loved about this book was its meticulous attention to detail. You easily get the impression that the author, Jerry Belanger, is very passionate about raising goats, and that’s exactly the type of person I want to be learning from. The amount of pages dedicated to making your own properly balanced goat feeds is astounding yet educational and surprisingly not too dry to read.

Pic 3, some feed ration breakdowns

The only qualm I have with the book is that it doesn’t cover fiber goats at all, but that’s to be assumed when the title of the book is Raising Milk goats, not Fiber goats. Still, the book is an extremely valuable resource, and it easily takes my #1 spot for Best Goat Book. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to add goats to their farm.

Rating:

Above is one of the views from the master bedroom. This is similar to the view I’ll have while washing dishes, as the kitchen is directly below. While these animals likely won’t be staying on the land (and the tractor certainly won’t be), my future grazing animals will be hanging out in the same area.

I must tell you, at this current moment I’m suffering a bit from barnheart, the desire to be a farmer but the inability to do so at the moment. Now I’m lucky that I’ll be on the land by the end of February, which is much closer to my goals than I ever expected to be nowadays, and a part of me keeps saying that because of this I should be happy. For the most part I’m able to distract myself with books, crafts, people and blogs. But every now and then I get the strongest desire to be out and exploring my land, chopping down deadwood, painting up the inside of the house, and doing all sorts of things which I cannot yet do. Considering the winter we’re having now in Ottawa is not much of a winter at all, many days would be perfect for wandering around. I can only hope that March and April will continue to be mild so that I can take advantage of this unusual season.

One other thing I’ve been doing to keep my mind off of the currently impossible is considering ordering some seeds. I would love to grow all sorts of things in my first year, as well as starting to establish the long term plants and berry bushes (excluding an orchard, that’ll probably have to wait till 2011). I’ve been saving lots of seeds from various grown and bought plants from last season, but those are mostly peppers/melons/winter squashes. I’ve spent a lot of time on the seed company Veseys’ website, and I’m looking around for other Canadian and possibly US seed companies. I absolutely love heritage vegetables so I’m keeping my eye out for them!

Here’s a picture of a work in progress I’ve got going using 100% my own handspun and hand dyed, the Quad Blanket, which will make its home in my future craft room (hopefully it’ll be painted in these colors too!).

I’ve made a more detailed post about my Quad Blanket on my yarn blog, Adventures with Yarn. Check it out if it interests you!

Today I’ve made a post on my blog Adventures with Yarn. I’ve documented one method I use to dye my handspun yarn using food coloring. I ended up dyeing two more sets of colors, blue and pink, so that I can keep going with a blanket I’m currently working on – a log cabin knitted blanket. If it interests you, check it out, and more pictures of the process can be found in this Flickr set!

This is the Strange Nook. It is called this because, well, it’s quite out-of-place, it’s pretty small, and with the window on the side bringing in the natural light, this nook seems to be more than mere storage but not large enough for any function requiring more than one or two.

I have been thinking for many days about what I would use this nook for. Some ideas that crossed my mind included changing it into a 50’s diner booth or making it into the sparest of spare bedrooms. But then, just yesterday, the idea hit me – I can use this nook as my seedling station! Putting a work bench along the window wall makes a nice place to sit and plant/transplant, and I can probably fit a plant rack along each wall. In fact I might just have enough space to keep a potted plant or two indoors for the cold Canadian seasons, which means my quaint fantasy of a potted pineapple plant is not yet out of reach!

Until we get an actual greenhouse up and running I think this will be an excellent solution. For sure it will add a nice splash of organic living green to the basement! Now my thoughts are around what color this room should be. Perhaps a nice light blue, to give the baby seedlings some hope and inspiration to grow. Perhaps brown with sponged on shading, to represent the dirt in which they live. Maybe a bit of a mural is in the cards, and a garden-y curtain to match… perhaps this strange nook is not as strange as I once though it was!

I’ve been thinking about chickens for the past few weeks. They will be the first animals joining us on the farm, so I’m taking the time now to learn all sorts of chicken related things.

Wikipedia has been very helpful in listing and illustrating many of the various breeds of chickens found throughout the world. Some breeds we’ve found interesting include Silkies and Australorps. I’ve also been keeping my eye on UsedOttawa’s poultry listings to see what breeds are available in the area. It’s encouraging to see the low prices of these animals, however I’m fully aware that the majority of the cost in chicken keeping is their feed and hay for their coop, after the costs for constructing the coop and run of course.

Speaking of coops, I’ve been looking at all sorts of coop ideas and plans. One common trait I enjoy is the easily accessible nest boxes, so that one can collect eggs by simply opening up the hinged roof to the nest box and voila there are the eggs! I had read about portable chicken tractors, but since I am not really concerned about space, I think I will go for a more standard and permanant instillation. And for their safety a deeply buried fenced in run area so they can range in peace!

In this post I’ll be talking about a few things I’ve discovered and learned throughout my recent home buying adventure! Of course, this knowledge applies to Ontario Canada, and is only my interpretation.

General and Realtors: My overall general thought about the process was simply how easy it was. All in all, some of my university projects took more effort and concentration and work than buying this house has. Some of this was certainly facilitated by the sellers having a realtor who also represented me at no cost to myself, his knowledge of rural property selling was handy and valuable, and his aid in filling and filing the appropriate forms was well worth it. I can see where having your own realtor would be beneficial, such as if you wanted to play hardball in the negotiations or if you were finding it hard to find a good property; luckily in my case I did not want to play hardball (I felt their asking price was a fair price) and I fell in love with that first property, so I had no need for a realtor of my own.

Morgage: The mortgage application process was quite simple, I applied for one from PC Financial online, and called in for one from ING Direct. For whatever reason I never heard back from ING Direct, and the mortgage I got from PC Financial fit all of my conditions at a reasonable rate, so I chose to go with it. I believe they assign you a mortgage broker who works specifically with PC Financial and CIBC (the bank who backs PC Financial), and all of the process is done through emailing or faxing documents and talking on the phone. The process was very clear at every stage, and all my questions were answered quickly by the broker. Best of all the mortgage has no “twenty pages of fine print”, the conditions are clear as can be, and I respect that greatly.

Inspector: Finding the home inspector was done completely online via search terms like “eastern ontario home inspector”, as well as browsing a directory of certified inspectors from some credential-giving organization. I sent out the same email to all who interested me, and weeded out a few based on the quality of their replies. I narrowed it down to three inspectors, the final choice was influenced completely by my insurance’s recommendation to have a WETT (chimney and fire stove) inspection, of which only one inspector offered. This inspector is Greg Keith who runs Matrix Property Inspections. The inspection was a great learning experience, the report he prepared up will be invaluable in guiding our overall renovation process, and he helped to identify a key problem which I then negotiated to have the sellers fix. This fix alone makes up for the inspection fees. I highly recommend Greg to anyone in the Eastern Ontario region.

Beyond gaining valuable insight into the house, the report provided most of the information needed for the insurance company. Without this, I would have needed to talk with the owners and find out all that information… I think it would have been a hassle! So I was quite grateful for the report.

As a side note, my final three inspectors all had websites, and all featured pictures of themselves on their website. I find it interesting how much of an impact this played on my openness to them and their services. It seems when you are selling your services, you really do have to sell yourself just as much.

Lawyer: My lawyer was found in a similar way, through the internet. Again I contacted a few lawyers and narrowed it down based on the professionalism of their responses (such as striking off the lawyer who made snide comments to me about my knowledge). I met with one who was quite interested to hear about my experience in finding him through the web. He seemed to be very knowledgeable and successful in his field of practice, he laid out the fees for the entire process clearly. Once I am complete with the process I will post my recommendation and name of the lawyer in this space!

General thoughts about selling a house: I can’t believe how important pictures are in selling your house. I would estimate one could easily make a few more thousand dollars, or sell their house in less time, by hiring a professional photographer who will photograph each room with a proper wider angle lens or with multiple shots. The same thing goes for having floor plans. In fact, I would take it one step further and say if you really wanted to sell your house fast or for your desired price, having a website made for your house with details and pictures of each room would help out immensely, as would sharing any and every tidbit of information you have. As more and more people turn to the Internet to buy a house, I believe to sell your house properly involves bringing as much of that “real life house showing” aspect into the digital realm, whether that’s through pictures, videos, floor plans, information lists, et cetera.

Eastern Ontario-specific knowledge: Water tests (for checking well water) are free, if you’re in the Ottawa area you can do it the fastest by going to the St Laurent lab off of Conroy, where they have the water testing kits to take and where you will also go to drop off the water sample. The instructions are simple, 2-3 days later you can access the results through the phone and 4-5 is when the paperwork will be available. Potable drinking water results are under 5 coliforms and 0 e-colis.

While I was hoping to add a Part 2 to this series, I wasn’t expecting to add one this fast!

The picture above is the first and only property I visited before making an offer. It was love at first sight!

The property is located about 40 minutes East of Ottawa. It’s 70 acres of agriculturally zoned land with a small barn, a creek, pasture, and lots of wooded brush. The house itself is a wonderful three story dwelling – a traditional second story with bedrooms and a balcony accessed from the master bedroom (the area above the front door in the pic above), a lovely social main floor with a combined open kitchen/dining room and a gorgeous living room with fireplace (and a laundry room looking onto the property, a nice view), and a spectacular only slightly underground  fully finished basement complete with an apartment-sized kitchen, lounge room with wood stove, two rooms, and an indoor woodshed room.  So basically it’s everything I ever wanted, in fact it’s more than I could have imagined!

Best of all is that I got it at a good price. The seller had recently reduced the price as well as posting the property on other sites, such as where I found it, UsedOttawa. In fact, it was my decisive actions that secured this property for me – there were many other buyers hot on my tail, at least one was scheduled to visit the day after I visited, and more people were calling their Realtor in the past few days! You know that whole “lines follow Meagan” thing? Well it happened when I bought my house too! Luckily I had taken some steps in advance, done some research, such that I was able to take the required actions immediately when needed.

One interesting note – Ontario mortgages only use the term “him” in the buying contract, even in cases like mine where it is a woman buying the property. But I’m not offended at this, in fact in the past few days I’ve felt more “manly” than I’ve ever felt before – checking out land, contacting inspectors, being an adult!

The closing date is February 12th, meaning from that day on, I imagine there will be a ton and a half blog posts featuring this area and my experiments with doing pretty much everything I ever wanted to do! For those who want to see more pictures, I invite you to visit the Flickr album I’ve put together, which is where I’ll be uploading more pictures as we go