Heel low:
We came to Alberta (my husband returned) 25 years ago because of the benefits of agriculture here. We could buy land that was arable and knew we would be left alone to have a hobby farm. We can buy large quantities of raw goods like grains, straw, hay without the hassles like when we lived on the Coast--not able to find a supplier to source what we needed to play at farming.
There are four totes of grain in the trailer (l00kit the amount of silos of grain!)
One tote is forty 55 pound bags...4 totes is 160 bags of grain
Plus we haul in two loads a year of pelleted bird rations
So we go thru 480 "bags" of bird food a year
One and third bags a day is eaten by our poultry
and in winter, I haul ten 5 gallon buckets of water a day
Here we are a "little" place and surrounded by "big" places that may easily sell us the dozen or so tons of grain and bagged feed. A good place to "play farmer!" We play because we never expected to make a profit. Our government uses the term "no expectation of profit" to define hobby farming...something we play (very hard at too) at and enjoy the benefits of our own home grown bounty. The quality of our life and the food we have to use is better...lots better than factory commercially farmed products...or so we think!
This is a year's supply of hay for the little flock and herd we have in ruminants
(nine ewes, one ram, two llamas and an old doe goat)
What we don't GROW as forage & have them graze on our pastures, is topped up by this feed
Just like you, we LOVE winters too and it is why we moved here. I don't like fall and spring because these times are in-betweens to winter and summer--simply too messy for me. Ice to slip on, turns to mud, fall time all those leaves falling making a mess we need to clean up. I like tidy and orderly...NO MESS!!
We breath a sigh of relief when it is once again WHITE (winter) or GREEN (summer). We are bless that spring and fall happen for a very short period of time here. Makes me very happy. When "spring" comes, it is very short time. Unlike on the Coast where we had spring drag out over months...you'd see first the snow drops (Galanthus) blooming, then the magnolia's (Magnoliaceae) would flower, lilies like the tulips (Lilium), and daffodils (Narcissus) would begin to show up. We had spring on the Coast but here in Alberta, everything blooms all at once...lilacs (Syringa), roses (Rosa)--even the fruit gets going...all at the same time...if you blinked over a two week period...you may miss SPRING time...LOL The leaves here in the fall turn and in about two weeks, the wind has blown the leaves off and the trees need to be bare because otherwise the branches break with the weight of the snow that falls.
The thing I like about raising livestock in Alberta besides getting the raw products in bulk without too much trouble...the cold winters KILL parasites that might otherwise plague the animals. This weekend, the one chore I want to get tended to is I want to deworm the ewes and the ram. I don't have to do this every four months like in many other places, twice a year is enough. I do fecal floats (have two microscopes and all the supplies) and find NO parasites...so wonderful to know the animals are virtually free from that...no fleas on the dogs...magnificent to not have them scratching and being bothered by external parasites. I use to HATE how the dogs suffered on the Coast--a never ending battle to keep them free of yucky fleas!
This does however mean I have to realize only the STRONG animals and plants survive. Constantly tested to see if they can withstand the extremes.
No sitting around doing nothing in winter...
WE got no place to sit??
The dogs cope well at adapting...helping me with chores but taking advantage of things like an empty (well OK, room enough for ONE dog) sled to sit and wait for me to finish up without getting COLD TOES!
Old Dog Fixins...she is a wise old dog indeed!
Retired Princess Warrior dog...she knows how to take care of her needs
More work in winter because pretty much ALL the water I haul to the animals, if not drunk by them before it freezes (and it freezes quick...five gallon pail frozen solid if left outside over night and often splits the pail too!)...all the water not used up has to be smashed out of the rubber buckets. I cannot use heated water buckets for birds like the Mandarin ducks (chickens get heated water buckets, as do the Call Ducks) because they have no self control and I would find them completely emptying the heated bucket and risk a fire. On the other hand, I have to water these kinds of birds in the afternoon so they have time to get water, then it freezes solid and they have time to dry off and not get ill by playing too long getting soaking wet into the colder weather.
You make me laugh...winter in Israel and summers in Canada...a globe trotter! It would work so long as you had someone stay and keep things going where you were not! Those citrus trees would need regular watering, yes? Can't say I have not thought about maybe packing up all the creatures and holidaying over winter on the Coast...I would have to come back here in summer...the mud and gloomy 90 days straight of rains would depress me and the waterfowl, oh the mud pies they would be forever making would be endless!
Thank you for the incentive to make our own bread...
I do make my own bread...but there are only so many hours in the day and I do get tired unlike when I was younger.
I have a good bread machine to help out now--makes a loaf with hardly any effort and makes a real shaped loaf...here is some homemade chili and bread from that machine.
Not a round loaf like in some bread machines, a REAL loaf, with straight sides...curved top
I use to make bread every two days but both Rick and I grew tired of it. There is a whole other taste to bread made at home...and bad as it may sound, you get tired of HOMEMADE BREAD...makes great toast, easy and quick to make too, but it has been a while since I bothered. Yesterday was busy and to think of stopping for even 20 minutes to measure out the ingredients and fire up the bread machine...I was not in the right mind set for that...oh well. Maybe we will go a batch up...for now, I be very lazy and grabbed store bread.
Ah yes, those Dorper sheep. The girls have been living the life of luxury. Feeding them, actually flushing them right now with very green and very good alfalfa hay. After I deworm them and the ram and the two older ewes will go in with the ram. I will be marking his chest with coconut oil that has been tinted with drink crystals (I have two marking harness but prefer to just smear his chest with colour and not worry about him being rubbed wrong with the harness or worse yet, getting his harness caught on our fencing panels). See who the ram marks and record the date. Seventeen day cycle and then I can take the two ewes out and put in three ewe lambs. The one little one I chose as a pet, will not be bred, she has grown but is a runt and little. I am fine with having a pet now and again. I am soft that way--farming with PETS too!
I want to lamb when I am home 24/7, not when I have to work at my part time job--because this is all unnecessary and lavish...if I was not home and a ewe or lamb(s) died because I chose not to time their lambing when I could be on watch...I would never forgive myself--a risk I cannot validate. I will know when each female is bred, add five months or 145 days for when to expect lambs. If the ram bred the ewe today (unlikely!), she would be lambing June 8. The only negative to June 8th here is there will be flies and likely it is raining. The barns are all roofed, so it may rain all it wants. I do not want frozen ears, lambs put off and weakened by severe cold. Scours too are an issue in damp wet weather but my barns are large, comfy and adequate. Have to be as said, none of this is mandatory...so I had better be taking very good care of them.
Jan 8th, 207 - Delivering some new oat straw bedding for the ewes' barn
Always a willing helper...don't put that straw IN the barn, we'll just eat it right here...even with the green alfalfa in the feeders!
We eat straw just to make you feel unworthy and unable to choose what we like to eat!
Realizing, of course, if I put oat straw in the hay feeders, the ewes would all give me a big stinky eye...that I was abusing them by only offering them oat straw...
This is one side in the ewe barn, I have removable gates that make it a lambing pen
Puckboard sides, easy to clean and a good place to have baby sheep in
I am playing farmer, so we plan our lambings at our best convenience. If I ran it like a business, you must justify risks for profit. No profit and worse yet, dead animal on a hobby farm takes the FUN out of the equation...so time passes, we plan our fun...makes me rather odd because I have asked sheep vets if sheep have to have lambs...reply back was, "Well no, they don't have to lamb." Vets are so use to people wanting a lamb CROP every year...not a business, only fun because we have jobs that pay for this hobby. Dorpers can lamb at any time of the year, so on my work schedule I prefer June and for the ewe lambs, July so I am home and there for them if needed. I don't want to miss a second of this fun thing...lambing is going to be such a fabulous time.
Add in the great green pastures that the sheep cannot keep up with...all good and should have excellent sheep because of it.
I am also now researching Kune Kune pigs...they are a true grazing pig and in Eastern Canada, we now have the most diversified breeding herd in North America. Bought some books on outdoor pig raising and my apprenticeship in raising pork begins. It also helps that pigs are personable (smarter than dogs!) and the Kuneys are cute as buttons. I have been conversing with some breeders and it looks like my livestock housing is right adequate...so maybe in a few years, there will be these dotty dotted porkers out competing for grass with the sheeps....
Jan 7th - Evening is upon us and time to head back to the house
When you wear the right clothing (and eat the right foods), winter is fun. I don't like the heat...so to me, too hot is just unbearable. I thrive in the cold. After you get use to winter, when it warms up to -10C, you find yourself wearing a t-shirt outside, thinking spring is here. I would not cope very well in a place with too much heat. We do get 110F here...that is when I feel rotten and hate that I cannot do chores and any physical work without being uncomfortable.
If you wanted to torture me, tell me I have to go lie on a hot sandy beach some place...not paradise, misery!
It is good to have lots of people that love different conditions...otherwise we would all live in one place and be more crowded than we are now.
The only thing I miss about living on the WEsT Coast of Canada...shrimp...but when I need a fix in that food, I just buy some frozen ones...
Jan 7th - Peeled some defrosted shrimp...
Heat some butter and peanut oil, peeled and diced garlic cloves for flavour (and removed)
then add some honey, saute the bell peppers, green onions and raw shrimp
Delicious!
Doggone & Chicken UP!
Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada
Thank you! I do feel blessedthis is the reason why I LOVE Winter here, It because it is yours definition of Spring!
It just amazing to me that we have citrus flowers and you are have heavy Snow!
But as you say, in every place there are the advantages and the disadvantages! I envy the easy access to natural resources that you have, venison and other kind of meat. Wonderful wild salmon, trout halibut and other fish, wild berris, mushrooms ect!
So the conclusion for me is: to spend ouer Summer in Canada, and the Canadian winter in Israel!
Tara you should bake you own bred!
How the Dorper lambs are doing? You will have one ready for eating this spring?
We came to Alberta (my husband returned) 25 years ago because of the benefits of agriculture here. We could buy land that was arable and knew we would be left alone to have a hobby farm. We can buy large quantities of raw goods like grains, straw, hay without the hassles like when we lived on the Coast--not able to find a supplier to source what we needed to play at farming.
There are four totes of grain in the trailer (l00kit the amount of silos of grain!)
One tote is forty 55 pound bags...4 totes is 160 bags of grain
Plus we haul in two loads a year of pelleted bird rations
So we go thru 480 "bags" of bird food a year
One and third bags a day is eaten by our poultry
and in winter, I haul ten 5 gallon buckets of water a day
Here we are a "little" place and surrounded by "big" places that may easily sell us the dozen or so tons of grain and bagged feed. A good place to "play farmer!" We play because we never expected to make a profit. Our government uses the term "no expectation of profit" to define hobby farming...something we play (very hard at too) at and enjoy the benefits of our own home grown bounty. The quality of our life and the food we have to use is better...lots better than factory commercially farmed products...or so we think!
This is a year's supply of hay for the little flock and herd we have in ruminants
(nine ewes, one ram, two llamas and an old doe goat)
What we don't GROW as forage & have them graze on our pastures, is topped up by this feed
Just like you, we LOVE winters too and it is why we moved here. I don't like fall and spring because these times are in-betweens to winter and summer--simply too messy for me. Ice to slip on, turns to mud, fall time all those leaves falling making a mess we need to clean up. I like tidy and orderly...NO MESS!!
We breath a sigh of relief when it is once again WHITE (winter) or GREEN (summer). We are bless that spring and fall happen for a very short period of time here. Makes me very happy. When "spring" comes, it is very short time. Unlike on the Coast where we had spring drag out over months...you'd see first the snow drops (Galanthus) blooming, then the magnolia's (Magnoliaceae) would flower, lilies like the tulips (Lilium), and daffodils (Narcissus) would begin to show up. We had spring on the Coast but here in Alberta, everything blooms all at once...lilacs (Syringa), roses (Rosa)--even the fruit gets going...all at the same time...if you blinked over a two week period...you may miss SPRING time...LOL The leaves here in the fall turn and in about two weeks, the wind has blown the leaves off and the trees need to be bare because otherwise the branches break with the weight of the snow that falls.
The thing I like about raising livestock in Alberta besides getting the raw products in bulk without too much trouble...the cold winters KILL parasites that might otherwise plague the animals. This weekend, the one chore I want to get tended to is I want to deworm the ewes and the ram. I don't have to do this every four months like in many other places, twice a year is enough. I do fecal floats (have two microscopes and all the supplies) and find NO parasites...so wonderful to know the animals are virtually free from that...no fleas on the dogs...magnificent to not have them scratching and being bothered by external parasites. I use to HATE how the dogs suffered on the Coast--a never ending battle to keep them free of yucky fleas!
This does however mean I have to realize only the STRONG animals and plants survive. Constantly tested to see if they can withstand the extremes.
No sitting around doing nothing in winter...
WE got no place to sit??
The dogs cope well at adapting...helping me with chores but taking advantage of things like an empty (well OK, room enough for ONE dog) sled to sit and wait for me to finish up without getting COLD TOES!
Old Dog Fixins...she is a wise old dog indeed!
Retired Princess Warrior dog...she knows how to take care of her needs
You make me laugh...winter in Israel and summers in Canada...a globe trotter! It would work so long as you had someone stay and keep things going where you were not! Those citrus trees would need regular watering, yes? Can't say I have not thought about maybe packing up all the creatures and holidaying over winter on the Coast...I would have to come back here in summer...the mud and gloomy 90 days straight of rains would depress me and the waterfowl, oh the mud pies they would be forever making would be endless!
Thank you for the incentive to make our own bread...
I do make my own bread...but there are only so many hours in the day and I do get tired unlike when I was younger.
I have a good bread machine to help out now--makes a loaf with hardly any effort and makes a real shaped loaf...here is some homemade chili and bread from that machine.
Not a round loaf like in some bread machines, a REAL loaf, with straight sides...curved top
I use to make bread every two days but both Rick and I grew tired of it. There is a whole other taste to bread made at home...and bad as it may sound, you get tired of HOMEMADE BREAD...makes great toast, easy and quick to make too, but it has been a while since I bothered. Yesterday was busy and to think of stopping for even 20 minutes to measure out the ingredients and fire up the bread machine...I was not in the right mind set for that...oh well. Maybe we will go a batch up...for now, I be very lazy and grabbed store bread.
Ah yes, those Dorper sheep. The girls have been living the life of luxury. Feeding them, actually flushing them right now with very green and very good alfalfa hay. After I deworm them and the ram and the two older ewes will go in with the ram. I will be marking his chest with coconut oil that has been tinted with drink crystals (I have two marking harness but prefer to just smear his chest with colour and not worry about him being rubbed wrong with the harness or worse yet, getting his harness caught on our fencing panels). See who the ram marks and record the date. Seventeen day cycle and then I can take the two ewes out and put in three ewe lambs. The one little one I chose as a pet, will not be bred, she has grown but is a runt and little. I am fine with having a pet now and again. I am soft that way--farming with PETS too!
I want to lamb when I am home 24/7, not when I have to work at my part time job--because this is all unnecessary and lavish...if I was not home and a ewe or lamb(s) died because I chose not to time their lambing when I could be on watch...I would never forgive myself--a risk I cannot validate. I will know when each female is bred, add five months or 145 days for when to expect lambs. If the ram bred the ewe today (unlikely!), she would be lambing June 8. The only negative to June 8th here is there will be flies and likely it is raining. The barns are all roofed, so it may rain all it wants. I do not want frozen ears, lambs put off and weakened by severe cold. Scours too are an issue in damp wet weather but my barns are large, comfy and adequate. Have to be as said, none of this is mandatory...so I had better be taking very good care of them.
Jan 8th, 207 - Delivering some new oat straw bedding for the ewes' barn
Always a willing helper...don't put that straw IN the barn, we'll just eat it right here...even with the green alfalfa in the feeders!
We eat straw just to make you feel unworthy and unable to choose what we like to eat!
Realizing, of course, if I put oat straw in the hay feeders, the ewes would all give me a big stinky eye...that I was abusing them by only offering them oat straw...
This is one side in the ewe barn, I have removable gates that make it a lambing pen
Puckboard sides, easy to clean and a good place to have baby sheep in
I am playing farmer, so we plan our lambings at our best convenience. If I ran it like a business, you must justify risks for profit. No profit and worse yet, dead animal on a hobby farm takes the FUN out of the equation...so time passes, we plan our fun...makes me rather odd because I have asked sheep vets if sheep have to have lambs...reply back was, "Well no, they don't have to lamb." Vets are so use to people wanting a lamb CROP every year...not a business, only fun because we have jobs that pay for this hobby. Dorpers can lamb at any time of the year, so on my work schedule I prefer June and for the ewe lambs, July so I am home and there for them if needed. I don't want to miss a second of this fun thing...lambing is going to be such a fabulous time.
Add in the great green pastures that the sheep cannot keep up with...all good and should have excellent sheep because of it.
I am also now researching Kune Kune pigs...they are a true grazing pig and in Eastern Canada, we now have the most diversified breeding herd in North America. Bought some books on outdoor pig raising and my apprenticeship in raising pork begins. It also helps that pigs are personable (smarter than dogs!) and the Kuneys are cute as buttons. I have been conversing with some breeders and it looks like my livestock housing is right adequate...so maybe in a few years, there will be these dotty dotted porkers out competing for grass with the sheeps....
Jan 7th - Evening is upon us and time to head back to the house
When you wear the right clothing (and eat the right foods), winter is fun. I don't like the heat...so to me, too hot is just unbearable. I thrive in the cold. After you get use to winter, when it warms up to -10C, you find yourself wearing a t-shirt outside, thinking spring is here. I would not cope very well in a place with too much heat. We do get 110F here...that is when I feel rotten and hate that I cannot do chores and any physical work without being uncomfortable.
If you wanted to torture me, tell me I have to go lie on a hot sandy beach some place...not paradise, misery!
It is good to have lots of people that love different conditions...otherwise we would all live in one place and be more crowded than we are now.
The only thing I miss about living on the WEsT Coast of Canada...shrimp...but when I need a fix in that food, I just buy some frozen ones...
Jan 7th - Peeled some defrosted shrimp...
Heat some butter and peanut oil, peeled and diced garlic cloves for flavour (and removed)
then add some honey, saute the bell peppers, green onions and raw shrimp
Delicious!
Doggone & Chicken UP!
Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada
) are hellish! 35-40C in average and slmost 70-75% humidity, NOT FUN AT ALL! THANK GOD FOR 6 Horse power Air condition! )
Something like over 6200 photos on 211 pages...lots of photos...yes?? 
Humidity does make it miserable...for the most part, Alberta has a DRY cold and a DRY heat...on the WEsT Coast of Canada...it was miserable at -10C very much felt like -40C here in Alberta. That humidity makes you instantly cold or instantly hot. I can sneak outside and go to the garage where the freezers are and grab a loaf of frozen bread...sneak back inside the house without putting on outside clothes. On the Coast, it seemed like if you put your TOE outside...you froze instantly. NO sneaking outside for just a moment...instantly miserable! We need to understand that like boiling water at sea level compared to the mountains ... how much water is in the air...humidity, that sure makes a difference. No humidity makes extremes of hot or cold easier to manage. Add in moisture and holy molly...unbearable for many of us. :/ Now so you all know...keep this topic on food...I have also been known to wear this apron when cooking outdoors... 
Distraction...oh yes, there is always food and making dinners...that will help! HELP ME! 
